Ok...another Newbie

first thing....i have to say you guys are great, u all seem friendly, and are all willing to help eachother out without flaming, which i think is fantastic.

so heres my newb questions:
im currently on Windows XP Media, and its broken, and i dont have the windows xp media OS on disc, so have decided to start from scratch and get LINUX

but im not sure how to do it, lets say for example i wanted to go to UBUNTU would i just, download it onto cd, then put it in and follow instructions? please help.

also with the desktop environments, such as Gnome, KDE, Compiz Fusion etc, do they work with all the Linux OS? and if so can i switch between them, etc..

as you can see im very new to the idea of linux, but would love to escape from the money grabbing hands of microsoft and im too poor to get an apple

cheers in advance, if all goes well i should be on these furoms a fair bit, helping to contribute and hopefully help another newbie one day.

 

I recommend downloading and burning Linux Mint.
If you need instructions just ask.

 

With any distro you'll want to download the .iso, burn it to a disc as an image, and boot to it. That 'as an image' is important, as it takes the contents of the file and burns them to the disc. If you just burn the .iso to the disc it won't work. The distros you should be interested in at this point will be very easy to install, especially if you're not worried about any of the data on your hard drive. If you want to maintain your Windows install, BACK UP YOUR DATA TO ANOTHER DISK. Burn a CD, use a thumb drive... anything so long as it's not on your hard drive, just in case.

Some distributions are desktop environment agnostic, others are not. A distro like Debian, Gentoo, or Arch Linux makes it very easy to install many different DE and WM, even simultaneously (though you can only use one at once). A distribution like Ubuntu has different versions for different desktops and other variations, and although you can install them all on the same system, it can result in some oddities. Similarly, Fedora and Suse allow you to choose at install time, but installing more than one can result in odd things happening and cluttered menus. They also tend to focus on one DE or another, so KDE or Gnome may be less thought out on one, while it's very streamlined on another.

I'd suggest downloading a few distros and setting aside a weekend to just mess around and gain some familiarity. Here are some distributions that are generally considered newbie friendly:

Ubuntu (Gnome), Kubuntu (KDE), Xubuntu (Xfce)
Linux Mint (Ubuntu/Xubuntu w/ codecs and stuff, can seem kind of cluttered)
Fedora (Gnome, but KDE and Xfce are available; more security and bleeding edge X)
Suse (traditionally KDE centric, now maybe more Gnome centric, many available)
Pardus (really great Turkish KDE distro that flies under a lot of radars)
Mepis (Debian w/ KDE and a nice installer, great if it works on your hardware)
Mandriva (focused on extreme user friendliness, KDE w/ Gnome available)

http://distrowatch.com/ is your friend

 

I recommend Ubuntu. It's what most of us, including me, started with. If not, Ubuntu, the priority should be to go for a distro that is newbie friendly and has a very big online community(aka forum). This way help is always around the corner. Fedora is a very popular one as well.

For Ubuntu, download the LiveCD version of the release you want. 8.04 is supported to 2011, 8.10 to 2010. Then write the iso to a blank disk (write contents, not copy and paste) and just boot from it.

Just ask if you need more help.

 

cheers, guys, this is why i love this furom its been like 2 hours and theres allready loads of helpfull replies.

whats happened is, i keep getting a blue screen prompting me about errors with drivers, will this effect my linux if i change to linux?

 

You should also consider the possibility of hardware problems. Before going any further, I'd grab your hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic CD, and I believe the Ubuntu CDs have a memtest boot option that you should let run for a good 24-48 hours to make sure your memory is good. If both those pass, once you get a Linux distro installed, grab Prime95 to stress your CPU.

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft/

You should definitely give Linux a shot since you seem interested, but make sure your computer is functioning properly first. We wouldn't want you getting a bad first impression, or even worse, losing data to corruption.

Oh, and welcome to the forum!

 

I would dual boot for a time and then, when you're comfortable, switch over to ubuntu.

I would recommend Ubuntu 8.04 as a good place to start. If you have newer hardware, however, you might just want to install 8.10 which came out a few days ago.

 

On second thought, I support Ethyriel. If you don't need the computer for important purposes, the it's best you run the tests.

If you need the data urgently, then boot into the Ubuntu(or any distro's) LiveCD and copy the data into an external, then install Linux.

Dual booting would be less advised, since your Windows partition is screwed up anyway, so it's not really worth it.

 

cheers

well i did s sytem restore and since then i havent had the blue screen, hopefully its better im going to wait and see.

would it be worth doing it on my old pc, which is like 8 years old.

at the moment im on a Dell inspiron 6400, 1.6gh processor with 1gb ram, and an ATI graphics card. i think it should work.

 

Yeah, you'll get everything but good performance.

