I want to try Linux but I have not got a clue which to choose.

Ok I barley know how to spell Linux. Let alone understand which version to look into and what to play with. I dont know command line interfaces. So whatever I choose must have a good GUI. I am on broadband so downloading an ISO is not a problem. I was thinking about knoppix on a CD, but seeing as I have a spare HD that I can install it on I would like to go that route.

I breiffly read over some of the threads in this section and saw that some of what I know is totally wrong. I thought that Linux was like saying windows with just diffrent versions, like 95.98 and so on. But it looks like linux is just a base and people have built there own OS onto linux. My current system is a P4 2.4 with 1 gig of ram, GF4 video card. I know there are driver issues but I would like to find the easiest build to get me started with the basics of linux.

Any Help At all will be apprciated.

Since your a total newb go with Mandrake 9.1. It will guide yo uthrew everythign and their is nothing really that hard. It guides you threw everything. It was the 1st linux i tryed and i used it for 5 days until i thought it was too simpleand moved onto slackware 9.0.

Edit, ok I just was not looking in the right section. I did find it free.

www.linuxiso.org has lots of linux ISO's from many many distros.

Try a number of distros and find one which suits you. A number of people on this forum promote Mandrake which I personally dislike..... I am a fan of SuSE which some dislike.... each distro suits different types of people, try a few flavors and see which one is to your taste

The pros of distros like mandrake and redhat are that they use a lot of wizards that make things pretty simple. Mandrake is probably better because redhat has kinda of gone off on its own and become less like other distros, so using it will teach you how to use redhta more than it will teach you how to use linux. Suse is supposed to be very good, but you can't get iso's- you have to do an install via ftp. Redhat has also been kind of extra-cautious lately (by not including wine for RH9, and leaving out MP3 codecs).

The cons are their package mangement (called RPM) which can sometmes be hellacious to deal with when you want to install something. They are also pretty bloated by default with stuff you'll never use, and you have to trim the fat off of them or they will be a little slower than some of the more advanced distros.

Knoppix is actually pretty good. Its Debian-based, which means it has a better system for installing/unistalling software compared to RPM (called apt-get). It doesn't have as many wizards as Redhat or Madrake though. Its a little more minimal since it was designed to run on ram-limited systems as a live CD, and because there's only som much you can cram on a CD (install size is about 1.75GB). The install procedure for knoppix is not too hard at all, though you do kind of have to tinker on it a just little bit afterwards because it is not very secure. There are nice guides on Knoppix net. There are also many different variations of Knoppix. I made one recently in fact, called Overclockix. You'll find threads about it here at OC.com, and also at knoppix.net.

A live CD like Knoppix/Overclockix is really cool in and of itself since you can use it without installing it, and it can often be a useful tool to correct problems on linux hard drive installations, or even to recover files from crashed hard drives/OS's.

I recommend giving both Overclockix and Suse live eval CD's a try.
Overclockix link- http://overclockix.octeams.com/
693mb
screenshot: http://overclockix.octeams.com/snapshot3.jpg

Regardless of the wizards provided specifically by the distro, if you use the KDE Window Mananger, you will get quite a few wizards/GUI configuration tools. Making everything configurable graphically has been the primary goal of KDE since it was first developed. It's also very windows-esque in appearance compared to some other window managers, and easy to get started on. Another good window manager for someone new to linux is gnome, which is pretty much comparable to KDE in every respect.

Ok I dowloaded, 1.5 gig last night Mandrake 9.1 in ISO format 2 CD's. I am going to burn it when I get home tonight and try to install it on a spare 6gig drive. It is being installed on a Windows XP Machine are there any cautions tips or hints I should know about. You guys are the best, thanks for helping a newbee out with this.

A tip for a newbie installing Linux: if it's being installed on a machine that already has XP on it (or another OS), and you don't wanna lose it, make sure you're installing on the correct drive/partition. I almost lost all the data on my 40GB drive because it was my first Linux install and I didn't know what the hda and hdb was . But when I was in fdisk, I realized that it was the wrong size (I wanted to install it on my 13GB drive). Luckily I caught myself. Hopefully this kind of thing should be obvious .

-daga

Ok its in

Ok Linux Mandrake 9.1 is installed. It did take me 2 tries to understand enough to click auto allocate on the hdba thing.

Now all I got to do is start understanding this thing. LIke what is "equall to "my computer" in this linux.

Thanks for the tips I have it all installed now and I am playing with it. I will be back asking lots of questions as time goes on. I am already reading the stickies but at this point they all seem like gibberish, becuae I dont understand what things are so I cant understand what they do.

/ is equivalent to My Computer.

cd / (go to /)
ls (list contents of /)

Most partitons will be mouted to mountpoints in /mnt like /mnt/hda1, /mnt/hda2....

