Trying Linux for the first time

[SalvorHardin]

So I've used windows all my life and I'm currently using Vista ultimate.
I have no real problems with it but I thought I'd give linux a try and see what it's about.
Never hurts to try new things,right ?

So I'm currently downloading Fedora 9 and will try to run it from a live cd before installing it.

What should a complete beginner like me keep in mind ?
Am I in for a world of confusion ?
Any advise or tips ?
What everyday things we do with a pc (internet, installing programs, watching video or listening mp3 etc etc) are different and how ?
What about antivirus software or firewalls ?

 

[Magickthise]

So I've used windows all my life and I'm currently using Vista ultimate.
I have no real problems with it but I thought I'd give linux a try and see what it's about.
Never hurts to try new things,right ?

So I'm currently downloading Fedora 9 and will try to run it from a live cd before installing it.

What should a complete beginner like me keep in mind ?
Am I in for a world of confusion ?
Any advise or tips ?
What everyday things we do with a pc (internet, installing programs, watching video or listening mp3 etc etc) are different and how ?
What about antivirus software or firewalls ?

The main thing is don't try writing to your NTFS partition(s) unless you know exactly what you are doing: you can corrupt the entire partition. There are Linux utilities that will enable you to write to NTFS, but I have an older machine that does only has FAT32 partitions so I couldn't tell you about what to use and what not to use. Out of the box, Linux can only read NTFS but not write to (so go ahead and play your mp3 files, just don't add any or move them).

I run Kanotix from the LiveCD. I installed it once, but I honestly prefer the LiveCD. Absolutely no fear of viruses, no fear of somebody (myself included) messing up the OS because it is read only. And it read and writes my FAT32 partitions just fine.

 

[Twilight]

What should a complete beginner like me keep in mind ?

Repositories!

You don't have to worry about installing anything, Fedora's RPM repositories are robust and will basically include any app you could ever want within reach of a 1 click install. Just go to add / remove programs.

Am I in for a world of confusion ?

Not at all. Modern linux distros are totally user friendly in almost every respect.

You never have to use a command line if you don't want to (though you should, as you become more familiar with it - I use command line exclusively on my linux machine). But you can use it just as you would Windows, for example.

You may run into confusion in some cases when it comes to proprietary drivers (Fedora will at first install with only open source video card drivers, you'll have to authorize it to install your proprietary video card driver (nVidia? ATI? what do you have?)

What everyday things we do with a pc (internet, installing programs, watching video or listening mp3 etc etc) are different and how ?

Nothing, really. You install programs from the repository with one click in most cases ... you can play every video imaginable in (e.g.) mplayer with the proper codecs installed (easy to get!), etc. etc.

 

[SalvorHardin]

Thanks for the info Twilight and Magickthise...

I'd like to know more about ntfs and fedora.... I wouldn't want to screw up 4 hard drives.
Lots of usefull things in there.

 

[Tyberius]

Thanks for the info Twilight and Magickthise...

I'd like to know more about ntfs and fedora.... I wouldn't want to screw up 4 hard drives.
Lots of usefull things in there.

You just have to

mount

properly. You can mount pretty much any file system, but with that power comes a bit of complexity.

 

[SalvorHardin]

What sort of complexity ?

 

[Tyberius]

What sort of complexity ?

man mount

returns about 1000 lines of instructions

man fstab

returns 30 more. In addition to the general options for mount there are specific options for the filesystem that you are specifically mounting. For the ntfs stuff, there are character set options, permissions handling and 8.3 conventions among other things.

As far as I know, nobody has come up with a good driver to allow Linux to write to NTFS. NTFS is like a big database, and a lot of management has to go into each write, so only limited writing to existing files has been proven to work.

Edit: There is a driver called NTFS-3G which purports to have stable read/write support, but I have never used it.

 

[darkshadow0001]

Wow. My first time with Linux was Redhat Linux 6.2 which was made back in 2000... I still have the 3 1/2" floppy disks for it. I think it was for a computer class I took at one time. I never understood Redhat, then after a while for the fun of it I bought Suse Linux 9.0 at a used software store and tried that. I was able to install it, but the only thing I didn't like about it was the graphics were only 2D. I gave up on Linux and stuck with Windows. I too, never had any real problems with Windows. I don't understand what everyone's hype about Windows is... yea, I get viruses here and there but so what, just remove them and your fine.

