Joydeep Bakshi ([55]joy12 from vsnl.net)
   Answered By Faber Fedor, Benjamin Okopnik

   Hi, I am a computer faculty & also teach Linux. I am interested to know
   about  the advantage/disadv. & the difference of ext2,ext3 and the new
   Reiserfs file-system of linux. could any one please provide me these info.
   ? any link for further reading is also welcome. 

     [Faber] Have you read:
     [56]http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Filesystems-HOWTO.html ?

     [Ben] [blink] Joydeep... how do you do that if you're not familiar with
     even the very basics of finding information under Linux? I really don't
     envy your students the quality of information they're receiving. The above
     may sound harsh, but given the questions you've posted to this list over
     time  -  including  this one - and the skills required for teaching
     (considered independently from the actual content), I find the above
     statement highly incongruous with your level of knowledge.

     ReiserFS isn't what I'd call "new". You can find out about the various
     filesystems by looking at the relevant HOWTOs - the Filesystems-HOWTO, the
     ext3-(mini,usage)-HOWTOs - and the kernel documentation, usually available
     (if     you    have    the    kernel    sources    installed)    in
     "/usr/src/kernel-source-/Documentation/filesystems, with each
     type of supported FS having its own explanatory file.
            ____________________________________________________

partiton

   John Savic ([57]johnsavic from bettanet.net.au)
   Answered By Karl-Heinz Herrmann

   hi, 

   Ive just bought a new pc, and had the vendor load linux mandrake, as I = am
   not impressed with micoscum corp. I need to run mechanical desktop = which
   dosent seem to like linux, so can u please advise. talking to some boffins,
   I need to partition the drive, and set up = windows, can u please advise,
   and if this is the case, can u please = advise how to go about it, as I am
   a real novice at linux. 

   thankyou
   john savic 

     [K.-H]  well  --  whatever mechanical desktop is, if its a win only
     application you'll need windows.

     If it's not very hardware intensive you might get away in an emulator
     (e.g. wine). Then there is (commercial) vmware which runs a virtual PC
     inside linux (which can run windows). Or you change to a dual boot system
     Linux/win.

     Dual boot system are best set up right from the beginning. Messing around
     with partitions after everything is installed is always risky. You can try
     (commercial)      PartitionMagic      to      repartition.     fips
     [58]http://www.igd.fhg.de/~aschaefe/fips is a free version with a less
     fancy GUI I guess.

     What partition layout would be useful (or possible) depends on how it is
     now and what you want. Usually I would put firs the win partition and then
     only the Linux partitions (note plural), often in an extended partition.
     If you've one huge Linux partition now I don't know if you can free the
     beginning -- it might be restricted to free the top end.

     Well -- messing around (successfully) with partitions takes at least some
     knowledge of partitions on PC systems. This is not (very) specific to
     Linux, but of course all the Linux tool behave a little different from the
     old DOS tools (like fdisk, format,...).

     There  is  a  nice page giving hints how to ask questions which get
     answered/answered with something really helpful:

     [59]http://linuxgazette.net/tag/ask-the-gang.html

     which  also mentions the possibility to search on TAG or google for
     relevant search criteria: "linux partition resize" might be all that's
     needed.
            ____________________________________________________

PPP over parport?

   Peter Paluch ([60]peterp from frcatel.fri.utc.sk)
   Question    by    linux-questions-only    (linux-questions-only   from
   linuxgazette.com)
   Answered By Thomas Adam

   Hello, 

   Originally it started as a non-Linux problem. I had to interconnect two
   Windows95 machines via a serial link using the Direct Cable Link function.
   However those machined refused to connect (of course, what else could I
   expect  from  M$  products...).  After  several  hours of unsuccessful
   experiments I finally booted Linux on one of these machines and after five
   minutes of playing with pppd I had the Windows95 and Linux up-and-connected
   perfectly. 

   However, the serial link was too slow because of an old UART, so I thought
   of using a parallel cable instead, with Win95 at one side of the link and
   Linux at the another. But here I have a bigger problem. The Direct Cable
   Link in Windows always uses PPP protocol, no matter what type of cable it