I'm thinking about converting...

[jimkopelli]

...from Windows to some form of Linux.

To the users we have on the site...

But I need to know more.http://forums.intpcentral.com/images/smilies/unsure.gif Pre-leap looking, if you will. I know that Linux users have many great things to say about it... that they don't see any reason why anyone should use Windows... but... nothing is that simple. What are the drawbacks? Is there anything Windows has that Linux doesn't, anything I might miss? What's the best form of Linux for a beginner? What questions should I ask that I've forgotten about?

Your responses, please.

[Star]

Mac OS X. =)

You'll love it; it's so pretty. And you can get under the hood and do all kinds of geeky things like you could on Linux. The difference is, that if you don't want to, you'll never have to.

[Miss Anthropic]

I think if you use the words Linux and beginner in the same sentence stick with windows.

[jimkopelli]

Ah, yes, but that's more of a switch than I want to. I know how to speak Mac, but that doesn't mean I want to live there.

[jimkopelli]

I think if you use the words Linux and beginner in the same sentence stick with windows. Beginner to Linux, not beginner in general. I do like to think that I know what I'm doing at least some of the time.

[CoHo]

You could try Suse, you should be able to keep your windows install anyways, you can just choose what OS to boot into

[Division56]

I just tried MEPIS.

It's great.

[Sir Isaac Lime]

Knoppix Live-CD. Burn the iso, boot it and you've got a linux desktop. You can run the installer and put it on a drive if you like.

http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html

*edit*

MEPIS, what division suggested, also runs on a Live-CD. It's a great concept and probably perfect for your situation

http://lwn.net/Articles/68926/

[Shai Gar]

tell me more about Mac OS X

[Hypnos]

Mac OSX + Powerbook is a pretty sweet platform, but I can't stand the Mac GUI and the keyboard and 1-button mouse.

I use Linux for everything, but it has its drawbacks:

* Getting esoteric hardware to work can be downright painful (less so for Linux on PPC)

* While Linux has some best-of-breed apps, there are no strong competitors to say, Photoshop and PowerPoint. GIMP and Impress will work for 90% of people, but the other 10% are the power users who drive development.

* The world of Linux can be very addictive -- you might find yourself hacking code for no good reason :)

I'll presume that you are familiar with the myriad advantages.

As for the best flavor to start with, I recommend something like Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntulinux.org/). I use Gentoo, but it requires a better working knowledge of systems administration for the extra power to not be bothersome.

[Trolsk]

If you don't wish to get down and dirty on command level and read a lot of text, Windows is a lot better choice, I think.

[Heather Harrison]

I use Linux at home, and Solaris at work, and I have been using Unix-type operating systems since 1990, long before I ever encountered Windows. With that experience, I am of course more comfortable with Linux than with Windows, and I love to complain about Windows.

But stepping out of my own little world, I fully realize that Linux is not for everyone. If there is one thing about Windows that is good, it is that someone who has very little computer experience can sit down and start using it fairly quickly. Of course, as ones experience increases, the limitations of Windows will become annoying. I assume that is why you are looking at switching.

Linux will have a substantial learning curve associated with it if you are not already experienced with it or with some other Unix-like OS. There are a lot of commands to learn and settings to customize, and getting some hardware to work with it is a pain. That is the part that I never got the hang of (or wanted to - I detest tinkering with computers). Fortunately, I have a friend who is a true diginerd with a huge amount of Linux experience; I always talk him into taking care of my computer hardware. If not for him, I know I could learn how to do it for myself, but why bother when I can get him to do it.

If you don't have much experience with it, if you don't enjoy hacking or tinkering with hardware, and if you don't have anyone around who can help with it, it may be a very difficult change to make and I am not certain I would recommend it. But if you can make the switch, you will appreciate the added power and functionality you will get out of your computer and you will never want to go back.

Heather Harrison

[Nighthawk]

I don't use Linux much myself, but a few of my Linux-using colleagues swear by Ubuntu Linux for ease of installation and use.

www.ubuntulinux.org (http://www.ubuntulinux.org/)

[Thermo]

This is just my opinion, but if you have the money get a Mac with OS X. If you have a spare PC and no money, get a Easy to use Linux flavor. If you really want to be hardcore get a BSD - my preference is OpenBSD. If you want to play games Mac or Windows are the only real options.



I use Linux at home, and Solaris at work

I have to use Solaris at work, too. God, I hate Solaris. Its the only OS I know thats default install barely has a single usable tool. I have to install a whole suite of GNU tools just to make it tolerable. I just don't like where it puts anything or adds /opt.

[Star]

Pff, Solaris is a great OS; they've done a good job recently in modernizing it. If you think it sucks, something like HP-UX would have you crying like a baby.

[Ka.avik]

One thing to consider, in all this, is the accuracy of the phrase
"Unix is user friendly. It's just choosy about who it's friends are."

Myself, I rely on SlackWare (http://www.slackware.com/). But, Gentoo (http://www.gentoo.org/) is equally sweet to administer. More, if you've a broadband connection. but, it is a royal pain to install. Slackware, just the opposite -- easy to squeeze in, kinda hard to futz with it over every change you want to make after that.

