That's it. This is the last time I re-install you, Windows (Linux)

[Etherman]

For an even more gentle introduction to Linux, get yourself a copy of one of the free VMWare Players and head over to the VMWare virtual appliance forums. Download a couple(or a bunch) of the appliances there. A Google search will turn up even more downloadable appliances.

VMWare will run the Linux of your choice in a window on your Windows box and let you poke at it. It’s a generic environment so you won’t be setting up your exact hardware, but it will let you test the different distro’s and get a good idea of which one you’d like. You can install software, reconfigure things, etc. If you get things just like you want them, you can copy the config files and re-use them on a full install.

You can set it up to not commit changes to the VM image, or you can keep a pristine backup of the VM(or both), so if you break things badly, it’s simply a matter of “powering off” in VMWare terms, or copying from your backup VM, and everything is undone. In other words, it gives you an “undo” while learning. I can’t state how useful this is. If you are curious about “what happens if I do this,” and you know you can easily undo mistakes, it makes you much less fearful of trying things out, and thus learning.

While it gives you the chance to try out Linux without partitioning or messing with your windows install at all, but keep in mind it is virtualization, and you’ll take a performance hit. You’ll need a fairly fast machine, or some patience, so make sure you take that into account. Just because it’s slow on VMWare does not mean it will be slow with a regular install.

Also, these VM’s are usually created by ordinary users, so quality can vary. I’ve run into some that just plain don’t work, and some that aren’t quite what I expected, and some that are perfect. I download more of the specialty application appliances for demos/testing, so YMMV.

Although it doesn’t work as of yet, iTunes is consistently ranked high on the list of desired applications at Codeweaver, so I’m guessing they are working on it. If all else fails, you can run a WinXP virtual appliance in Linux. Although I’ve never tried getting iTunes to update my iPod from a VM.

Some VMs:Ubuntu 6.10, Fedora 7 test 2, KDE3.5.5 on openSUSE 10.2

[Sage_Rat]

@Throatwarbler Mangrove

I understand the Linux “core” is a command line interface, and the GUi is added on separately.

The command line interface is also a "G"UI that is added separately. The only difference is that the command line doesn’t require a graphics card beyond the ability to put text on the screen. The most common command line is called “bash”, but there are others with slight differences in functionality.

An OS actually has no way to interact with it except through writing programs. And of course there’s no way to run those programs without a program to start them going. (Catch-22)

The OS does grab access to the file system by itself though (during bootup), so it checks in a few places on the file system for a instructions on what all applications it should start running. Pretty much always, one of those will be a graphical or text user interface so that people can start their applications via that.

[Throatwarbler_Mangrove]

I appreciate the well intentioned lectures on the difference between kernel and shell, but there’s no need for them. I merely worded my original question poorly.

[Raguleader]

Well, this looks like it could be fun. My experience with Linux has been bittersweet. I tried Mandrake 8.2, but got frustrated trying to figure out how to get my printer to work. Later upgraded to Mandrake 9.0, but then my mouse wouldn’t work (the whole time, dual-booting with Windows).

Eventually went back to just running Windows, and my later experiments were mostly with LiveCDs. Slax was fun to boot up with, but I had no idea how to go anywhere from the start screen, so that disc went to my room mate who understood it better and played with it. Lately I’ve been playing with Knoppix, but I can’t get it to connect to the internet.

Now I’m gonna try out Ubuntu, whenever it finishes downloading. This is fun.

[Raguleader]

OK, downloaded the Ubuntu 6.06 LiveCD and I’m running off of that now. Pretty nifty, this one looks like it actually works, although I can’t figure out how to open a TXT file that I made in Notepad in Windows.

[Raguleader]

OK, I’ve got a question, if I’m using the LiveCD, is there a way I can “save” the way I have the system set up? Like if I want to make like, a gamesave of my preferences and what not to the hard drive?

