Moose Goes Penguin

[Acadia]

Hey Moose! Good to see you here!

So, Urmas, what is the EASIEST Linux version for an absolute Linux newbie to download and experiment with? What is Mandriva, never even heard of that one. You used to be a Ubuntu man, didn't you? I would probably have to do this in VirtualBox. Anyway, like I said, for a newbie. Thanks.Acadia Edited December 21, 2008 by Acadia

[Urmas]

Ubuntu and Mandriva are both easy. The install process is fast and... a no-brainer, really.Yeah, guess I still am a "Ubuntu man". But thing is, MOST of the distributions these days are darned easy to install and use.

[Acadia]

Ubuntu and Mandriva are both easy. The install process is fast and... a no-brainer, really.Yeah, guess I still am a "Ubuntu man". But thing is, MOST of the distributions these days are darned easy to install and use.

Hmmmm, according to Jay over at the Haven, the free Microsoft VM program will work on XP Home, it just isn't supported. I also have no experience with VM, have you used both MS and VirtualBox, if so, which would be easiest again for a pure newbie (or not-so-pure newbie)? Acadia Edited December 21, 2008 by Acadia

[Urmas]

Nope... don't have Windoze on my machines, so no MS VPC for me. But... VirtualBox is very easy to use, and it comes with more goodies (such as USB support and "dynamic" screen resolution).But... why don't you install BOTH? Then YOU can decide which proggy is the easier/better one.

[Bruno]

Hi Acadia !Clearly you are new to the Linux part of the forum, so: welcome, hope you will feel at home ! But, there is a tiny little detail I would want to draw your attention to:

. . . for an absolute Linux newbie to download and experiment with? . . . . Anyway, like I said, for a newbie.

. . . which would be easiest again for a pure newbie (or not-so-pure newbie)?

See, we have a policy regarding the "N" word . . . let me pull up an old quote from 5 years ago: "We try to avoid the word "newbie", it does no justice to the efforts we, also the beginners, put in to learn a new operating system. I think the wish to learn Linux shows a brave attitude and deserves a better qualification"We don't have many rules here in the Linux forum . . . but this is one of them Bruno

[Acadia]

We don't have many rules here in the Linux forum . . . but this is one of them

Acadia

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Look! It's a MOOOOOOSE! Howdy, Bill! How's all going with you? Cold enough for ya' up there? ;)HAPPY HOLIDAYS to you and the whole Moose family!

[Acadia]

Look! It's a MOOOOOOSE! Howdy, Bill! How's all going with you? Cold enough for ya' up there? ;)HAPPY HOLIDAYS to you and the whole Moose family!

Hi, Eric, thanks, Happy Holidays back at ya. Yeah, plenty cold, low of 14° tonight with wind gusts up to 40mph.Yup, getting antsy to take the Linux plunge, just want to do more home work. See ya.Acadia

[sunrat]

Hi, Eric, thanks, Happy Holidays back at ya. Yeah, plenty cold, low of 14° tonight with wind gusts up to 40mph.Yup, getting antsy to take the Linux plunge, just want to do more home work. See ya.Acadia

You know you don't have to take a plunge. You can run many versions as Live CD without any installation. There are many posts on this forum about how to do it, and also how to use VirtualBox.Is that 14° Fahrenheit? brrrrrrr! In Melbourne today is 30° Celsius with 14C about night minimum. Welcome to ATL! Edited December 22, 2008 by sunrat

[Acadia]

You know you don't have to take a plunge. You can run many versions as Live CD without any installation. There are many posts on this forum about how to do it, and also how to use VirtualBox.Is that 14° Fahrenheit? brrrrrrr! In Melbourne today is 30° Celsius with 14C about night minimum. Welcome to ATL!

Yup, Fahrenheit.Acadia

[Frank Golden]

