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Subject: Re: Linux for Comp. Chess. Help!

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 10:37:05 05/30/02

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On May 30, 2002 at 12:24:31, Miguel A. Ballicora wrote:

>My hard drive broke down causing me lots of problems. The only good thing about
>this is that I installed a new HD and I got courage to install also Linux.
>So, I'd like to have Windows and Linux. I would do the serious stuff with
>windows and I will use Linux to experiment with it and for computer chess
>programming. I developed my program Gaviota portably, so it can compile in both
>MSVC and Cygwin, so to have it compiled with GCC should be a piece of cake.
>In that way, I can release a version of my program for Linux!

I personally like redhat.  7.3 is current.


>
>So, the question is: What kind of Linux distribution would you recommend taking
>into account that it would be mainly for computer chess and experimentation?
>That is, xboard, xboard compatible engines, GCC, programming tools etc.
>The cheapest one I can find? If in the future I decide to build a dual, would it
>support SMP? I heard that Bob Hyatt had problems with Red Hat.

No.  Redhat _solved_ my problems.  I used slackware when I had some SMP
problems, but the problem turned out to be the old Adaptec 7xxx scsi driver.
It was later fixed.  Redhat is the preferred (to me) linux install.  You can
download 3 ISO images, boot and go.



>
>Should I download Linux instead? (I have access at work to a T1 connection and a
>CD burner) or it is too much trouble? $40 for a linux distribution might be
>fine.

I personally download.  But I don't have a T1.  I have an OC12 so it takes
no time at all.  :)



>
>How to do it dual boot? Is that easy to do? Is that supposed to come in the
>distribution I buy? Is something safe? I partitioned my HD 20MB + 20 MB already
>with the application that came with the HD (Maxtor 40 MB, I have no idea whether
>it is good or it sucks but I did not want to wait to do research).

Dual boot is easy.  Partition your disk, install windows, then install linux.
Lilo or Grub (boot loaders) will let you choose the system to "default" to and
also let you pick the other one any time you want...

>
>The good thing is that I can experiment now since my HD is empty (with Windows
>98, which came with the machine, I know people do not like it but I'll try not
>to buy another version and it worked "reasonably" well for me).
>
>Sorry about my ignorance, you can really reduce it :-)
>If you help me, I will pay with a new Linux engine to download.
>
>Miguel



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