[Sleel]

Try Songbird as an iTunes replacement. As a Mac user, I’ve poked around with it a little and while it’s still in development it’s not bad at all. Support for iPods and several other bits of functionality are provided through plugins. That’s kind of a nice (and *nix-like) approach; let you add in the stuff you want, don’t weigh you down with the stuff you don’t.

[Tuckerfan]

@Throatwarbler Mangrove

Thanks friends, I suppose I’ll deal the the interface once I get further into it.

the Ipod issue kind of concerns me. I’m really not too worried about the synchronization aspect, my needs for music are simple enough, the only reason why I have an Ipod and put up with the awful iTunes software is because IPods support audiobooks better than anything else on the market. I’ve looked at a few how tos and this particular issue is not addressed. I’m sure I’ll find some way to make it work, though.

One thing that you can try, if your machine is fast enough, is to install WINE (which allows you to run some Windows programs under Linux) and use that to run iTunes. Wine comes in handy for running other things as well (you could probably get Windows Solitare running using it). Make sure you check out the Ubuntu and Kubuntu forums as folks there are friendly and helpful.

You might also want to check out the Linux Reality podcast. The host, Chess Griffin, is an enthusiast, not an expert, which helps. His podcasts take sort of a scattershot approach to Linux, one week he’ll talk about window managers, the next week he’ll cover networking. This is nice, because if he’s talking about something you’re not interested in, you don’t have to wait a month or more for him to switch to a topic you are interested in.

[Mangetout]

@Raguleader

OK, downloaded the Ubuntu 6.06 LiveCD and I’m running off of that now. Pretty nifty, this one looks like it actually works, although I can’t figure out how to open a TXT file that I made in Notepad in Windows.

If you’re using Gnome, GEdit should open it; if you’re using KDE, Kate would probably be the first choice, but any distribution of Linux will usually have text editors pouring out of its ears - too much choice, usually.

This does bring up an important point though - in Windows, files are generally identified by their extension - the bit after the dot, usually consisting of three letters. In other operating systems, the extension is really just a not-particularly-significant part of the filename and files are often identified by a header within them.

[Raguleader]

@Mangetout

If you’re using Gnome, GEdit should open it; if you’re using KDE, Kate would probably be the first choice, but any distribution of Linux will usually have text editors pouring out of its ears - too much choice, usually.

This does bring up an important point though - in Windows, files are generally identified by their extension - the bit after the dot, usually consisting of three letters. In other operating systems, the extension is really just a not-particularly-significant part of the filename and files are often identified by a header within them.

Weirdest thing, the text file wouldn’t open in Gedit, but it opened fine in OpenOffice. shrug

[Throatwarbler_Mangrove]

So I’ve gotten it installed, and so far it’s been fairly good. With the one exception: GRUB does not seem to recognize my boot partition, and I can’t actually boot from the HDD. Now, I can boot with the live CD, and after booting up, everything including the HDD works fine. :dubious:

Some googling turns up the following:

BIOS might be out of date - I’ll have to make a bootdisk to flash the bios

Manually indicate to GRUB the dimensions of the harddrive. I know what they mean, but not sure how to actually go about doing it yet, especially since I don’t really know my way around the file system.

[DrDeth]

I am going to hazard a WAG- your original problem with Window was likely caused by Spyware, and part of the Spyware is still hidden in your BIOS. It can’t do much now that you have Linux, but you’ll always have problems.

[Raguleader]

@DrDeth

I am going to hazard a WAG- your original problem with Window was likely caused by Spyware, and part of the Spyware is still hidden in your BIOS. It can’t do much now that you have Linux, but you’ll always have problems.

Well, if it’s in the BIOS somehow, then flashing the little bastard out will take care of it nicely, won’t it?

[snailboy]

This thread reminds me of when I started using Unix-based operating systems. If you don’t like one distro, try another, and easier isn’t always better. I first gave Linux a try in high school, back in 98 or so. I bought Mandrake 6.5 (I think…) at Walmart and installed it. This was way back in the day when Linux didn’t have nearly the hardware support it does now (and some of the support wasn’t built-in) and much of my hardware was unsupported, so really I didn’t get much out of it besides the basics of Gnome and a few basic commands.

