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I would appreciate some advice please.
I have been thinking about trying a freeware OS, eg BSD or Linux perhaps. The computer will be reformated prior to the installation of the OS, do I have to have different drivers for the Sound Card, Graphics Card, Monitor, Modem, etc or will the existing drivers that worked with W98 be compatible with the new OS?
jepo
Depends on the age of your computer. An older computer will most likely be supported and most drivers will be included in the OS. Your best bet would be a distro of Linux. You can find downloads for most of the major distros here;
http://www.linuxiso.org/
My personal favorte is Suse, but Mandrake and Fedora/Redhat are also user friendly. Read the tutorials on how to make an ISO before you D/L a distro. Free BSD is also available from the above link.
Many thanks for your reply, I will follow up your suggestions. The computer that I intend to use has:
AMD Duron 800 MHz
320 Mb RAM
25 Gb Hard Disk
and is about 4 or 5 years old.
The DVD versions of magazine cover disks can be a useful resource too. PCPlus recently had the ISO for the Linspire 5 Live CD, which can be a useful way to experiment. Other distros have a Live CD edition, eg Ubuntu.
Thanks Platypus I will keep an eye on the magazines for their disks, although I don't think I have ever seen PCPlus in the UK.
http://pcplus.co.uk/
Linux distros are usually included free on the DVD version of the edition.
If your on broadband you can get many distors from a lot of sources such as:
http://www.linuxiso.org/
http://www.knoppix.com/
104456
Thank you for the links, which will followup.
jepo
Hi Jepo
Hers a nother you can add to your list: http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php
Some of the smaller live cds will run from mini disks too
104456
Sorry for the delay in replying, thank you for the further information.
jepo
S`ok Jepo.Which did you try out? :D
104456
I have not tried any of them yet, I am trying to digest all the information received. After my forthcoming holiday I will take some action.
Regards
jepo