New LINUX user?

Hello,

I am a staunch MS OS user. I've never used Linux and have used Mac OS because the MS OS computers at the computer lab were full. I think I know my way around MS OS as much as the next person. However, I am becoming more of a "tinkerer", and like the idea of opensource software, free software, and the sense of community that Linux users share.
Please let me repeat, I have never used Linux. I'm not that familiar with command lines and don't have any experience with programming. With that being said, will I have trouble using Linux as a 2nd OS on my notebook? I basically don't know anything about Linux other that it's an alternative OS. These recent urges to "tinker" cannot be satisfied with Vista, so this is why I'm leaning towards Linux. Will I have trouble? I understand that I'll have some trouble with initial set-up etc, but will I be entering a world that I will never understand based on my limited understanding mentioned above?

Thanks for you input and help!

 

Well.... you shouldn't have too much of a problem. Read this or at least some of it. I read some of it a few minutes ago. I got a link from forum member Bog. I don't know if he wrote it or not. Otherwise... have fun.

 

bwright, you can use Live CD's to give various distros a test run before installation. In other words, no need to install until, and unless you like what you see.

IMO, good distros to look at for starters: Ubuntu, Mint, PCLOS, and perhaps Mandriva. Others will have different opinions, but I think most will agree that using Live CD's is the best way to start. Good luck and I hope you enjoy Linux as much as the rest of the regular NBR posters. BTW, welcome to the forum

 

Ya. Ubuntu is the most popular distro. Also keep in mind that the LiveCD is going to be slower than if you actually had it installed on your hard drive.

 

True, but depending on hardware used, you still can get a pretty good feel for the distro.

BTW, has anyone else used the Gentoo Live CD? That is the fastest CD I've ever seen - by far. If it's faster than the actual installed distro (I wouldn't know; I'm not smart enough to get the damn thing set up properly! LOL), Gentoo has got to be a smokin' fast distro!

 

Yeah... that has been mentioned on my Ubuntu thread, I think... or something.

 

Heh, i never thought the help i gave you in the Windows forum would push you to use Ubuntu even more. You'll have no problem using it at all, we'll help you out, it's quit simple but once it's installed you'll be able to mess with everything. It's a lot safer to mess with things because you can backup files with ease so if you mess up your xorg conf file and can't boot into the GUI then just restore it.

 

I short of started tinkering with Linux about a year ago for pretty much the same reasons as you. I now use Ubuntu and Debian about 95% of the time. The learning curve is not all that difficult and there is plenty of help available on line(google) or in the various forums. You really have nothing to loose so give it a try.

 

That's pretty funny - most of the people on the Gentoo Forums hate the Live CD.

 

Ubuntu is by far the easiest to install and has a ton of information on its forums and includes a lot of GUI apps to take care of common tasks. However, even though Linux is becoming more user-friendly, they're still a lot of things you need to do at a prompt. Because of this, I highly recommend you read up on the subject a bit.

Additionally, when you first make the swap over, you may be horrified at how text appears in programs, and that is simply because the default fonts in Linux are different from Windows. They're several fonts you can download to pretty up the text, but if you are like me, you might find the transformation better if you go ahead and install the Windows fonts.

I copied all my windows fonts from C:\Windows\Fonts to /usr/share/fonts (that's a full name in Linux). After copying fonts over to this location, you might have to change the permissions of the fonts in order to use them, or you will see square boxes as text. Remember that, or you will become frustrated. If something doesn't work well, check its permission settings.

As an alternative, you can also copy fonts to /home/username/.fonts and you should not have to worry about permissions, but if you copy them to this location, your system programs such as Synaptics will not have access to the fonts, and will use the default system fonts/themes (this is why I copied mine to /usr/share/fonts).

Furthermore, they're lot of already made scripts you can download from sites that help you perform tasks much faster. As an example, you can download NScripts (gnome-look.org) that will allow you to open Nautilus (similar to file explorer in windows) as root which will allow you to do extra things in the GUI, you might not be able to without, such as change file permissions on certain files outside of your /home directory (like fonts, themes, etc).

Good luck with your journey into a new world.

 

Most of the people who post on the Gentoo forums are a hell of a lot smarter than I!

 

Well, it's actually because it doesn't produce a working install lol
I mainly don't like it because it uses GNOME.

 

I recently tried KDE 4.1 Beta, and it has improved in terms of stability; but the functionality still isn't there. The tons of configuration options available in 3.5x that made KDE so good are mostly gone. For instance, there doesn't seem to be a way of moving program icons along the taskbar. The whole System Settings console is a very stripped down version of the one in 3.5x. KDE 4 needs to make leaps and bounds for their UI to improve, as far as I'm concerned.

 

I think they're working on getting all the configuration options into KDE 4, but it's just not there yet. It should be by 4.2 or 4.3.

 

Linux will become the dominant OS in the market before KDE 4 becomes ready for prime time.

 

Yes. Ubuntu FTW. If you need any help there's Google, Ubuntuforums.org and us.

 

I recommend you check out the threads started by de.1337 and me on the subject. We did similar things.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=255345
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=204507
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=214065

 

it takes like a minute to change to xfce or kde lol, anyways I recommend linux mint. Very simple to use, tho ubuntu probably has a bigger forum community....