And you'll want to keep win32 around; there are a few games for Linux, but 3D under X is a joke nine times out of ten -- the greedy & paranoid card makers won't let out enough hard information for the programming gurus to make excellent open-source Xservers in the same decade as the card came out in.

Halo2? Use windows.

Oh: Mac OS X is not unix; darwin is BSD derived, but I could never confuse a Mac for anything other then a mac, with bash (http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/bash.html) stuffed into it somewhere.

[Hypnos]

Pff, Solaris is a great OS; they've done a good job recently in modernizing it. If you think it sucks, something like HP-UX would have you crying like a baby.

:) My personal favorite of the oldworld Unixes is Digital Unix, now Tru64. However, of ther server OSes I've tried besides Linux, VMS holds the most special place in my heart.

[Thermo]

Pff, Solaris is a great OS; they've done a good job recently in modernizing it. If you think it sucks, something like HP-UX would have you crying like a baby.

My complain isn't that its difficult, its the lack of consistency, its bloated, and a lack of useful utilities in the base install. It sucks to have to spend HOURS configuring something that you just installed. OpenBSD shines in all the places Solaris blows. However, you have to give Sun some credit it has huge market share, very high end platforms and they are making great strides in Solaris 10 to update the OS.




Oh: Mac OS X is not unix; darwin is BSD derived, but I could never confuse a Mac for anything other then a mac, with bash stuffed into it somewhere.

I am not really sure what you mean here. You can compile unix binaries, it has bash, and the system is setup unixlike. What is it missing?

[Trolsk]

The BSD systems aren't UNIX certified. The important thing is POSIX compliance, however.

[jimkopelli]

I've been kinda looking at Suse, and a little bit at Knoppix... but hmm. A lot of what I use my computer for is, in fact, gaming. I do use it for homework, too... so I'd probably keep MSOffice Suite on there somewhere because of Powerpoint and Word. (Note: Windows is a great operating system... if it's free.) Other than that... I don't know.

[Miss Anthropic]

Beginner to Linux, not beginner in general. I do like to think that I know what I'm doing at least some of the time.
I was just giving you a bad time. My boyfriend swears by Linux and despises Windows. On a scale of 1-10 in computer geek, he is an 11. I don't know enough about Linux about it to notice any difference or use its features when I'm on his computer.

[Thermo]

The BSD systems aren't UNIX certified. The important thing is POSIX compliance, however.

POSIX compliance isn't all or nothing there are degrees. Windows, I think starting with NT was POSIX compliant. I also don't really know what you mean by unix certified.

[Trolsk]

POSIX compliance is important because POSIX defines the API, and is the ground for portability. NT only got to be partially compliant; it doesn't use the fork() model at all, for example. UNIX certification is a different matter.

[Thermo]

POSIX compliance is important because POSIX defines the API, and is the ground for portability. NT only got to be partially compliant; it doesn't use the fork() model at all, for example.

That is my point. You can't define UNIX by whether or not it is POSIX compliant. Unix is more vague, IMHO, its pretty much any OS that has UNIX like processes and you can compile unix binaries on and run standard unix tools. MAC OS X more than qualifies and Windows doesn't. Cygwin doesn't count, because its glued on.

[Star]

UNIX® is a registered trademark of The Open Group.

http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/

That should clear up for you what is UNIX® and what is not, and how it is defined.

[Trolsk]

Well, UNIX is a registered trademark. Certification is marketing. So Mac OS X qualifies as a Unix because its firm anchor in FreeBSD, which sensibly offers portability to other Unices, that indeed have family lines, through compliance to POSIX standards. I've read one that defines a full set of system call operations which you'll find in any Unix.

[Dunearhp]

The latest Suse would be an excellent starting point. I tried one of the recent releases and was very impressed. My new laptop worked perfectly (bar 3d accelleration) and easily with the default install.

I have heard good reports about Ubuntu, but haven't tried it yet. I would probably lean towards it, since I have a preference for Debian based systems.

Personally I run Debian unstable (hasn't crashed in years) by preference. I would not recommend it for those new to linux. It requires a lot of fiddling to get the hardware right, but adding new packages is a breeze.

[Ascending]

The thing keeping me in Gates land is the fact that Linux can't read from NTFS partitions.

[Hypnos]

The thing keeping me in Gates land is the fact that Linux can't read from NTFS partitions.
Linux-NTFS has been able to read NTFS (all versions) for a while now; it now has some very basic write support.

[Ka.avik]

What is it missing? pretty much everything. I've only spent a few days on a Mac, but they were hair-pulling days. No, I don't remember the commands I was reaching for, but they weren't there. There have been other commands written, that behave differently, but it did _not_ feel "unixlike" in anything other than it's unfriendliness to newcomers.

[Sir Isaac Lime]

I'm not familiar with Mac OS X, but i'd imagine there would be package(s) available to extend whatever might be missing. I know for sure the basic shell commands are there.

[Ascending]

Ah, my mistake, meant to say write to NTFS.

[Star]

pretty much everything. I've only spent a few days on a Mac, but they were hair-pulling days. No, I don't remember the commands I was reaching for, but they weren't there. There have been other commands written, that behave differently, but it did _not_ feel "unixlike" in anything other than it's unfriendliness to newcomers.

This is just silly. I take it you didn't know about fink (http://fink.sourceforge.net/)?