[GRASSLIST:8883] Re: Off Topic (Somewhat): Most commonly supported Linux Distro for Gr ass usage?

[pmarc]

2005/11/4, Patton, Eric <epatton at nrcan.gc.ca>:

>  I am seriously considering
> partitioning my hard drive to be able to run Linux on my workstation.

Good for you. welcome.

> Can anyone who has done this recommend the 'best' method (i.e., least likely to
> destroy my hard drive) of doing this? Partition Magic seems to get high
> scores when Googled. But I would prefer using an open-source tool for doing
> this, I'm just apprehensive about software stability.

I've been reading comments from people who had done this lately, and
they seem to be using FIPS or GNU Parted.
I've not used any one of those.

>  which Linux
> flavor is the most supported, if that question even makes sense. Or, which
> version do the developers and other old hands use?

This is the kind of question that tends to start a flamewar...So, I
will raise my shields and wait for the worst, hehe...

> I want to be able to do away with Cygwin altogether and be able to
> download/compile the latest cvs releases. Aside from trying out the latest
> and greatest, I want to help out with some Grass documentation (most likely
> man pages - am I crazy ;^)  ? ), and to do this I'll need to have the latest
> programs. I know from reading the messages in this list that there have been
> many improvements made since Sept 2, the date of my Cygwin binary.

So, if want to start man writing, I should recommend you go the Debian way.
The current stable release is just some months old, and the testing
version (which I am using) is pretty stable. Not the most current
packages though. Hamish may be able to explain his setup. If I recall
right he is the grass package maintainer for Debian.

Err, well , I said all thas because, per Debian policy, all packages
_must_ provide man pages, so there is already a good foundation.
And if allow a sugestion, write your docs SGML, so they can be
compiled to whatever formats the user sees best.

> I'm aware that before partitioning I need to backup all my files - we have a
> 1TB drive for this - and I've been tarring and zipping for about a week now.
> Tedious, but necessary. I will probably try out partitioning my home PC
> first (as I don't really have too much worth losing on it) as a trial run
> before attempting my work PC.

If you don't mind installing windows and apps all over again, then I
sould recommend you to partition an empty drive. Then install. Be sure
to create a FAT32 partition, so you can exchange data from Linux to
Windows with ease. I heard the NTFS write support works, but that is
marked as dangerous in the kernel options.

The last time I installed my system was from an empty drive, due to
hard disk failure. Had no backup.

Just my 0.02
--
Paulo Marcondes
http://rj.debianbrasil.org