Stormblade

Hi guys. Always been a Windows user. I just booted up Ubuntu and I'm posting this from there. Anyone want to go into chat and help me get off on the right foot with it?

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StarCraft player.

thiussat

What kinds of questions do you have? Is all of your hardware detected and working? If so, then you'll probably want to first learn about the Gnome GUI (your desktop manager). In Ubuntu, you can do pretty much all everyday configurations through it. You can google for some Gnome/Ubuntu tutorials.

One thing to be aware of (since you come from Windows) is that all of the apps you need will be in the Ubuntu repositories -- you can find the repos by navigating in the Gnome menus (software manager or something like that, I don't use Ubuntu but it isn't hard to find). You just download what you want and it will install it for you. It's not like Windows where you find an app here or there and install it from some website. With most Linux distros everything you need can be found in the repositories. You can compile your own stuff from source, but that's not something a newb needs to even think about.

Be sure to read up on "sudo" (Ubuntu's semi-super user). Linux isn't like Windows where every user who sits down at the computer has full access to all files and directories. Typically the only directory you will use on a daily basis is the "/home" dir. Don't go rummaging around in the "/" or "/etc" or "/root" directories unless you know exactly what you are doing.

Once you get familiar with how it all works from a GUI perspective, then you can delve into some command line stuff. It really depends on what your goal is -- do you want to use ubuntu for basic stuff? Or do you want to become an advanced user? If you just want an everyday OS, I wouldn't worry much with the command line.

Stormblade

Not sure yet, just wanted to check it out. Unfortunately I went to install it and accidently changed my 2nd hard disks partition to a Linux Swap partition from NTFS. Windows no longer sees it, tried changed it back with Paragon Partition manager, now im using some tool that scans every sector to try and retrieve the data, like 90 gigs of stuff I had on there. Hmmmm.

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StarCraft player.

thiussat

Ouch, well since the partition table has been written, there probably isn't much you can do other than using some sort of data recovery software.

If you have any Ubuntu questions, just ask. There are others here who are much more familiar with its intricacies than me.

Stormblade

ah, im not gonna pull my hair out over it, I'll just reinstall my stuff and re download my mp3s, rofl. Anyway, what's the swap partition for? and I guess I should put aside a gig or two in a seperate partition on that drive for it to use next time I try to install Linux? isn't a problem, it's a 250G drive.

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StarCraft player.

Dawlish7

Swap, think of it as like windows page file, i don't really use one as i don't notice the difference but it is recommended to have 1

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Melcar

Just make a 2GB swap partition and the rest as your root partition (ext3). As for software, nearly everything can be obtained from the repositories (System>Administration>Synaptic).

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