linux...? what do i need?

[failurbydesign]

i want to try linux on an extra computer of mine..what would be the best version of linux for me to use? and is it hard or easy? will the majority of my stuff work with linux? i have soo many questiosn..but lets stick with the first one and ill do the rest...

 

[cryogenic]

I run Fedora Core 3 and found that it detected and installed all my hardware properly... Obviously everyone's opinions are going to vary on this one. I've had good luck with Suse as well, but it doesn't include compiling tools by default, so that makes it hard to compile and install some software. There are plenty of resources out there to answer your questions and plenty of places to look for answers to your problems. On the whole, the Linux community is generally pretty helpful. Your questions are pretty vague, so it's nearly impossible for me to give you a straight answer to any of them. Setting up Linux in general isn't really that much harder than Windows, it's just that it's quite a bit different so there's a learning curve involved.

 

[j79zlr]

Q: linux...? what do i need?

A: Patience

 

[LeeJend]

I tried Mandrake and Redhat a couple years back, both detected hardware and worked fine.

Your windows applications will not run on Linux, wrong operating system. Unless you find something like Lindows (whatever they call it now) that will emulate Windows. The Windows emulators don't do well with games or graphically oriented programs.

You can find replacements for Office and business type applications for free in the open source world of Linux. Some games are available in Linux versions.

A few years back trying different applications in Linux was not as easy as swapping between Outlook, Eudora, Firefox, IE, etc. The interfaces aren't as standardized. Hopefully they have improved it some by now.

Let us know what you find. I just pieced together another PC out of my junk box and was going to set it up as a dual boot experimental machine.

 

[Shamus MacNoob]

To be honest if you need to ask your not there yet.

sorry

 

[cryogenic]

Q: linux...? what do i need?

A: Patience

amen to that one... even with FC3, which is fairly n00b friendly, one still needs patience and a good google-hand. Like I said, it's not that it's that much more difficult than Windows, it's just different. I would suggest this particular user avoid Gentoo and Slackware... Even though slackware is mostly pre-packaged, I don't see it as newbie friendly as Fedora, Mandrake, Suse, etc.

 

[dreamliner77]

Or go order some free Ubunto cd's.

 

[Weasel]

You need the power of google, the knowledge of how to use search engines and forums, and a site with lots and lots of documentation. Linux is free which is great and all but that also usually means there's nothing when it comes to documentation, it's poorly written, or it's insanely complicated; it's fairly rare to stumble across something that actually makes sense if you're not familure with hacking up a program/driver to make it work properly.

If you don't mind downloading several CD iso images, then try your hand at SuSE, Fedora, or maybe even Mandrake (has a lot of bloat compared to the others and the userbase gives off bad karma). The only problem is that those distrubutions are typically three or four cds and you either have to netinstall SuSE or buy it. I'd recomend Progeny for a new user because it's only one cd and has an easy installed but it's not completely finished yet and is still to be considered alpha/beta software.

You could always paruse around over on LinuxISrg and try to find something or use a distro such as Knoppix which runs off a CD and makes it much harder/impossible to damage your system.

As I'm sure you're familure, linux isn't Windows and can't use the same software. There are software depositories around the internet (use your favorite search engine) that have plenty of software to download or most comes on the CD images that you down load.

 

[failurbydesign]

To be honest if you need to ask your not there yet.

sorry

I beleave you know after reading all this..maybe ill research more into what i may be getting myself into..thanks for the help...

 

[j79zlr]

Linux is free which is great and all but that also usually means there's nothing when it comes to documentation, it's poorly written, or it's insanely complicated;

This is utterly untrue. The man pages usually have your solution, or a search on a linux forum will solve 99% of problems. In the linux community everything is actually quite well documented, especially with the high rate of new users, they have the same problems and solution is usually only a google search away.

 

[FishBoy]

RedHat, SuSE, uBuntu they are all good i haven't tried uBuntu yet though but hope it'll be nice

 

[Weasel]

This is utterly untrue. The man pages usually have your solution, or a search on a linux forum will solve 99% of problems. In the linux community everything is actually quite well documented, especially with the high rate of new users, they have the same problems and solution is usually only a google search away.

