First some background, I started my pc experience with a 286 and dos
3.x. I learned how to build and install and repair by part failure, sw
failure and simple curiosity (what would happen if I delete this?)
hehe. you sure learn a lot that way!!! Anyway, with no formal
education, book learning or anything I can build/tear down desktops and
laptops any ms os or program. But as of mandrake 9.x I can't seem to
figure out how to even get Linux to work after the first reboot...

Now my questions..

I would like to find a distro that would allow me to:
1) boot up,
2) partition a drive,
3) format the partitions,
4) and (dos sys c: equivalent) make boot able hdd
5) Then from the command prompt load 1 program at a time by either man
pages or internet assistance

My goal is to understand what I am doing by the time I get to the Gui.

Any advise is greatly appreciated

On Mon, 14 May 2007 21:45:54 -0500, William wrote:

> First some background, I started my pc experience with a 286 and dos
> 3.x. I learned how to build and install and repair by part failure, sw
> failure and simple curiosity (what would happen if I delete this?)
> hehe. you sure learn a lot that way!!! Anyway, with no formal
> education, book learning or anything I can build/tear down desktops and
> laptops any ms os or program. But as of mandrake 9.x I can't seem to
> figure out how to even get Linux to work after the first reboot...
>
> Now my questions..
>
> I would like to find a distro that would allow me to:
> 1) boot up,
> 2) partition a drive,
> 3) format the partitions,
> 4) and (dos sys c: equivalent) make boot able hdd
> 5) Then from the command prompt load 1 program at a time by either man
> pages or internet assistance
>
> My goal is to understand what I am doing by the time I get to the Gui.
>
> Any advise is greatly appreciated

In order to boot there must be a minimal system installed on your hdd, a
text based system. You're aware of this since you want internet access and
man pages. Most major distributions allow for this type of installation,
since they may be used as a server. An example would be Debian. Starting
in text mode, adding X, and then choose Fluxbox (or KDE / Gnome...) Now
the thing is that any modern distribution will make this as easy as
possible if you use it's tools. If you really want to test and try, you may
want to go to the source, like http://www.x.org/ but be aware that this
may be the start of a long journey.

--
Ehrman's Commentary:
(1) Things will get worse before they get better.
(2) Who said things would get better?

On Mon, 14 May 2007 21:45:54 -0500, William wrote:

> I would like to find a distro that would allow me to:
> 1) boot up,
> 2) partition a drive,
> 3) format the partitions,
> 4) and (dos sys c: equivalent) make boot able hdd
> 5) Then from the command prompt load 1 program at a time by either man
> pages or internet assistance
>
> My goal is to understand what I am doing by the time I get to the Gui.


Slackware...

paul_s

On Mon, 14 May 2007 21:45:54 -0500, William wrote:

> First some background, I started my pc experience with a 286 and dos
> 3.x. I learned how to build and install and repair by part failure, sw
> failure and simple curiosity (what would happen if I delete this?)
> hehe. you sure learn a lot that way!!! Anyway, with no formal
> education, book learning or anything I can build/tear down desktops and
> laptops any ms os or program. But as of mandrake 9.x I can't seem to
> figure out how to even get Linux to work after the first reboot...
>
> Now my questions..
>
> I would like to find a distro that would allow me to:
> 1) boot up,
> 2) partition a drive,
> 3) format the partitions,
> 4) and (dos sys c: equivalent) make boot able hdd
> 5) Then from the command prompt load 1 program at a time by either man
> pages or internet assistance
>
> My goal is to understand what I am doing by the time I get to the Gui.
>
> Any advise is greatly appreciated

Gentoo was made for you. Also consider LFS.

William <william_thompson@att.net> wrote:
>My goal is to understand what I am doing by the time I get to the Gui.

Although this isn't an answer to your question, you might have some fun
reading the material at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ , which
describes how to make your own distro from the ground up.