Shortly after high school, in 99 or 00, my friend bought SuSE. Little did he know that I’d get a lot more out of it than he did. For him, it was about like Mandrake was for me. For me, it wasn’t much more. I still had some hardware that wasn’t supported and I only used it for a month or two before giving up. However, I had the desire to find a distro that worked for me after SuSE.

I’d heard good things about Debian and wanted to give it a try. Downloading it wasn’t really an option on 28k dial-up. I found myself in Best Buy browsing their operating systems aisle. Of course I didn’t find Debian since it isn’t sold at stores. What I did find was FreeBSD 5.0. For $50, I got 10 CD’s and an 800-page book! That seemed like a hell of a deal. What I didn’t bargain for was the challenge it takes to learn FreeBSD. I managed to install it, but it dumped me at a command prompt and I had no idea how to get a GUI installed. (It might have already been installed actually. I didn’t even know the startx command at that time.) I think I probably could have figured it out pretty quickly had I been in the right frame of mind, but I was so used to everything being intuitive from Windows and didn’t try reading the fucking manual. So I booted to FreeBSD occasionally but I still wasn’t getting anywhere.

I still hadn’t given up though. It was late in 2000, November if I remember correctly, and I believed there was a Linux distro out there for me. People were still big on Debian and I still wanted to try it to see what all the fuss was about. At the time, Debian and the distros based upon it were the only ones with anything like apt-get. I had been a member of a Linux forum since my SuSE days and a fellow member sent me Debian 2.2r2. Finally I had the distro I’d been searching for. Would it be what I needed though?

I got it installed but it didn’t automatically install buttloads of software like Mandrake and SuSE. I don’t even remember if it came with a GUI. However, I’d heard about this magical program called apt-get and decided to see if I could figure it out. Hey, if it’s as easy as people say it is, it shouldn’t be that hard, right? So I opened a terminal. I don’t remember what the first program I tried to install was, but let’s say it was Mozilla. I tried “apt-get mozilla”. It said something along the lines of “mozilla: bad command”. I thought for a few seconds. “Hmm… It did recognize apt-get as a command, so that part is probably correct. apt-get thought the word ‘mozilla’ was an action it was supposed to perform. What action do I want apt-get to perform? I want it to install Mozilla.” “apt-get install mozilla” Shazam! In two guesses, I had figured out how to install programs with apt-get. Within days, I went from a pretty bare install of Debian to a mostly configured system with internet.

For me, Debian was the perfect stepping stone. Unlike FreeBSD, it was easy enough that I could figure out most things without too much of a challenge, but unlike Mandrake and SuSE, I learned a lot in the process. It taught me that not everything was going to be intuitive and I sometimes had to read the manual. Less than a year later, when I was ready for it, I went back to FreeBSD and loved it, but had it not been for Debian, I would have still been using Windows for a while, if not to this day. Most people like to start in the really shallow waters and slowly work their way to the deep end. I needed to jump in and get my chest wet before I could get anything out of Linux. There may be some other people out there who are the same.

[Ximenean]

How well does Linux run on laptops these days? That’s always been a showstopper for me - I 've tried various live CDs, as well as installing (or trying to install) things like Fedora on spare laptops, but there have always been severe problems, like being unable to go into standby or hibernation, no drivers for the video or wireless Ethernet, the touchpad not working, no sub-pixel rendering (almost a must-have for me), etc., that have made Linux on a laptop an underwhelming experience.

[Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party]

I’m running Ubuntu on my Acer laptop now. Hibernation and standby works OK (didn’t work in FC5) but I haven’t tried to get wireless working yet (that didn’t work in FC either). The ATI drivers that come with Ubuntu are good enough to run Beryl at a decent speed and Tremulous has performance comparable with Windows (it’s based on the Quake 3 engine).