Thinking about trying out LINUX...
 

I have a major computer upgrade in the works and am thinking of what to do with my old computer. I could give it to my nephew, but I am feeling a little greedy this week and am thinking of keeping it for myself. I have toyed with the idea of making a linux box from time to time and wanted to know what you guys would recommend for a linux newbie.

So...

1) Should I bother? I don't have all that much time to devote to playing with Linux and I have been known to drop a hobby and not pick it up again for months.

2) What version/type of linux should I look into? Should I be expecting to pay much (anything) to get something?

3) Any other tips/hints/words-of-advice/words-of-caution/words-of-encourgment?


Thank you all for your help and your suggestions!!!

do a search for "linux". We answer these same questions almost every week. :)

I'll save him a little time.

1) Yes. If you want to learn more about computers and such, this is a good learning experience.

2) Mandrake is good for beginners, Fedora (free Red Hat) is popular too. You shouldn't have to pay for any Linux OS. http://www.linuxiso.org

3) It's not Windows, so your first experience with it will probably be very strange. I recommend you try to RTFM before asking questions because some of the questions about Linux are like asking "What does that button in the lower left do?" to a Windows user :) If you would like more advice search in Google for Linux FAQs, Linux Guides, Linux Tutorials, etc. The info is damn near endless.

Expect to blow up your system a few times. It's like anything else - you learn from your mistakes - and part of learning Linux is making some big mistakes when you start out. ;) Just remember, it's almost always YOUR FAULT and not Linux's. Like was said above - some of these mistakes you'll make that will "blow up" your system are the equivalent of deleting C:\Windows to a Windows user.

Oh yes, very good point.

The best piece of advice you have to remember:

YOU WILL FAIL!!! MUHAHAHA (don't worry, we all do)

I would recommend starting on a weekend where you have a lot of time to burn and have a Windows/Mac machine nearby connected to the internet so you can read up on exactly what you did that caused your machine to scream in pain.

Well, if you want to learn without worrying about messing up the whole system, look into gnoppix or knoppix. THeiry're bootable cd's with the whole linux install, X windows and desktop. THe difference is g=gnome desktop, k=KDE desktop. If you mess up, you simply reboot.

true dat.
i too am a linux n00b. i installed fedora core 1 on one hard drive i had laying around, and installed knoppix 3.3 on another. it was quite an experience.

the thing is... like it was mentioned before, the linux question gets asked every week... can't a mod or someone with uber-linux skillz post a persistent thread like the "notice" for adware/spyware/popups/startpage?

general tips and links to linux stuff would be greatly appreciated. i'm still trying to figure out how to add programs and shit. compiling? i have no clue where to begin!?!?

Thank you all for your advice... I did do a search for linux, but as you could imagine there were page after page of results. I scanned the results, but obviously not thorough enough. I will look into it some more! :) Thanks again.

Maybe soopafreak has a point, maybe the linux question should be posted as a notice, or unmovable thread, whatever those are called.

Sigh... I see the error of my ways... After searching more I discovered this thread http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...threadid=44145 . It was 7 pages deep, so I don't feel too bad... But it is essentially the same questions I asked. That thread also includes a lot of links by SecretMethod70 to other threads in the similar vein.

Here's a good article.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=6690
Here's somethin else
http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20040329/index.html
and here's part 2 to the above.
http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20040412/index.html
Read the first one first though.

Also, check the website of the version you install. For example, Mandrake has about 300 pages worth of information I believe on their website.

Do a search with "howto". Articles have been written on so many different aspects of how to do "x".

The Linux Documentation Project:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/howtos.html

Check out the how to install: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Installation-HOWTO/index.html

(Found through google, howto's are everywhere)

I wouldn't be too scared if I were you. I'm a computer beginner and I've been using OpenBSD without blowing my system up. With that said, here is my recommendation.

I don't really know what the state of Linux is so I would suggest FreeBSD. It's just as feature laden as Linux and it's cutting edge (much like Linux).

Also, if you're worried about dropping your new UNIX hobby, you can always do something useful and essential with it, like turning it into your firewall/NAT server! Think of the fun and piece of mind! Do you have more than one computer in the home?

Um...reasons? He didn't say he toyed with the idea of a UNIX-variant box, he said specifically a Linux box. I normally wouldn't care about such a suggestion, but it really has nothing to do with what he was asking. BUT, if you have an actual reason why you think it would be better for him to get acquainted with a UNIX-type system using FreeBSD instead of Linux - beyond the fact that you don't know what the state of Linux is - then please post it so that he and anyone else looking to try something new out knows. Of course, since you don't know the state of Linux, it's my guess that you probably don't know what is (and isn't) involved with the current distros and, thus, likely can't give any specific reasons.

Plugging your favorite OS or browser or whatever is an alright thing to do when it's actually responding to something, but I don't see how "try FreeBSD" fits as an answer to "what you guys would recommend for a linux newbie."

I was thinking of putting a post together w/ links to past posts, general information, stuff like that. If it's good enough, maybe SMeth or whoever will want to make it a sticky, if not.. it will be there for people to say "Just look at this thread" in the future.