 

[JonathonWally]

Years ago, when I first wanted to try out Linux, I went through a bunch of distros before getting comfortable with one.

I used Mandrake, SuSE, Red Hat, and then settled on Debian.

Even though I haven't run Linux in a while as a main OS, I still keep Knoppix CDs around and Damn Small on a USB flash drive.

I guess if I were going to go back to running Linux on one of my machines, I would give Ubuntu a shot, I hear good things about it.

Any suggestions?

 

[Lindley]

I too, never had any real problems with Windows. I don't understand what everyone's hype about Windows is...

It's not so much about Windows being bad. It has issues, but some does every system. It's simply a matter of the alternatives being more pleasant experiences in some respects. For example: Copying a 24GB file from a Linux box to a Windows box, I find both machines remain more responsive if I control the copy from the Linux side rather than the Windows side.

I honestly feel that in most respects the Unix foundation is simpler, smarter, and more reliable than the NT foundation, and that reflects on everything built on top of it. But the NT foundation isn't terrible, either. XP is a pretty decent system, if a bit inelegant. So go with what works.

 

[Carpe Occasio]

The last time I used Linux for any length of time was when Redhat 6.0 came out. Since then I've played with different distributions like CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Linspire, Mandriva, Mepis, Redhat, Slackware, SUSE and Ubuntu. The only one I could get wireless networking up and running on was Mepis (and even then it was intermittent). Just last week however I downloaded the latest distro of Ubuntu and discovered something disturbing. It used to be you could install any version of Linux on just about any computer no matter how old (within reason). Previously I would install Linux on an old Thinkpad I have (P2, 800Mz, 256 Ram, 40GB HD, 800x600 resolution). They would always install and run no problem. The latest version of Ubuntu however can't be run from the live cd as a minimum of 384MB of ram is required. As for installing, the partitioning application hangs and the install fails during a dual boot setup. With a full install the OS cannot handle the low screen resolution and won't display the entire desktop. This same laptop however will run Windows XP with no problem. It seems like some versions of Linux are abandoning legacy support.

 

[Alaedhros]

^ Not really. Remember what a Live Cd is doing -- it's running from the CD rather than the HDD. Therefore, you're going to need to load large chunks of it into RAM at any given point in time. It's simply the Live CD, not the day-to-day usage of the OS, that requires such resources. If you don't have them, use the Alternate install CD. You won't get a swanky graphical interface, but that won't kill you. As for the real required RAM, I think 256 MB is a reasonable lower limit for GNOME, about half that for Xfce, and half again for CLI-only (though you can certainly run a CLI on even less).

WRT your partitioning display problems: can you post the exact error messages (or logs)? If the install fails during partitioning, what "full install" are you talking about? What video card are you using? Most importantly, have you edited your Xorg.conf properly?

 

[Carpe Occasio]

^ Not really. Remember what a Live Cd is doing -- it's running from the CD rather than the HDD. Therefore, you're going to need to load large chunks of it into RAM at any given point in time. It's simply the Live CD, not the day-to-day usage of the OS, that requires such resources. If you don't have them, use the Alternate install CD. You won't get a swanky graphical interface, but that won't kill you. As for the real required RAM, I think 256 MB is a reasonable lower limit for GNOME, about half that for Xfce, and half again for CLI-only (though you can certainly run a CLI on even less).

WRT your partitioning display problems: can you post the exact error messages (or logs)? If the install fails during partitioning, what "full install" are you talking about? What video card are you using? Most importantly, have you edited your Xorg.conf properly?

Other live CD's I've used work fine with 256MB of ram, even a Windows XP live CD. Also, it's not just a display problem while installing/partitioning. The Ubuntu GUI can't handle 800x600 resolution apparently. The partitioning for a dual boot fails with no errors, it just hangs indefinitely. A full desktop install results in either a portion of the desktop not displaying, or applications, etc., opening partially off screen with no way to adjust them. I've only had this problem with Ubuntu (as far a I can remember).