My bad, I should have been more clear and formed a less direct sentence (draining day). The man pages aren't too helpful all the time and on most things, at least on the bsd platform, it still stumps me or doesn't document all the features that I'm trying to use. Initial documentation is typically poor with 3rd party (I guess that's what you could call it) software and sadly I can't think of any good examples right now because my brain is fried. I do believe I also mentioned that using one's favorite search engine you can stumble across sites where someone else has posted problems/solutions or something along the lines of LinuxFAQs. Most and my last experience with linux was with Debian which isn't exactly user friendly and doesn't exactly have a great and helpful user base. Of course, that was a few years ago. Maybe I should just stop typing and go back to bed.

 

[Geffy]

really? I found the BSD manpages cover everything quite well, with the exception of telling you how some shell constructs are supposed to work, but thats the same in most linux distros as well

 

[X-Istence]

If you don't mind trying another *nix based OS, try FreeBSd, comes with the handbook http://freebsd.org/handbook/ which helps you step by step through the install process.

 

[vern]

Linux and open-source software in general truelly do have lots of documentation. The problem is that the documentation is not geared to the non-techie. For the new user, the documentation ranges levels of hard to insanely hard. The other thing I find very annoying in the community is the fact that lots of users who knew nothing months before tend to become elitists when someone new comes along. I asked "what is the difference between linload.exe and loadlin.exe" in a #linux channel a few days back and instead of getting a straightforward answer ... I get "use google". Yes the answer was eventually found on google, but not after hours of searching ... yes hours. Even when I did find it, it wasn't directly describing both, but just referring to them. Things like these are very frustrating. I can only imagine how someone who has just started today must feel. This elitist attitude that a lot of people have (no one on OSNN, OSNN has always been helpful) is a detriment to the community and the growth of open source as a whole.

Now who knows how to upgrade my AlphaBIOS? :laugh:

 

[X-Istence]

vern, try the FreeBSD community, they are a lot more helpfull.

Asking questions in IRC will get answered, most of the time in a timely manner and by different people, who can all give you their input on how to do it.

The only time when you are told to google or use the handbook is when it is such a dumb question that it has been mentioned to many times on google.

They prefer to send you to the handbook because it contains a lot of good information, and they are in general a lot more helpfull. There is no 1337 attitude, and everyone is on the same level as everyone else. No snobbish replies, nothing. Some people know more than others, but in general they would rather share the knowledge rather than let it go to waste.

For a good FreeBSD help channel try #freebsdhelp on Efnet.

The two communities are different. They try to make the man pages and other documentation be aimed towards noobs, especially for man pages that newbies to a system most need.

After that, you learn how to do it, and the other man pages become easy to use as well. Ill say it again, the handbook is a great source. Contains anything anyone should want from their system.

 

[cryogenic]

As far as Linux documentation goes, I'm kinda surprised nobody's mentioned The Linux Documentation Project!

 

[Weasel]

Linux and open-source software in general truelly do have lots of documentation. The problem is that the documentation is not geared to the non-techie. For the new user, the documentation ranges levels of hard to insanely hard. The other thing I find very annoying in the community is the fact that lots of users who knew nothing months before tend to become elitists when someone new comes along. I asked "what is the difference between linload.exe and loadlin.exe" in a #linux channel a few days back and instead of getting a straightforward answer ... I get "use google". Yes the answer was eventually found on google, but not after hours of searching ... yes hours. Even when I did find it, it wasn't directly describing both, but just referring to them. Things like these are very frustrating. I can only imagine how someone who has just started today must feel. This elitist attitude that a lot of people have (no one on OSNN, OSNN has always been helpful) is a detriment to the community and the growth of open source as a whole.

Thank you! You said what I was trying to say.

 

[j79zlr]

I learned linux on my own basically, and the same with FreeBSD. I've been using it for a few years now, and I must say that I very rarely had a problem that couldn't be solved with minutes not hours of searching.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=linload.exe+loadlin.exe+&btnG=Search

Shows the difference in the second result.

 

[sean.ferguson]

whats wrong with documentation? http://www.tldp.org/