How about instead of turning it into a linux machine, make it into a hardware firewall.

http://www.smoothwall.org/

Hmm, at first, I thought you were daft and were personally offended that I would suggest something that wasn't Linux but, upon further reflection, your reaction might have been (more) reasonable if I were to give you the benefit of the doubt. So, why don't I do just that...

I think my mistake was that one of the first things I suggested was using FreeBSD and then failed to mention that the rest of my post applies to any UNIX variant teflonian might choose, including Linux. I thought that was clear but I suppose it wasn't...

So, yes, the only reason I suggested FreeBSD is that I don't know "what is involved with the current distrobutions." If I had such knowledge, I would probably have simply suggest one of those. As it were, I merely suggested the closest thing I could think of and I still don't think it's a bad suggestion. If nothing else, it's another choice...

Whatever UNIX variant you choose, teflonian, I suggest you use it as your firewall and NAT server. I doubt you will blow it up (as others have suggested) and it will serve a useful purpose, as well as being an interesting new hobby of yours...


Please, read his post, again. His question(s) is(are) a little more involved than that...

Most new distributions should install with very little pain. Like someone recommended before, Mandrake and Fedora are the most user friendly you'll find. You can check out other distributions (and download them) at http://www.linuxiso.org/ -- Just don't go with something like debian or you'll end up poking your eyes out.

sorry KnifeMissile - I misinterpreted your post. My bad.

No harm meant - I just get annoyed by all the people - including and, honestly, especially Linux users - who respond "use this instead!" to anything that's not what they like when there's no reason to suggest it. They make other users of said software look bad. So, please accept my apologies - seems my radar was a bit sensitive ;)

EDIT: Oh yeah, regarding blowing up your system... :lol:

It's entirely possible, as KnifeMissile pointed out, to not do that. Only reason I say it's likely is that even my personal Linux Guru (that's the best way to learn Linux by the way - if you have a real life friend who is a Linux guru, use him to help you learn as much as you can) has to reinstall every now and then (MUCH less often than when he first started using Linux 7 years ago). If you're learning and experimenting, it's very likely that you're going to break something and have to reinstall every now and then, but if you always carefully follow the documentation and don't venture out into all the different possibilities of desktop Linux use, you may very well never experience that. Point is, don't TRY to break your installation, but don't be surprised if you do. Besides, I've found the best way I've learned is from the times in the past when I've screwed up - I certainly know better what not to do in certain situations after it happens :D

Thank you again for your input everyone...

Knifemissle, I do have a little experience with UNIX as I used it for an astrophysics lab a few years ago, but I am primarily looking at linux as from what I can gather it is more universal and larger in scope for what I would want to do (which is basically just play around with various aps, but someday who knows, I might want to make it my primary OS).

My brother insists I use SUSE as it is very user friendly. He has a version that wouldn't cost me any money to use (it is a version you would have to pay for, but I don't know exactly why I wouldn't have to pay yet... but I guess I can imagine), so I guess money isn't a factor in deciding not to use that distribution. So, any opinions on Suse? Is my brother just doing what SecretMethod70 mentioned and throwing out his favorite version as the "only one" to use?

And thank you for the warnings about blowing up my system, but it will be a spare computer and if something happens to it, I won't be too sad...

There's a group out there that used to work on a project called "DemoLinux". Basically it's one CD you download and then you can boot off it to run Linux. It runs solely on RAM drives, so installation is no problem. To get out of it, just reboot your computer.

http://www.demolinux.org/

Unfortunately, there was some legal issues with what they were doing, so this hasn't been updated in over a year. Still, I like to keep a CD on hand for showing off Linux to my non-tech-savvy friends.

eek! By blowing up I don't mean any PHYSICAL damage :) Just basically messing up the installation so taht you have to re-install.

SuSE is actually a pretty decent distro. I haven't really used it much but I do understand it's pretty user friendly. However, the way in which it installs software makes it so that it's a bit harder to install software I THINK. SuSE, if I'm not mistaken, doesn't use RPMs and has it's own thing. As such, I THINK it's harder to find binaries to install programs for it if they're not included or not the latest version included on the CDs. Of course, I could be totally wrong since I've only used it a little bit.

DemoLinux is pretty old and the concept has since been all but replaced by Knoppix and Gnoppix. Correct me if I'm wrong nothingx, but I don't think there are any differences between how DemoLinux works and how *noppix works. Never heard about the legal issues though - that's interesting. I wonder what they were.

SuSE is RPM based. RPMs for Red Hat don't usually work for SuSE though. I don't know all the differences as to why that is. There is some stuff that SuSE includes that isn't distributable under the terms of the GPL and other free licenses. I currently have SuSE 8.2, I'll check the EULA on it tonight to see if I can be more specific on the legal stuff.

Ah yes, SuSE does use RPMs, but they're just not compatible with other RPMs. Thanks for correcting me :)

One thing to remember, if I'm not mistaken, YaST2 has been GPL'd recently.

You may want to check out the new Linux sticky in this forum :)

For basic messing around in linux try Fedora, Madrake, or SUSE.

If you really want to get into the guts of Linux and learn things I'd say start with Debian. Its hard to learn right away, but you learn quickly and its worth the effort.

I personally started on Debian.

Just my suggestions though.

I would definitely check into it. IBM is going to be switching their products to Linux (fully!!) by 2005. I'm gonna get some experience in sooner or later.