Mandrake is like a begginers version of Linux. It does a lot for you through wizards and crap so you really dont know wuts going on. IF you really want to know whats going on under the hood try a more complicated version of linux like debian, slackware or gentoo. I am trying to use Slackware now and i have having problems with the kernel since it didnt come with one but i have learned a lot just by using commands to try and install and compile one. I have learned more about linux than i ever have would using mandrake.

One thing to understand is that since Linux is a completely different OS, theres a lot of things that have no equivalent between the two OSes.

For Mandrake, I think theres a "Home" icon on the desktop that will bring up a filemanager window, and you can go from there.

I installed Mandrake once, played with it for a few days and found it to be too bloated & hated the wizards. Went with Gentoo & never turned back. Taught myself by reading their forums and setup my own PC with Waimea as my window manager.

I'd recommend a distro like Gentoo, Debian, Slackware as well as a few others instead. Take your time & stick with it, the more hands-on work you do, the more you will learn.

Thats exactly what i am doing. I used mandrake for 5 days before i decided it was too easy and tryed to use slackware. When i master slackware i am gonna switch to gentoo because i hear it is a lot better and you cna optimize it for each piece of hardwae you have.

Its so easy to reccomend distos such as Debian, Slackware and Gentoo.. in fact these were what was reccomended to me... Some people however wish to learn linux but find that is not possible to install it on another system or hard drive...
I have Linux on my main system which I am attempting to learn, however it is exceptionally important that I have a stable working system all the time and IMHO from a learning perspective Debian, Gentoo, and Slackware can not provide this where SuSE can.

People seriously need to try distros, each one has good and bad points and suit specific people depending upon requirements..

Debian, in my experience, is incredibly stable. However, there is the issue of Apt. Apt is beautiful package management. Absolutely wonderful...Unless it breaks. And then you're sad. Once it breaks, it sucks to be you. I'm just glad that so far it's only broken on my router, which isn't apt to do a lot of apting. (Sorry. I couldn't help it. )

Gentoo I'm finding I'm liking a lot. It doesn't have the pretty installer that Debian does, but it's oh so cool. Just installing it gave depth to my understanding of how Linux works.

And then there's Red Hat...Yeah...RPM sucks...Red Hat, as a distro of Linux, sucks. Yeah, there's really no reason to go with Red Hat. Red Hat is pretty much the Windows Millenium of the Linux world.

Debian: "I thought about crashing one time, and then I thought to myself, why would I want to do that? And I never thought of it since."

Gentoo: "I know what you mean, I was in that same position just three months ago when my uptime hit one year. I thought, well why don't I go for two years?"

Red Hat: "I was thinking, maybe I should actually work today. But then I figured that would involve effort. So I didn't."

White Star said:

Debian, in my experience, is incredibly stable. However, there is the issue of Apt. Apt is beautiful package management. Absolutely wonderful...Unless it breaks. And then you're sad. Once it breaks, it sucks to be you. I'm just glad that so far it's only broken on my router, which isn't apt to do a lot of apting. (Sorry. I couldn't help it. )

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Although Debian itself may be stable I would suggest that for someone such as myself making the move from the warm fuzzy Windows enviorment, to a Linux enviroment with no real knowledge about the system with the requirement that the system must work out of the box and be stable then Debian is not really suitable.
The reason for this that that for a first timer with specific requirements such as myself would find it difficault to setup and configure Debian and get a system worth using.. When distros such as Mandrake, SuSE, Redhat, Lycoris generally provide more of a helping hand.

Try the distros and find one which suits you its the only way imho

Red Hat is REALLY bloated I suggest using Mandrake. I use RedHat and I really don't like it. I was using SuSE, and Slackware at one point but SuSE I had problems with setting up the NIC. Slackware was really nice, but you should only use it if you have lots of time on your hands, to learn and install everything that you need. I stopped using Slackware just because I didn't have the time to configure it and get all of the programs, plugins for things.

Note: I have had problems with the RPMs in RedHat when the computer was shut down wrong (power surge) it it broke the RPM and in the past you had to recompile the kernal if it happened.

I have a different take on Debian, since I've been using Knoppix and a custom verions of Knoppix that I made. Knoppices are an easy way to get a preconfigured debian system. It takes a little bit of efffort to run the scripts and edit a few files, for which there are guides, but that's nothing compared to a typical Debian install. And you get apt-get, which is very nice.

Still in love with gentoo though....

Still too lazy to dump redhat off one of my systems and my laptop. Keep telling myself I'll do gentoo on one and Overclockix on the other......

I still keep on telling myself that i will change my primary system to linux... i've had mandrake running for me for a while (through virtual pc).. and i had redhat before.... IMO mandrake is better than redhat, which is kinda unfriendly... i haven't gotten to anything more advanced... and the way its looking, it prolly won't happen until i'm forced to

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