Yup, Fahrenheit.Acadia

Hi Bill, welcome to ATL.I would suggest Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (the latest stable release) for a starter linux OS. This latest from Ubuntu focuses on better hardware support (wi-fi and video particulary).Almost all hardware on my machine works "out-of-the-box".Like myself and Urmas you may come to view Ubuntu as your favorite linux distro.Unlike Urmas I can't bring myself to leave XP quite yet.I have XP and 5 linux distros in a multiboot configuration on my machine.Setting up a dual boot machine is an option you might consider if you likewhat you see from a live CD and want to install a linux distro.See the below link for the "definitive" guide to dual booting Ubuntu.http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/index.htmNow as to using a liveCD. While a liveCd can give you a feel for given linux distro and provide info on hardwarecompatibility, liveCD's are glacially slow to load and run slow.If your computer can boot from a usb flash drive you might want to consider creating a liveUSB flash drive from whatever linux .iso file you choose.The link below is for a neat program called Unetbootin, (both Windows and linux versions) that automates the creation of a liveUSB drive from many of the more popular linux distros available.LiveUSB drives load a great deal faster than liveCD's and once loaded perform much faster than a liveCD thereby givingyou a better feel for whatever distro you choose.Just like with a liveCD you can install the distro to your HDD if you decide to take the plunge. The install itself will be much quicker too.http://lubi.sourceforge.net/unetbootin.htmlFinally a link to Ubuntu .iso D/L site.http://www.ubuntu.com/P.S. beginning a few versions ago Ubuntu liveCD .iso's are now called "desktop edition iso's"Remember we are here to help.Oh yeah, Merry Christmas Bill.BTW, How is your property on Mt. Desert Island going?Have you been there lately? Edited December 22, 2008 by Frank Golden

[Bruno]

In some cases testing a KDE ( desktop manager ) based distro is easier for people coming from Windows . . . because the gap is easier to bridge.Some of the KDE based distros that come to mind are: Mandriva ( Read Review ) or PCLos ( Review ).Another KDE based distro, for people that like a challenge, is Slackware ( Review ) the distro that is 150% stable and has the history to prove it.The installer might make you think it is oldfashion, but once installed you are back in 2008/2009.Slax ( Review ) is the "Live" version of SlackwareAnyway . . . please do try a fair amount of "LiveCD's" before you take the plunge ! ( just ask and we will provide reliable download links ) next to an indication of what Linux is like, it's a good way to check in how far your hardware is supported by that particular distro. Bruno

PS: If you folks think we should split up this topic, please let one of the moderators know and we will do the magic.

[striker]

Just split it up!

[Urmas]

Just split it up!

Aye-aye, Sir! @Moose:Don't get overwhelmed with all the suggestions that keep pouring in... Linux isn't a monolyth. The good folks here use a fair amount of different distributions with different desktop environments (What the heck is a desktop environment, you ask? Don't worry... you'll "get it" pretty soon), some folks dual boot, some folks multi boot, some folks are addicted to VirtualBox... and so on.And you know what? This... anarchy is a great, great thing. IT IS YOUR COMPUTER, so it is your privilege to be able to customize it JUST THE WAY YOU LIKE. This is what Linux is all about.OK, OK... stepping down now... but the soap box WAS there, and meself happened to be passing by...

[striker]

[Acadia]

Frank: we were up there in October; had our private drive, which will also serve as 90% of our driveway, put in last year and the town approved our name for our drive, Dragonfly Way. Still several years away from doing any building, thanks for asking.Everyone else: I am going to keep it simple because I am dealing with an 4 1/2 year old Pentium 3 or 4, I forget which. So I probably have some real hardware limitations. BUT I've always been wanting to play with VM's also so I am going to install whatever Linux I choose probably into VirtualBox which I am reading up on now. No chance of dual booting because I treasure my all time favorite software program ever, FirstDefense-ISR, too much to mess with the MBR, FD-ISR (the original version only which is no longer available) actually makes Windows worth keeping, believe it or not. Maybe over Christmas or this coming weekend I will finally be able to do something, but again, want to do more reading.Thanks for all the help and suggestions, keep them coming!Acadia

Edited December 22, 2008 by Acadia

[raymac46]

If you are planning to run as a virtual machine, I suggest you have lots of RAM. In fact if you have less than 1 GB of RAM, I think you'd be better off just trying a Live CD. You need enough RAM and disk space for the virtual operating system to set itself up and have its own storage.Linux works great with dual booting and plays very nicely with Windows on the same hard drive.One distro that works very well off a CD and is small and fast is Puppy Linux. I wouldn't suggest it for the full blown Linux experience but it'll give you a taste of what Linux is all about.

Edited December 22, 2008 by raymac46

[Acadia]

If you are planning to run as a virtual machine, I suggest you have lots of RAM. In fact if you have less than 1 GB of RAM, I think you'd be better off just trying a Live CD. You need enough RAM and disk space for the virtual operating system to set itself up and have its own storage.Linux works great with dual booting and plays very nicely with Windows on the same hard drive.

