Ok, I see there’s a number of linux types here. I’m sick sick sick of microslop and am considering a switch. I’ve got two boxes so I can try it on the old one first. I learned on unix back in the early 90’s so I have a partial clue here, but feel like I need some serious handholding. so here’s my question:
Where are the websites with comprehensive instructions on how to make a conversion?
Subsidiary Question: Does this mean I’ll get pretty much zero support when I have to interact with the commercial world ie problems with my dsl or isp?
most ISPs have UNIX support now, my ISP is verizon and I’ve had tons of problems with my DSL and I’ve discovered that when I tell them I’m running XP they give me someone that doesn’t know what they’re doing, they just read from a script. when I tell them I’m running RedHat 9 they send me to a real network support engineer, someone who actually knows what a DSLAM is and has the power to get into it and really troubleshoot the problem.
the software side of linux is gettig a lot better too, there’s lots of games now that will run under WINE and there’s even an office suite that’s compatible with the M$ stuff, and it’ll even talk to an exchange server. the networking is easier than ever to set up, running samba will let you use file shares on your windows machine.
most of the software that you’d use for linux is free or cheap too, Ximian’s pro office suite is only around $40, the Gimp (similar to photoshop) comes with most distros for free.
I think your biggest difficulty is going to be all of the files and programs you use now under windows. The open office that comes with most Linux distros has worked well on the Word files I’ve opened, but what if you use Quicken, and I don’t think the tax programs are available for Linux yet…
I’ve been very impressed with RH9, and I use Mandrake at work. Multi language support is wonderful. Beats my Macintosh. I use it in both English and Japanese, works great. I have had a real struggle getting dialin wirking in RH, but I have no clue yet if the old computer, the old modem, or RH is at fault.
My ISP has specific instructions for Linux dialin. I haven’t tried ethernet yet.
I’m running RH9 on a 366 Celeron with 128MB RAM and a 4.7 Gig disc. 97 to 98 ish vintage. Performance is not real snappy bringing up the big applications, but once they’re running it’s fine.
I strongly recommend Knoppix as this first thing you try.
It’s boots and runs directly from the CD-rom, so you don’t have worry about trashing your machine.
You’ll be able to see how well your hardware is detected. Play around with some of the applications, and generally, decide if you want to continue. I think you’ll be highly impressed.
Then, decide on one of the “standard” (i know, i know, there’s no such thing) distros, Red Hat, Mandrake, Debian, Suse,…
fancypiper has some excellent links there for you, and they’ll probably lead you to others.
re financial programs, I’ve never used any but read recently that the newer versions may have adequate quicken support (gnucash? moneydance? other?)
I’ve used SUSE since 5.2, and now have 9.0, used to double-boot, have now dispensed with Windoze entirely. Besides by own box (got it this summer from Los Alamos Computers) and a previous hand made box I’ve only installed on my son’s Dell laptop (dual-boot). The 9.0 install is a snap, and the partitioning tool is particularly good–Joe Barr had a short article on that at Newsforge yesterday. SUSE gives you an amazing wealth of software, in addition to the easy install on most anything remotely similar to stock hardware (but… I can’t offer guarantees ). Their automated PPP config has worked very well for me, compared to the days of writing your own script. Mandrake is the other distro that has a very good rep for newbie friendliness, although I haven’t used it (it, too, is at 9.0). Some others on this board like Debian, Gentoo and Slackware. IMO, those are probably not the best choice for someone like you describe yourself. Oh, and Lindows gets good reviews for general users. I think someone on this board commented on that, as well as a CD distro that’s good for a Linux testdrive. I believe Redhat is downplaying desktop support, but I don’t doubt that it would be a solid choice. I’m a little prejudiced against it because I disagree with some aspects of their directory structure, but I’m sure it’ll do fine by you.
Thanks everyone, I knew from the various threads that mention linux here that there were decent resources out there. I really have only poked around on some of those links for a very short while, but am leaning towards getting my feet wet with knoppix and the gnuII windows stuff. Then at this early stage it looks like mandrake or suse will do pretty well for me. Yes I do use quicken and will either keep a dual boot machine, one machine of each flavor, or find some linux equivalent. Other issues that I see are the prevalence of emails with annoying attachments in the latest version of ms-XXXX. I assume there are some decent translators out there for this stuff. Oh did I mention my wife is terrified I am going to ruin the computer?
I am so sick of worrying about viruses and worms and having to update software and the machine keeps crashing more, running slower and the registry gets more topheavy and I stopped understanding all of this a few years ago… Now ms says they wont support 98 anymore which granted I never really loved but I could tolerate.
I’d recommend Knoppix as well, plus it has a nice windows environment without the microsoft influence. One can use unix through there very easily. so, ditto.
my email client is kmail (although i’ve used sylpheed as well); i use kshowmail to review mail on my isp’s server before downloading anything. evolution, or course, has good reports. thunderbird, from mozilla.org, has gotten very good reviews in general, esp. re its handling of spam. i use the firebird version of mozilla and like it very much.
I have had some hardware (HD going bad) to crash Linux, but I can’t recall a crash in the last 2 years (with the exception of Windows when I try to play a game) using Linux.
Knoppix is Debian based, BTW and you can use the CD to install it. Debian uses a nice pacakge manager called apt-get or (the GUI frontend) Synaptic to install software.
I don’t have much info on SuSE as it isn’t used as much on the Linux BBS I frequent. I currently use Red Hat 7.3, Mandrake 9.0, (good to start with, Red Hat’s newest GNU release is under the name of Fedora now) and Gentoo (a sort of advanced Linux and it has a manual install that can take several days or a week depending on hardware), usually in that order. As soon as I get Gentoo doing just right, I will probably switch to that as I am a control freak and a couple more things to figure out and I will switch to it.
