a few questions...

[oneafterdark]

alright guys. Ive been looking into this LINUX thing.. I like what im hearing.. FREE. i have a .. borrowed copy of XP and i dont like all the garbage thats on it. IE< stuff like that. I was just wondering. what kind of linux you would think i should download? i pretty much get onto the web.. listen to music.. and watch movies on here.. somtime's i edit photo's with photoshop.. thats it. i dont play game's or do anything else really. And if anyone has AIM or MSN then if you could write to me on it so i can actually have a convo about this, i would really like that. Thanks for reading my sad display of computer knowledge.

 

[x0r515t]

Judging by what you do on a computer, Linux sounds like it fits you perfectly. The only thing you can't do in Linux is play most PC games.

For getting onto the web, theres many browsers available for linux such as Firefox. You can use xmms to listen to music, you can use mplayer to watch movies. You can use The Gimp to edit photos.

As far as what distro to try, well it depends on your expectations of an operating system. Do you want a distro that will make things as easy as possible, or do you prefer to configure things yourself? If you want a distro that is friendly to beginners I would suggest Ubuntu which is based on Debian. If you are the type of person who prefers to configure things yourself, then I would suggest Slackware, Gentoo, or Debian. SuSE and Fedora Core are also easy for a Linux novice, but they are RPM based. For those who don't know RPM stands for Red Hat Package Management and as the name implies, is a package management system. Other examples of package managers are emerge(Gentoo) and apt-get(Debian). Package managers are used to install programs on Linux systems, alternatively if you don't wish to use a package manger you can compile from source.

Compiling software from source is simple, and can usually be accomplished in three steps:

./configure

make

make install

So to sum it up, if you want ease of use, I suggest Ubuntu, SuSE, or Fedora. If you want to challenge yourself more Slackware, Gentoo, or Debian.

Heres a good site to further research different distros:
http://distrowatch.com/

 

[iamroot]

There are many GNU/Linux distros out there now and it can be overwhelming for a new user. I would strongly recommend Fedora Core. It's pretty stable, cutting edge and has a wide selection of packages.

GNU/Linux should be fine for your usage. Mostly gamers have big issues with GNU/Linux since it can't play most of the Windows-only games out there on the market. There are certain games that work fine though. Games by Epic Games and id software have GNU/Linux ports. UT2004 and Doom3 are examples or games that run well with GNU/Linux.

GNU/Linux has Mozilla Firefox so that shouldn't be much of an issue. There are some great media players to play audio and video content as well. There are many such players so I don't wanna go through them here.

There's a pretty good Photoshop-replacement called the GIMP. I'm not into photo-editing and stuff so I don't use it but I've heard that people who are experienced with Photoshop should be okay with the GIMP.

My MSN address is darkangel8887@hotmail.com. You can add me if you have more questions and I'll try to answer them to the best of my abilities.

There's a screenshot of my desktop here. Hope it can give you an idea of how a GNU/Linux desktop looks like.

 

[dyserq]

Yes, there are many distributions out there ... lol, your using Fedora Core 4 iamroot, i'm using that right now as well ... don't mean to intrude and stray away from the topic but how do you get those extra toolbars which tell you about news ? It looks extremely familiar to the 'Serious Samurize' i used to use on windows
Anyways, check out the distributions for yourself, there are quite a while, most of the best and most renowned distributions are on http://distrocenter.linux.com/, just check out some stuff on http://www.linux.com/ to see how much more the advantage of using linux is compared to windows

 

[oneafterdark]

well, i did download ubuntu system and loaded it into my system. I like it alot, except for that i cant find a driver for my ati radeon 7200 dual monitor, and most the people on the net figure if you on linux your an expert on the subject. Ive been just aksing people for help and they get mad because i dont know exactly what their talking about. If you guys are willing to help leave your email address' or anything. I still need a Mp3 player on here, ive been bored all night, and i'd like to get that driver, and find out why i cant go into a chat. If somone has some free time at about 2 pm mountain time tommarow im going to be on here and if someone with linux would see if they could get in that would be great. We'll, if anyone knows how to do the monitor thing and would be willing to take some time to help me i would be one of the happeist people on the planet. And maybe help me with the res. on my screen. I think its at like 1024 right now and i cant operate on anything lower then 1280 or whatever that is so im dien here! thanks guys

 

[dyserq]

Sadly the one huge down side is that sometimes the software and hardware aren't compatible with linux, my printer is not compatible so that is something that brings down the marks
As for chat, there should be GAIM loaded on nearly every distro and they serve the large im clients, such as AIM, MSN, ICQ, IRC and Yahoo (i really do wonder why most of the chat clients can be simplified into only 3 words)
As for the drivers, i am not so sure, some people even need you to pay for them so that you can just get them compatible together ! Its annoying especially when they are excluding one of the best os that i've seen
Sorry that i can't necessarily help but i myself have only gotten around to installing a linux distro that has slowly been gathering dust over the several months (i got fedora core 4 )

 

[iamroot]

The widgets that show you the news and stuff is called GDesklets.

I agree that hardware compatibility is a real downer for new GNU/Linux users. Most internal hardware don't have much of a problem but the external peripherals are a real pain in the neck. The only thing you can do is to be careful and check it out on the net before buying the hardware.