Potential Linux User

colin20x6 · New Member Joined: 03 Jun 2024 Posts: 5

Hey guys, I am looking into installing Linux onto my laptop, and I am wondering if I could get some advice as which version is best/most recommended, the pros/cons between the different versions and the pros over windows. Thanks.

JP · Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2024 7:16 am Post subject:

Welcome to USALUG colin20x6

As far as which distro might be best, it might be helpful if you let us know a little bit about your computer experience; M$OS/Mac/Linux/BSD, etc.; what you expect from your Linux install, what kind of lappy you want to install on, what your requirements are for use, whether you will be using wired or wireless, etc. Any info you can provide, will help others to be able to recommend a distro that might fit your needs and tastes. Once again, Welcome!!

_________________
Dell Box - Arch Linux
Dell Lappy - DreamLinux 3.5 - Default OS
Mepis 8.0 - Backup

colin20x6 · New Member Joined: 03 Jun 2024 Posts: 5

Yeah, sure thing. I'll try to go in order to keep things simple.

I'm pretty proficient with windows as it is the main O/S I use. I've been building and troubleshooting computers with Windows O/S for years now and and seeking to branch out. I have used Macs before, and I like them, they're just too expensive for my taste. I have used a computer at a friends house that was running a version of Linux on it, but besides that, I have no experience with Linux. I just got my new desktop up and running, and I want to experiment with Linus on my Laptop.

To be real honest, I don't know what to expect besides a free smoothly running O/S, and was kinda hoping to learn a little more about the pros/cons of Linux.

My Lappy is a Mad

Dell

Inspiron E1705. Parts of my DxDiag are copy and pasted as follows:

BIOS: Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS Version 1.10 A02
Processor: Genuine Intel(R) CPU T2400 @ 1.83GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 2024MB RAM
(Video) Card name: Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Family
Display Memory: 224.0 MB

Requirements for use? Well, I would at least ask for it to do the things windows can do as far as the basics, beyond that, this is mainly experimental, if anyone knows any cool stuff you could do with Linux that would be impossible anywhere else, I'm all ears. It would be nice for all my drivers to be compatible.

Wireless, That is a must.

I'm mainly here for info, whatever you have to say, good or bad.
Links and articles welcome too, but I prefer to have user opinions! =)

Germ · Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2024 10:37 am Post subject:

Download and burn Mandriva One

It's a live CD and if you like it, you can install it to hard drive. It comes with a lot of proprietary drivers. If you do install it, setup the software repositories. You'll get lots more software to install and can upgrade the kernel to i686. Mandriva One comes with a i586 kernel in order to be compatible with a wide range of machines and will only recognize 880MB of RAM. The i686 kernel will do up to 4 GB of RAM.

_________________
Laptop: Mandriva 2024 PowerPack - 2.6.33.5-0.2mnb
Desktop: Mandriva 2024 Free - kernel 2.6.33.2-1mib

BrionS · Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2024 11:16 am Post subject:

Welcome to USALUG colin20x6!

I usually direct anyone new to Linux asking which distro to install to the Distrowatch website where you can find out all sorts of details (and links) to most Linux distributions imaginable. The link above takes you to the top 10 Linux distributions according to them.

Some distributions are more laptop-friendly than others in terms of software installed out-of-the-box but nearly all of them can get the same software installed once the OS is in place. (The only time you can't get software installed easily is if there is not binary version for your distribution's package system - RPM/DEB/TGZ/etc. - which means you'd have to manually run the commands to compile the software.) Thankfully most distributions these days have fairly large repositories of binary software and easy-to-use software package managers to search and install the stuff you need.

Not having a laptop myself, initial searches suggested Ubuntu and Xandros as very laptop-friendly distributions due to their excellent hardware detection. Xandros is not free but it is well supported by the company and is the version of Linux that ships on the new ASUS Eee UMPCs (Ultra-mobile PCs). It's a pretty good bet that it can be optimized for a laptop since that's what UMPCs basically are. Ubuntu is one of the more popular Linux distros and has gotten better with each release in my opinion, though there are many here who dislike Ubuntu greatly because it diverges somewhat from its Debian roots and breaks some Debian-ness in the way it functions and is organized. I would not concern myself with that aspect however until you are more familiar with Linux and decide you want to start branching out and trying other distributions.

