Support NeoGAF

[Felidae_Khrall]

I'm going out and buying a 250 gig External USB 2.0, so that I can clear off my hard drive and back it up. Then, I'm blowing away XP Pro on this machine and installing Mandrake.

I've never really used linux before, but this is very GUI from what I've been told . Any tips/suggestions/neccessities I need to know about?

What Firewall/Virus Software should I use?
Any good resource sites for these programs?
Will all my games work? (Would I need a Windows EMU like WINE?)
Should I update my BIOS?
Good Burning Programs? I have a DVD-RW, any good Player out there too?
etc, etc...

BIOS: BIOS Date: 12/12/03 19:29:54 Ver: 08.00.09
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 1022MB RAM
Graphics: Radeon 9600PRO(128)
Audio: SoundBlaster! LIVE
MotherBoard: Asus P4P800 Deluxe

The CPU is Hyperthreaded.

I appreciate all helpful input


*Edit*

Oh Yeah, and what about all my windows files..(are there any incompatibilies with anything) Will I need to do anything special about the format they're in ? That'd be key... hehe

 

[SFA_AOK]

Install should be OK, Mandrake was a very easy install for me. All your hardware seems to be common stuff so I seriously doubt you'll have any issues there. As for the software - during the install process you'll be able to choose what programs you want to install.

As for you opther questions (I've left out some as others will post better answers)

Any good resource sites for these programs?

http://www.google.com/linux
http://www.freshrpms.net
http://www.tldp.org/index.html
http://www.sourceforge.net

Will all my games work? (Would I need a Windows EMU like WINE?)

Your games won't work straight off, no. I'm not too sure about Wine, I think it'll run some games but not all. For games that require high performance, I'd guess you'd be better off keeping a Windows XP partition...

Also, I've heard driver support for Radeon cards kinda sucks.

Should I update my BIOS?

Not unless you have a reason to?

Good Burning Programs? I have a DVD-RW, any good Player out there too?

You should get the choice to install some burning software when you're installing. If not, there should be some free stuff out there...

 

[iapetus]

What windows file formats do you need to keep compatibility with? If you're talking about Office files, you'll need to install OpenOffice (I believe it's on the Mandrake 10 install discs) which has pretty good compatibility (in some cases better than Office itself!).

Expect none of your games to work. That way you might be pleasantly surprised when a few of them do. I've seen some people getting pretty good results with WINE, but personally I've never found it to work particularly well for games, though I have had Starcraft, Diablo II and Warcraft III working pretty well in the past.

 

[Felidae_Khrall]

Yeah, I wasn't too sure about Office files and stuff like that... Oh well, I guess I'll just get on with the install and see what's wrong AFTER.. then I can be more specific about what my problems are

Thanks so far guys!

 

[LinesInTheSand]

Why not just keep WinXP on too? You're just going to be dissapointed otherwise. Why anyone would go exclusive Linux baffles me.

 

[Felidae_Khrall]

I may put a partition on later, we'll see. I'll have Pro running on my other computer anyway when It's back up and running.

I just bought an External Enclosure kit and a Seagate Barracuda 200gig/7200rpm.
Ran me about $250 canadian.

That's the colour I picked, it's so shiiinny!

It's formatting now, but I have to go to work in an hour or so... Auuuugh, I want to play with it.

*Edit*

Oops, that's not quite the one I got, Mine is USB2.0 only, no firewire. So the ports are off, but it looks the same otherwise.

 

[DaCocoBrova]

^^


Where can I get that enclosure w/ no drive?

 

[Felidae_Khrall]

^^


Where can I get that enclosure w/ no drive?

Check your local small business computer stores. It cost me about $50 canadian. It's like $70-80 for the one with FireWire and USB2.0

Now.. Lets say that, oh... HYPOTHETICALLY, I was retarded and formatted a drive full of stuff I had not yet backed up and wanted to shoot myself right now... Any way I could, you know, HYPOTHETICALLY restore that drive?














































I want to cry.

 

[Tenguman]

You are pretty screwed, though there is software out there that may recover SOME things.

The idea is:

When you delete something off the hard-drive, you don't really delete it. Rather you mark that file for overwrite. So when the hard-drive wants to write a new file in that same location, it can. Thus, when you delete something it's not really gone until the hardddrive gets something new to put there.

So, in theory, after a format you should be able to gain a few things. I'd do a google search for "format file recovery" or something like that.

 

[SFA_AOK]

I think Norton have a program that does data recovery.

Most important thing is to stop using that drive!

 

[dazedx]

Using the latest version of Wine i've managed to get everything i use in windows, on a normal basis, to work in mandrake linux. Even games for me. Doom III has run flawlessly so far, as well as Warcraft III and The Sims.

There is pretty much a linux equivalent for almost all software out there besides games.

 

[Felidae_Khrall]

Ok, after discovering that I had accidentally formatted about 80 gigs worth of stuff I wanted to keep I gave up on mandrake so I could attempt some Drive Recovery.... Alas, it was all badly fragmented and while I did manage to rescue a number of .jpg's and about 4000 useless .png files. That and about 14000 files that were basically all just fragments of a larger file.. *SIGH*

So I just decided to do a good clean format, try updating all my bios/chipset drivers and then do another Clean XP install. Seems to be working ok right now, since the new Catalyst drivers aren't fucking over my startup.

I'm just getting 3D benchmark so I can see how it's gonna run with the clean wipe.

I'm still going to install mandrake, but with the complete pain in the ass time I've had doing the XP reinstall (Fucking thing crashed when I was D/L the security updates, so it wouldn't reboot) I'm going to leave XP on here, otherwise I wasted all that time for nothing.

I may install it as a dual boot, or, I may just put it on my older system when I get that running.









































..seeecrets