Looking for Some Advice

bscott at ntisys.com bscott at ntisys.com
Tue May 27 09:33:56 EDT 2003


On Tue, 27 May 2003, at 9:04am, Lawrence.Tilly at libertymutual.com wrote:
> Partitioning Software:  I need something that can split an 18GB
> NTFS-formatted drive with minimal risk (I have everything backed up, but
> it was a major PITA last time I needed to have a reinstall done).  A free
> solution would be preferred, of course, but if there's a licensed product
> that's far-and-above superior I'll put in the request.

  I am not aware of any Open Source/Free Software tools which can safely
handle NTFS.  My understanding is that there are Intellectual Property
issues surrounding NTFS that make OS/FS implementations of it difficult.

  I have used Partition Magic, from PowerQuest Corp, many times to resize
NTFS with great success.  It is a commercial product.  It runs on
DOS/Windows only, but it can boot and run from a floppy set, making it
workable on a Linux-only system.  I am not happy with the direction
PowerQuest has taken these past few years, but I suspect they still have the
best products in the field.  (I'm still using Partition Magic version 4,
which is several years old at this point.)

  Two alternatives I have looked closely at are Partition Manager from
Paragon (http://www.partition-manager.com), and Partition Commander from V
Communications (http://www.v-com.com/).  Paragon in particular has a number
of products which appeal to me.

> Red Hat Linux:  My machine is a Dell Latitude (3 years old, 500mHz, 512MB,
> ATI Rage Mobility 128 video).  Does anyone have any suggestions as to a
> good version of RH for a laptop of this vintage?

  If this is strictly a "let's see what happens" project, I would recommend
either 8.0 or 9, both of which seem to be pretty stable (for a Red Hat
release :), and contain the "latest and greatest" of everything Red Hat
supports.  Maximum wow factor for your audience, and (usually) the best
hardware support.  Even if the default desktop drags too much on your
laptop, you adjust things for better performance.  And with those specs, I
suspect performance will be good.

  The other thing you might want to consider is Red Hat's "enterprise"  
product line.  They are calling it "Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation"
right now.  The design goal with the "enterprise" line is a longer, more
manageable release cycle, which is exactly what corporate IT departments
want.  Of course, this also means that new features are slower to appear,
and hardware support sometimes lags.  But it might be more appropriate to
your environment.

> Installed Products:  I will mostly just need a desktop environment, web
> browser and a mostly-M$-compatible office suite. I have used Gnome and
> OpenOffice at home, and unless there are any significant reasons for doing
> otherwise, I would plan to do the same here. Any other apps will be added
> on an as-needed basis.

  I agree with all of that.  OpenOffice, while it is a resource hog, is an
excellent office suite, and a strong competitor to MS-Office, IMO.

> Anything Else:  Is there anything else I'm not thinking about (specific
> boot managers that work better, etc)??

  I'd be more worried about interoperability with the rest of your network.  
What software and protocols do you use there?

> Feel free to mail me off-list if you would like.

  I encourage you to keep this discussion on this list, as it is both very
on-topic and likely very interesting to many of it's members!

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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