Other great desktop distros I've used (though I can't personally attest to their laptop-worthiness) include: Arch Linux, sidux, MEPIS, Linux Mint, PC Linux OS (PCLOS) and OpenSUSE. Beware of OpenSUSE in that it's by far the largest download - 4 or 5 CDs last I checked when all the rest are 1. OpenSUSE is probably the most refined and Windows-like in terms of graphical wizards for everything, but I find it a bit sluggish and in some cases overbearing when software updates don't go right. OpenSUSE is probably the only distro in the above list however that I could comfortably suggest installing on a machine that will not have a high-speed Internet connection to keep it up-to-date frequently because it comes with so much software during the install. Most of the other distros install a small image and some basic software, then download the rest once it's base is installed and online.

Anyway, downloading and burning Live CDs of any/all distros you want to try is a good way to find out which ones auto-detect your hardware and which ones you like the look/feel of the desktop. Just bear in mind Live CDs tend to run a bit slower than a fully-installed version would due to need to access the CD frequently to load programs into memory.

Good luck in your search and let us know what you find works best for you!

P.S. As for trying something in Linux you can't do in Windows - check out compiz-fusion - it's a bunch of eye candy for your desktop and requires 3D acceleration hardware, but I think your Intel video can handle it. It includes things like wobbly windows, multiple desktops on a cube, Mac OS X-like Expose features, and the like. Here's a video demonstrating Compiz-Fusion.

_________________
Ubuntu 8.10 (64-bit), Ubuntu 7.10 (64-bit)
OpenFiler 2.2 (rPath Linux base), Mythbuntu 8.10

Pet3M0ss · Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2024 1:11 pm Post subject:

Welcome in colin20x6,
As JP, some background of where you are coming from and what you are planning to do (i.e. gaming, video, etc.) would help.

To install Linux (versus playing with Live CD's) you will do some basic things that all versions of Linux would require. If you are a real noob (where we ALL start), you may want to be thinking "dual boot" which gives you the option of experimenting with different Linux flavors on just part of your laptop hard drive. So, google up the how-to's for partitioning for a swap partition and a "root" or "/" partition. Once those partitions are designated on the drive, you can install whatever Linux flavor suits your fancy.

the "//distrowatch.com" site has a sort of unofficial tally of which distro seems to be most popular based on the number of hits people make.

There is a tutorial section here at USALUG. Feel free to experiment and ask. We take a bit of pride in the friendly manner of the USALUG forum.

_________________
Slackware 12.2
Slax

VHockey86 · Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2024 4:02 pm Post subject:

Your hardware looks like a pretty standard centrino setup and should be pretty well supported.

Do you know if you have the actual intel wireless card? Or one of the dell-rebranded ones? They started making the intel ones a $10 upgrade awhile back if I remember correctly. I know that the intel wireless stuff has worked right out of the box for me in any version of ubuntu I've tried (except WPA support is sometimes screwy). I'm not sure about the dell wireless cards though.

If you're looking for something with a similar interface reasonably similar to windows, a distro that supports KDE would be my recommendation.

Gnome is another desktop environment used by many linux distros, and it has more of an old Mac OS9 configuration to it (by default, you can change your desktop quite significantly with additional software/gadgets/themes/etc).

I'd like to make one clarification though that some new users quite often don't understand. You mention that it would be nice if all of your drivers were compatible. However these drivers you're talking about (the ones that come on CDs or at the dell website or whatever), are drivers specifically for windows. Drivers are software that run at a lower level inside the operating system and interface with your hardware (so that windows and other applications can interact with them to do useful stuff).

Since linux is a completely different operating system with a different kernel, all of the drivers are different. So while all of your hardware way be supported by linux drivers (either written by the manufacturer or some linux hobbist that reverse engineered it)...the drivers themselves are completely different.

Similarly, EXEs and MSIs and such are windows specific binaries, you can't run your windows apps natively in linux (yea I know there's WINE but lets not go down that road). But don't worry, plenty of software out there is crossplatform (firefox/thunderbird/etc have installers for windows/linux/mac). And for software that isn't cross platform (Microsoft Office for example), there are alternatives such as OpenOffice and KOffice.

colin20x6 · New Member Joined: 03 Jun 2024 Posts: 5

Pet3M0ss · Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2024 11:23 pm Post subject:

Sounds like you are a serious explorer! That's good!

Live CD's are terrific to give you a taste. One can use many of these disks to also install. You will be frustrated with speed (I think).