-Beej

On Mon, 14 May 2007, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux, in article
<D992i.3247$zj3.383@newssvr23.news.prodigy.net>, William wrote:

>But as of mandrake 9.x I can't seem to figure out how to even get
>Linux to work after the first reboot...

No details - no answers.

>I would like to find a distro that would allow me to:
>1) boot up,
>2) partition a drive,
>3) format the partitions,

ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/r...bt-2.0.103.lsm

Begin3
Title: tomsrtbt
Version: 2.0.103
Entered-date: 04MAY02
Description: "The most GNU/Linux on one floppy." (Distribution/panic disk).
1.72MB boot/root rescue/tools diskette for your shirt pockets.
Supports ide, scsi, tape, network adaptors, PCMCIA, much more.
About 100 utility programs and tools for fixing and restoring.
See tomsrtbt.FAQ for a list of stuff that is included. Not a
script, just the diskette image packed up chock full of stuff.
Easy to customize startup and scripts for complete rebuilding.
Also good as learn-unix-on-a-floppy as it has mostly what you
expect- vi, , lua, sed, sh, manpages- loaded on ramdisks.
One installer runs under GNU/Linux, another in DOS, one to CD.
Keywords: rescue recovery emergency floppy panic bootdisk tomsrtbt help
Author: tom@toms.net (Tom Oehser)
Maintained-by: tom@toms.net (Tom Oehser)
Primary-site: www.toms.net /rb
1 kB home.html
Alternate-site: sunsite.unc.edu /pub/Linux/system/recovery
1722 kB tomsrtbt-2.0.103.tar.gz
1722 kB tomsrtbt-2.0.103.dos.zip
1722 kB tomsrtbt-2.0.103.ElTorito.288.img.bz2
Copying-policy: GPL
End

>4) and (dos sys c: equivalent) make boot able hdd

and if you remember back that far, this installed COMMAND.COM and two
hidden files (IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS) totalling well under 500KB. DOS was
a single user, single tasking operating system that did NOTHING other
than provide a crude command interface that allowed you to launch actual
applications because it had to fit into the first 640K of memory. The
'tomsrtbt' admittedly is loading everything into a RAMdisk, but
'/proc/meminfo' on an ancient 486 is telling me

total used free shares buffers cached
Mem 14848000 7667712 7180288 1523712 4591616 1359877
Swap 0 0 0

>5) Then from the command prompt load 1 program at a time by either man
>pages or internet assistance

http://tldp.org/guides.html

* Linux From Scratch

version: 6.1.1
author: Gerard Beekmans, <gerard(at)linuxfromscratch.org>
last update: Nov 2005
available formats:
1. HTML (read online) (HTML.tar.bz2)
2. HTML (read online, single file) (HTML.bz2)
3. HTML (tarred and bzipped package)
4. PDF (PDF.bz2)
5. text (txt.bz2)
6. text (XML.tar.bz2)

Derived from the popular Linux-From-Scratch-HOWTO, this book
describes the process of creating your own Linux system from scratch
from an already installed Linux distribution, using nothing but the
sources of software that are needed.
More information can be found at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org.

The point being that you need a working operating system of some kind to be
able to create an working operating system. Chicken? Egg? Well, there is
more to it than that, but this is a good starting point. For a rough order
of magnitude, I think this is format 3 from the web-site:

[compton ~]$ ls -l /usr/doc/LDP/LFS-BOOK-6.1.1-HTML.tar.bz2 | cut -c30-
149504 Aug 25 2006 /usr/doc/LDP/LFS-BOOK-6.1.1-HTML.tar.bz2
[compton ~]$

Note that the LDP web site above has 34 _other_ books that you can
download for free many of which are valuable reading.

Old guy

Moe Trin wrote:

> ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/r...bt-2.0.103.lsm

> http://tldp.org/guides.html

> Note that the LDP web site above has 34 _other_ books that you can
> download for free many of which are valuable reading.

//snippage//

What a beautifully complete answer! /This/ is exactly the kind of reply and
encouragement we need to offer newbies. Well done.

Chris