linux

[BenLi]

I am aware that this topic has already been discussed in other threads. I thought it was better to start a new one.

I am a user of windows and I am thinking about switching to linux because my computer crashes way too often and i'm going to reformat so might as well. I don't know anything about linux so i wondered which distro is the best and suitable for beginners.

[Andy]

if your system crashes that often, then you're doing something wrong. i have dual boot ubuntu and windows installed, and for the past year, windows only crashed maybe three or four times.

[md]

I dunno about windows... I've never considered it stable; maybe andy has better luck then me

As for Linux, I've been told that Ubuntu and Xandros are good, though Xandros is apparently not free. Ubuntu also seems to have a few bugs in the latest version, but your experience may be different then others.

If you really want to jump in and learn a whole lot (and probably frustrate yourself to no end at first) there is Gentoo and LFS. Both involve actually building software yourself and so are somewhat slower to install then a binary-based distro. However many people (like me) prefer the customization and the package management system of Gentoo, or the do-it-yourself nature of LFS.

[Andy]

by windows crashing, i mean the entire system, not just an application. Most people fail to realize that when an application crashes, most of the fault is due to the developers of that app, not windows!

[Amailer]

On linux if an application crashes, the whole OS doesn't crash. On windows, if an app crashes, everything crashes -.-

[md]

Andy wrote:

by windows crashing, i mean the entire system, not just an application. Most people fail to realize that when an application crashes, most of the fault is due to the developers of that app, not windows!

By windows crashing I am usually talking about the system dieing. As in either BSoD or plain old no longer responsive. Usually that's caused by bad device drivers (not Microsoft's fault; but no drivers doesn't work either), or by programs hooking into windows in ways that cause instability. A program that crashes and starts using 100% CPU (and can't be killed... they exist) also counts as a unrecoverable crash.

On Linux I do occasionally have problems, again almost invariably with drivers. Video capture is the worst, followed by video drivers. Even then for video driver issues I can usually just restart X; and I could do the same with my video capture driver (reload it that is) if I compiled it as a module instead of compiling it directly into the kernel.

Again, you may have better luck then most, or perhaps a hardware setup that is less prone to errors; but in the end it really doesn't matter. The choice to run Linux over windows should not be about stability entirely, there are lots of other reasons to run a free operating system and free software over a proprietary operating system and software.

[Andy]

err no? it does not happen most of the time

[rdrake]

Like md said Gentoo and LFS are fun but not for the faint of heart.

Easy to use:

• Ubuntu
  
• Mandriva (aka Mandrake, many moons ago)
  
• SuSE (OpenSuSE now I think)
  
• Knoppix (nice to try, not really a distro)
  

Favourites of mine:

• LFS
  
• Debian
  
• FreeBSD (not exactly a Linux distro, but far superior )
  

I've tried more distros than I can remember. All have their pros and cons. Any of the above in the "easy to use" list should do you good. When in doubt, download and burn the LiveCD to try out the distro before installing.

Good luck.

[wtd]

rdrake wrote:

Knoppix (nice to try, not really a distro)

Sure it's a distro.

As for the age old question of Windows vs. Linux: Why choose? Dual-boot.

[BenLi]

so for ubuntu, everything is done for you? Do you have to manually install anything in addition like drivers? By crashing too much, I mean freezes up. I believe this is due to the fact that my computer is extremely slow. I can't have MSN, windows media player and limewire running at the same time because it lags. Yes its that slow. which brings me to the next question? Would linux run faster than windows? Also, would applications like office be compatible with linux?

[wtd]

BenLi wrote:

so for ubuntu, everything is done for you? Do you have to manually install anything in addition like drivers? By crashing too much, I mean freezes up. I believe this is due to the fact that my computer is extremely slow. I can't have MSN, windows media player and limewire running at the same time because it lags. Yes its that slow. which brings me to the next question? Would linux run faster than windows? Also, would applications like office be compatible with linux?

Ubuntu lacks support out of the box for a lot of proprietary code, such as some video card drivers, and codecs for MP3 and other non-free formats.

However, there are apps like Automatix and EasyUbuntu that make it simple to install this. Additionally, the Debian package management system, and GUI front-ends like Synaptic make installing software easy.

Aside from WINE, which emulates Windows APIs, much software like Microsoft Office and Photoshop will not run. However, there are apps which can deal with the files these programs generate, so there is compatibility.

[BenLi]

well the office isn't that much of a concern because i'm going to end up dual-booting anyways.

[neufelni]

If you want office software for Linux, you can use Open Office. I don't know about other distros, but it came with Fedora Core, which is the distro that I use.

[Brightguy]

wtd wrote:

As for the age old question of Windows vs. Linux: Why choose? Dual-boot.

Is there a guide somewhere that describes the process in detail?

The last time I tried dual-booting, it worked... but let's just say that Windows 98 doesn't like NTFS.

[wtd]

As long as you install Windows first, most decent distros these days will automatically recognize existing Windows partitions, and will set a bootloader up so that it dual-boots.