Mandrake has a nice resizing utility that will let you re-partition for a dual boot system easily, so it’s a good choice.
Can anyone explain what exactly Linux is??? I see the commercial, but that little kid isnt telling me jack squat. Is this some kind of windows alternative? I don’t get it.
Linux is a UNIX-like operating system created by developers world-wide that is distributed for free. Many wonderful features have been added on top of the UNIX operating system that allow users to mimic Windows functionality, but with greater security and customizing. Pretty much anything you can do with Windows you can do with Linux, from accessing your Microsoft Exchange server to writing Word and PowerPoint compatible documents.
There is a bit of a learning curve for users who have never used UNIX, but the new Linux releases (others can address this much more completely than me) the gap is narrowing.
There is always a quarrel about what is meant by Linux. According to linux dot org, Linux is a free Unix-type operating system originally created by Linus Torvalds with the assistance of developers around the world. Developed under the GNU General Public License, the source code for Linux is freely available to everyone.
BTW, the acronym GNU means “Gnu’s Not Unix”
The Linux geeks insist that “Linux” only pertains to the kernel or underlying operating system and GNU/Linux might be a better descriptions of the different “flavors” or distributions of GNU/Linux/whatever you want to call it.
I got fed up with Windows 98SE and installed Red Hat in December of 1999 and it was the best Christmas present I have ever given myself. I haven’t missed Microsoft software at all.
Good point Piper. I remember when Richard Stallman wanted it called “GNU/Linux” since the user level was based on GNU utilities. Torvalds wrote the kernel, but he used the 2BSD networking stack, at least in the initial releases. Don’t know what it uses now though. I heard they moved up to using the 4BSD stack, but don’t know for sure.
Just to back up a couple of great points that have already been made, I’ll slink out of lurkdom (for an OT post! ), and strongly recommend that you get yourself a knoppix disc and try it out. Most hardware is auto-dected and installed (plug and play… Ha!), and it boots you right into a type of “windows”, which will make it easier for you at first to get around the system.
Warning: DO NOT STOP HERE! One of the first programs you run should be xterm, or any other terminal emulator (essentially a command line). Try to learn to do as much as possible from the command line… this is where the true power of Linux lies; pipes, redirection, shell scripting… it will all come in time, but when it does you will be forever liberated from the Orwellian clutches of Micro$oft.
Before I leave I thnk I’ll set of a little firestorm here and say that once you think you’re getting the hang of this whole “Linux” thing… check out Gentoo. THE BEST DISTRIBUTION IN THE WORLD BWAA HAAHAHAHA… just kidding guys (and girls) Just a liitle joking around. I’m interested in knowning how long some of you guys have been using Linux . I’m a 22 year old CS student and I’ve been on the train since kernel 1.2, but didn’t switch over completely till 2.0 or thereabouts! Right now I mainly use 2.4.20, but now have a working 2.6.0 kernel I’m messing around with (Native support for ALSA! joy!). What are the rest of ya’ll running? William
Red Hat 7.3, Mandrake 9.0 and I am currently working on getting Gentoo working just right again. Something broke my gaming-sources and I gotta do some troubleshooting to get alsa and nvidia drivers going right again.
I don’t personally use Linux anymore but we have a lot of servers at work running FreeBSD. We did use Linux for them previously but needed more network throughput and the Linux networking stack just couldn’t handle it.
Almost everyone uses Linux for a desktop though, since it does such a great job there.
Well, so far so good. Knoppix ran on the first try albeit very slow. It was quite a surprise to see it recognize and run much of my hardware without a hiccup. I sure couldn’t get a reload of windows going that quick. I will try to figure out how to get it to run in a lighter mode and check the hardware issues out further when it’s running at a decent speed. Maybe I could read some documentation before I try this time.
I have looked around for available software and loaded abiword and zinf from gnuwinII without a hitch. At first glance, the word processing and financial stuff seems like it could be acceptable. Clearly, dealing with word format documents is trivial. Still need to look into dsl connection issues and converting those .pub documents.
Thanks for all the links folks, it will probably take me weeks before I get through them all. Now to pull the 2nd machine out of the basement, stick in the spare HD and jump in with both feet.
Knoppix runs from the CD, so until it is actually installed to the hard drive, it is limited to how fast the CD will transfer data, which is much slower than a hard drive.
I never have tried it on a box without a swap partition, so you may be running slower than I am because of that.
Well, mandrake 8.2 is on the old machine and I solved the first two problems: was getting rid of some horizontal lines periodically blipping the monitor and the mouse was all wacky at first and I had to use keyboard only. Now I’m trying out the terminal to try and figure out why some of the menu commands don’t work. Ohmigod, this isn’t a learning curve, make it a mountain or a cliff or something. I actually remember a few of the unix commands from 11 years ago - amazing!
I don’t know if this was one of the links you folks gave me, but linuxISO.org has some decent stuff.
). Their automated PPP config has worked very well for me, compared to the days of writing your own script. Mandrake is the other distro that has a very good rep for newbie friendliness, although I haven’t used it (it, too, is at 9.0). Some others on this board like Debian, Gentoo and Slackware. IMO, those are probably not the best choice for someone like you describe yourself. Oh, and Lindows gets good reviews for general users. I think someone on this board commented on that, as well as a CD distro that’s good for a Linux testdrive. I believe Redhat is downplaying desktop support, but I don’t doubt that it would be a solid choice. I’m a little prejudiced against it because I disagree with some aspects of their directory structure, but I’m sure it’ll do fine by you.