I'd still run a memtest, as it's very possible a driver or something got corrupted due to a memory problem, and the restore just took you back to before that corruption happened. You might not be so lucky that it's not a piece of your data next time.

http://www.memtest86.com/download.html

It's best to grab the ISO and boot to that. If you run it from your operating system, it doesn't have access to some protected memory.

 

Ubuntu is always high on the list, but from experience either linux mint or gos (good os) is a good starting place.
They are based on ubuntu and just have some nice touches added for the new user to make it easier. Nothing you couldn't do yourself with ubuntu, but its always easier for someone else to have done it for your first time.

 

Normally I would agree, but now that 8.10 is out, I'd definitely recommend trying that out before Linux Mint (based off Ubuntu but is behind), its fixed so many problems that it's the 1st distro that I can recommend.

 

And I just want to throw in that Mint does tend to break the Ubuntu ideal. It's a logical second step for someone who likes Ubuntu because the ways it breaks that ideal are in ways that a lot of people want, but I don't think it's as easy to pickup for a first time Linux user as Ubuntu itself. The default menu is more powerful, but it's not as obvious in it's usage. And there is a lot more stuff cluttering the menus which makes it a little more difficult to figure out which does what.

Ubuntu is just so easy to use for a first timer, it's a great place to start, even if a given user decides to try something else right away.

 

I tried Mint once, I found it too simplified (dumbed down) for my taste. Plus it's behind Ubuntu in updates, INTREPID IBEX FTW!!!

 

Hi deathstrok,

I would try Ubuntu 8.10.

1.) Check your hardware as much as you can as advised above.
2.) Dual boot Ubuntu 8.10 or just drop the live CD in and run Ubuntu off of that for a few days just to get the hang of it a little(i.e the new interface), before commiting to an install
3.) Yes, there are a lot of other great distros out there but I really like Ubuntu's organization of info and forums. This really can be helpful to a noob getting their feet wet. later when you become more ambitious, you can try out the other gazillion distros and environments.
4.) Ubuntu comes with the Gnome environment. Stick with that first and try to learn all you can about it, then you can move on and try other things.
5.) There is a lot of info out there, best of luck and try to focus on learning one thing at a time.

 

Linux Mint is pretty cool and for a lot of people is the answer to some of Ubuntu's deficits but the one thing about Ubuntu...the official forums are ~amazing~ the people there are very friendly, very tolerant of newbies, and very helpful.

If you're patient and polite then you will have an amazing experience learning Linux with Ubuntu. If you like Ubuntu but really don't want to get into some of the nuts and bolts of how and why Linux works then Mint can be a good distro to adopt to give you compatibility with certain types of files that you might want. It also has a very Windows-esque GUI.

 

cheers guys for all the help, you are truly fantastic.

ubuntu sounds like the one for me, as what i like about linux is the ability to customise your computer to how you see fit, as opposed to the commercial programmes which come isntalled on Windows, which can usually be replaced by better software for free. i want to make my computer my own, and ide love to be able to tinker with my computer.

but how do i go about checking my drivers? im not sure how to do this, (man i must sound like a incompetent noob) and ive checked google, but they all lead to furoms where people flame others who ask.

and whats this memtest and mersenne programmes im not sure what they do?

cheers in advance, once im up and running on my Ubuntu, hopefully ile be able to contribute more to the furom other then just ask for help.

 

Find your laptop here, there are likely quite a few guides.
http://tuxmobil.org/mylaptops.html
It's likely that older guides won't tell the whole story, as there are major improvements to compatibility every kernel release. If you have any questions beyond that, just ask.

Memtest86 is a program that attempts to disrupt the electrical fields in DRAM and corrupt data stored in it by repeated operations in patterns based upon the various organizational structures that memory manufacturers use.

Prime95 is an early distributed computing project with the goal of finding mersenne prime numbers. Why it's relevant here is that it has a torture test that you can set to loop, which does a very good job of stressing the CPU and little else. It's still possible that if you have errors while running the test that you have an issue with your OS (maybe as a result of memory), power supply, or motherboard, but it's a very good place to start.

 

When using a Linux distro like Ubuntu, you will most likely need to install a GPU driver.
These can be found through the menu; Restricted drivers, they are available for nVidia and Ati.
If you're lucky everything else will work out of the box. However, only with the last release (8.10) I got lucky .
There is a chance that you will have to install a wireless driver yourself.
If so, don't worry, come back here and ask if you need to.
And don't worry about being a n00b. Everyone starts as a n00b.
Cheers.

 

hey soz its been a long time since ive nagged for help lol.

im currently doing my exams to get into uni, as i live in australia, and they are pretty important, so i finally decided to study (3 days before :S), so ive put fixing my pc on hold. but dont worry, ile be back to ask nooby questions soon once again

also i found my media xp os disc, so i can hopefully dual boot and get the best of both worlds.

speak to you guys in about a week

 

Silly boy! Go study! *pulls out whip*

 

zephyrus17,
I love your avatar. So cute!

 

hehehe.. Karot! Karot! nom nom nom