new to linux, where to begin

[Igor Gueths]

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On Wed, May 12, 2004 at 06:30:29PM -0400, Chris Westbrook wrote:
> I am a computer science student home for the summer and thought maybe I'd 
> get into linux.  I currently have a laptop running windows xp pro.  is it 
> possible to run two operating systems on the same machine or should I try 
> to get an old machine somewhere.

Actually, it is in fact possible to boot the 2 operating systems. However, there are 2 things to consider. Do you have unallocated space on your disk, as in no filesystem? If not and windows 
is hogging the entire disk, you're going to have to install Linux and re-install windows. Based on my personal experience, it is easiest to create a partition for windows using the Dos version 
of Fdisk, and then install Linux after the windows partition.
  also, I really don't know much about 
> linux at all.  What distribution should I get.  I currently have a braille 
> note, and I've heard of brltty, but can I have speech as well?  Any help 
> would be appreciated.

In terms of what distribution to get, that really is dependent on personal preference i.e., do you prefer compiling from source over pre-built binary packages? If you like compiling things 
from source, perhaps Slackware is the better choice. However, if you like packages there are different distributions you can look at i.e., Fedora and Debian are the 2 that come to mind. I 
believe Brltty does support the Braillenote display, however I am not entirely sure on that. 
> 
> 
> Chris Westbrook
> msn or email: westbc at clw19.com
> aol screen name: westbrookc19
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

- -- 
Failure is not an option, it comes bundled with your Microsoft product.
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