Take the time to defrag the Win partition first. The Live CD will have a partitioning package like "parted" or "gparted" in the system utilities for making another primary partition. Size of partitions is your next question. Swap is to be about twice the size of your RAM

The root "/" partiion will be where the distro goes. One can make it as small as 4-5 gigs, but you will not have much room to play with pictures, sound, etc. 10-15 gigs should be good for testing purposes.

This stuff is easily googled, but I think you only have to check out the installation section of USALUG to see what needs to be done

_________________
Slackware 12.2
Slax

melloe · Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2024 5:03 am Post subject:

Run a computer club, and NooB friendly Distros are my main concern.
Fedora of course is in the easy to install category, and you can read all about it here. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN

But it is not in the first line for the NooB IMO

Some good advice above.

My choices for the technically proficient NooB are Mint, PCLinuxOS, Mepis, Mandriva, SuSE, Vector if by itself ( no dual boot ) and the *buntu crowd. But there are a dozen others that might work well on your lappie.

The Ubuntu distros are quite good ( I don't like them personally ). They consist of Ubuntu with the Gnome desktop as mentioned above. Kubuntu with the KDE desktop, and several specialists versions, such as Ubuntustudio designed for multimedia and the Educational version, and ...
http://www.ubuntu.com/ http://www.kubuntu.org/

Mint is well set up, and one of the best for a person new to linux. Mint5 is Gnome based, and Mint 4 community edition is KDE based. Think of them as cousins of Ubuntu but with the multimedia codecs out of the box, and using the Ubuntu and Debian repositories ( need to look that one up as over simplified. ).
http://www.linuxmint.com/about.html

Mepis is quite good, and also Ubuntu cousin, but it is getting a bit long in tooth. Still a candidate though.
http://www.mepis.org/

PCLinuxOS ( pclos ) is good, and has a great community ..one of my favourites.
http://www.pclinuxos.com/

Mandriva, another of my favorites, is easy, a great community, and the free version just works Mandriva Spring ( says Mandriva 2024.1 on download sites ) be careful, there are two versions, the second offering is without any of the codecs or players worth a crap. http://www.mandriva.com/en/download

As mentioned above, Xandros, Mandriva, Linspire, and Pioneer have paid for versions with support. Several others also sell the disk with 30 days of support ..and added codec and commercial players. I have done several just to see where they are. Xandros and Pioneer are very widows like and dead simple IMO, but also IMO, do NOT give a real Linux experience in their base form. OTOH, many have started Linux with said and moved on. Of the paid for, Xabdros is the easiest, and Mandriva the best Linux experience, again, in my opinion.

Welcome and enjoy

_________________
mell0: 1. Kubuntu, XP, Sabayon 2. Mandriva,Mint, Mephis
Thor: 1. VISTA, Fedora 2. Chakra, Debian
Sam:XP, SuSE Zues: win7, SuSE testing

melloe · Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2024 5:26 am Post subject:

I should add, if you are into games, Sabayon is the thing to aim for. Maybe not your first try, although with guidance, doable.

It has 4 or 5 great games on the DVD, but not a NooB install for any but the most persistent .

http://www.sabayonlinux.org/mod/mirrors

http://www.sabayonlinux.org/mod/screenshots/

_________________
mell0: 1. Kubuntu, XP, Sabayon 2. Mandriva,Mint, Mephis
Thor: 1. VISTA, Fedora 2. Chakra, Debian
Sam:XP, SuSE Zues: win7, SuSE testing

geeshock · Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2024 8:33 am Post subject:

jester · Sr. Member Joined: 19 Apr 2024 Posts: 1166

OP doesn't seem to have been around much apart from 5 posts over June 3 and 4 - this maybe a case of dead horse flogging

_________________
Arch64 :: Funtoo64 :: FreeBSD-8.0 :: OSX-10.4.11 (PPC)
Testing: Fedora12_x86-64 :: Ubuntu-10.04-LTS_x86-64

geeshock · Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2024 9:40 am Post subject:

lol, just saw a new post, forgot to check the date of the original persons posts

melloe · Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2024 9:49 am Post subject:

I too forgot to check the date

OOPS

Oh well, nice talking to ya

_________________
mell0: 1. Kubuntu, XP, Sabayon 2. Mandriva,Mint, Mephis
Thor: 1. VISTA, Fedora 2. Chakra, Debian
Sam:XP, SuSE Zues: win7, SuSE testing

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