Upgrading to Linux

On Wed, 31 Aug 2005 08:20:16 +0000, TheNIGHTCRAWLER

Really, the biggest question is what are the detailed hardware specs for the system you are building?

I'm going to second your buddy's recommendation to go with Mepis. It's very user oriented, and a breeze to install for anyone who can read. Drivers shouldn't be an issue unless you are unfortunate enough to have components that are not supported on Linux, they are few nowadays, but they do exist.

Much of the configuration is done for you and there are alot of applications that are installed by default with literally thousands more available for free download using the included package manager, Synaptic (fast internet connection recommended).

Other distros that are good for newbies are Mandrake (now Mandriva, which is up to 10.2 now), Fedora, and OpenSuSE. These tend to be a little bit more on the chunky side, so you should have at least a 400Mhz CPU, 128M RAM, and 6GB hard drive to use any of these (this shouldn't be a problem by today's standards).

The video card that you have will be important, as Linux prefers certain types. Newer NVidia, ATI, and Matrox cards are good choices. Others will work, but probably won't have accelerated support for playing 3D games and such.

Please keep in mind that Linux is not Windows, and will never be. It's a totally different world than what you are used to, though many things will seem similar or even identical, many more are totally different. The applications that you are familiar with that ran on Windows will probably not work on Linux, but there are usually open source equivelants that will enable you to do the exact same stuff that you did on Windows, just with a different application. If you have any questions, there is a worlwide community of users and developers that would be happy to help out via various newsgroups, IRC, and forums. Best of Luck!

Heh, good moniker, cuz you just opened a whole can of worms! Welcome to Linux! :-)

P.S. Word of advice - whatever you do, DON'T install that copy of Mandrake 8.1 you have! It's very old and would be like putting Win95 on an AMD64. You can download the latest version of Mepis or one of the other distros for free, so put the 8.1 disks down and step away!

-- rapskat - 04:24:17 up 3 days, 9:31, 3 users, load average: 0.32, 0.22, 0.18 "Developing open source software is like being in a car accident. It's painful and bloody, lots of people stand around to watch, but few want to help. Those that do are saints." -- William Stearns