I have 1gig of RAM; in 4 1/2 years I have never used more that 600meg of it that I know of. Thanks,Acadia

[Urmas]

1GB is enough. Just don't give your guest more than 400-500 megs and you'll be OK.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Linux runs very well on most older computers, so that shouldn't be a worry for you.Along the lines of what Bruno suggested about KDE-based distros being a bit easier for Windows folks; I am biased in that direction also. I started out as a Gnomie (users or the Gnome Desktop), however I eventually went over to KDE as my favorite. I still use Gnome, though. My back-up distribution is Debian (Gnome-based).Another KDE distro that you might like to try, along with Mandriva and PCLos that Bruno mentioned, is Vector Linux. Vector is a more graphically-based distro which is a progeny (offshoot) of Slackware. It's very stable and robust. You might also like OpenSuSE and Fedora Core with KDE or Gnome.Have fun with it!P.S. Virtual Box is like virtual sex. It's safe, but not nearly as fun. Install GNU/Linux FOR REAL on your system. I've tested and ran nearly every popular version of GNU/Linux out there. I never had VB installed on my computers at any time.

[Frank Golden]

Frank: we were up there in October; had our private drive, which will also serve as 90% of our driveway, put in last year and the town approved our name for our drive, Dragonfly Way. Still several years away from doing any building, thanks for asking.Everyone else: I am going to keep it simple because I am dealing with an 4 1/2 year old Pentium 3 or 4, I forget which. So I probably have some real hardware limitations. BUT I've always been wanting to play with VM's also so I am going to install whatever Linux I choose probably into VirtualBox which I am reading up on now. No chance of dual booting because I treasure my all time favorite software program ever, FirstDefense-ISR, too much to mess with the MBR, FD-ISR (the original version only which is no longer available) actually makes Windows worth keeping, believe it or not. Maybe over Christmas or this coming weekend I will finally be able to do something, but again, want to do more reading.Thanks for all the help and suggestions, keep them coming!Acadia

Bill why don't you get an external HDD and install a linux distro there. I have 4 distros installed on an external drive and use the Grub menu on my main drive to boot em. But you could, during install place the bootloader entirely on the external drive therebyavoiding messing with the MBR on your system drive.Or cheaper yet just get a spare drive and swap it out with your system drive when you want to run linux or slave it to your system drive and install the linux bootloader to it.All this depends on you machine's/BIOS's ability to boot from an external HDD or boot from a slave drive.I'm fortunate in that my notebook has a setting in the BIOS that when enabled allows me to choose the boot medium without entering the BIOS proper.I just have to press f12 before the POST is done and I'm presented with a menu showing the available drives. Of course the USB drive has to be attached before this point.

[Urmas]

P.S. Virtual Box is like virtual sex. It's safe, but not nearly as fun.

Says the one who... how was it? Oh yeah:

I never had VB installed on my computers at any time.

[Acadia]

Bill why don't you ...

Good grief, you're all jumping way over my head. I'm gonna keep is simple for now and besides, to repeat myself, I've been wanting to play with VM anyway. As time goes on who knows what I'll do, especially since I'm finally planning on purchasing a new pc sometime next year ... I have to start somewhere!Acadia Edited December 22, 2008 by Acadia

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Start HERE.

[Frank Golden]

Good grief, you're all jumping way over my head. I'm gonna keep is simple for now and besides, to repeat myself, I've been wanting to play with VM anyway. As time goes on who knows what I'll do, especially since I'm finally planning on purchasing a new pc sometime next year ... I have to start somewhere!Acadia

Sorry Bill, just trying to be helpful. We're here when you need us. Edited December 22, 2008 by Frank Golden

[Urmas]

Good grief, you're all jumping way over my head. I'm gonna keep is simple for now and besides, to repeat myself, I've been wanting to play with VM anyway. As time goes on who knows what I'll do, especially since I'm finally planning on purchasing a new pc sometime next year ... I have to start somewhere!Acadia

Told you... we're baaaaad. But... here comes the K.I.S.S. plan: you want to play with VM; install VirtualBox, and install Ubuntu and/or Mandriva One KDE in VBox. Enjoy.

[Acadia]

Told you... we're baaaaad. But... here comes the K.I.S.S. plan: you want to play with VM; install VirtualBox, and install Ubuntu and/or Mandriva One KDE in VBox. Enjoy.

Yeah, I'm keeping it real simple; already planning on installing about four flavors and playing, good grief, you guys are already rubbing off on me! Acadia

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Ya! Da Moose is wid us, comrades!

[raymac46]

I haven't tried VB either - largely because most of my machines are such junkers I have trouble finding a good host distro, let alone a guest.Besides, I have enough trouble with wireless in the real world that the thought of virtual wireless gives me pause.

Edited December 23, 2008 by raymac46

[striker]

VB ? Get real, use a live CD and if it suits ya, install.