MDUK

You talk a lot of sense. My point still stands though. The difference between OSs like OSX / mobile forms of linux ie Android, Chrome OS; and what is collectively known as linux ie Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE etc is that the former do not require the use of code to perform everyday tasks from a fresh install. From a user perspective, you just click an icon, and it does what you want it to. Most people aren't going to want to have to configure their OS using the terminal. A lot of people when looking at anything resembling code will just close their mind to it - I know I do it with maths unless forced otherwise. What I am saying is that distros such as Ubuntu which are aiming to bring linux to a greater market should focus on making things as easy a possible for the greatest number of people possible. Its all well and good saying that to someone who has never used a computer that they would pick things up easily, but most people have used a windows-based computer and this will be ingrained into society for a long time, even with increased market shares from Apple and Linux. By all means, the terminal should remain for advanced users to configure things as they would like, but out of the box users should be able to do everything without difficulty, and by that I mean without use of the terminal. In Chrome OS, I believe Google will have essentially what I am talking about, although it is obviously geared towards netbooks rather than desktops.

Incidentally, many years ago there a Blockbuster machine outside a nearby supermarket for renting DVDs (or it may have been videos) without the need for a shop. I was trying to use it with a friend and it crashed, swallowing his card. After a while it rebooted with the Windows 98 logo

I have been using Linux for about 4 years.

thornygravy

I love linux, but I love games more. Considering Windows 7 is in my hands, forget it. They both rock, but windows is just a bit more convenient.

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Cyberbot

I wanted to try it, but the stupid thing removed Vista while partioning the HDD. Oh well it was most likely my fault, but it's easy to blame something else.

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Holyaxe

All of you who say that Linux doesn't run many games:

The more people use it, the more games will be released for it. So if enough people start using Linux, there will be lots of Linux games in a few years.

jaxjoe

Yes, running LINUX is a lot like real life. You must perform very much MORE work than you ever feared doing ... to accomplish very much LESS than you ever hoped for.

And your boss really does always shout RTFM !

scottb75

I tried Ubuntu for about 6 months and I liked it well enough for what it was. I found it good for some things and not so good for other things. Obviously the security made it great for web browsing and downloading things without much worry, it was nice for downloading torrents. Some of the problems I had with Ubuntu related to the use of proprietary software, most noticeably certain video formats like WMVs were a real pain to get to play nice with Ubuntu.

My verdict: Linux is nice but it's not for everybody, if you are going from Windows with no knowledge of Linux you have to have a lot of patience because there is definatly a big learning curve. When trying to figure out how to do things Google quickly becomes your friend.

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mattliston

so here is a question for you linux gurus

sig rig is the system in question.

torrents, movies, music, lightweight gaming online, win 95-xp games, all fairly lightweight

LOTS of forum and siocial sites visited daily.

My question is, what distributions of linux should I focus my research on? Im looking for security, performance, and the ability to be somewhat easy to get hooked on, while remaining just hard enough to not only be a challeneg, but keep my roommates off my computer

lol, help a brother out. If you just PM me a distro name, thats fine, I dont mind looking it up to see if its right for me. Im not asking to be spoonfed a detailed answer, just a few suggestions for my "journey" away form windows on my spare 10gb drive

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lattyware

I run Arch Linux. It's not easy to set up, but there are good guides on their wiki and stuff, so it should be easy enough to do. Once you are done, you can have a really powerful, fast system that is tailored to your every need.

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enorbet2

Hiya - Gonna post inline.....

I don't consider myself a guru but I did begin with Linux around 1995, began using it as my primary OpSys 4 years later in 1999; I don't like automatics and thus prefer Slackware after trying some dozen distros yet I stay in touch with what's going on in the "windows wannabes" mostly based in Debian, so maybe I have something for you.



Since there seem to no longer be any hardware specific issues (ie Audigy now well supported) I prefer to deal with your hardware later.




Torrents are safer in Linux. Once you get the proper codecs movies are a breeze with Xine and especially MPlayer. Music is a major focus in Linux which is why for example Audacity, which started out on Linux, is now so widely used. There are numerous excellent players such as Amarok which behaves for music like Picassa does for photos, but I prefer Aqualung because it easily employs professional plugins
like "Tube Warmth" and 32 band EQs. Online gaming is a breeze (superior TCP/IP stack in Linux) W95 games are fairly easy but XP games can be difficult since some emulator like WINE or Cedega is usually required, even though some games still come out with native Linux support. However Unreal Tournament's latest afaik has yet to deliver their latest and greatest in native form - odd, since so many games, even if designed to be Windows games, are nevertheless wrtitten in Linux. Oh Well.


Should be minimal perspiration


This question is akin to asking what sort of car should you buy, a dune buggy or a AA Fuel Dragster, since you just got your license and are feeling perky.

All of what you define as your parameters is possible in just about any distro but I suspect as in the analogy you don;t know enough about what is possible and/or required to ask the right questions to get a qualified answer. So, IMHO your best bet by far is to go here

http://www.livecdlist.com/

and avail yourself of something Windows has only recently been able to do (and in a very very limited form a la Bart PE and Hiren's Boot CD) which is boot up a CD with a real OPSys on board and see for yourself how things look and work. Naturally, I prefer Slax, and it is probably a decent idea that you try it but you should also try a debian based distro and probably 2 different kinds, one with a Gnome interface (a bit alien at first) and one with KDE (more windowsy looking). Since there is so much hoopla, so many forums and faqs, for the last 2 I'd recommend Ubuntu and Kubuntu. All three can download drivers and apps on-the-fly especially if you have a decent amount of ram and/or if you use something like PQMagic (a linux version called GParted comes on the Puppy Linux LiveCD) to create a Linux swap partition. Don't go overboard on this a la windows as Linux has much better memory management so a couple hundred megabytes is fine and 500MB is way overkill. Incidentally, as remarkably fast as these LiveCD's can be, most load unaccellerated video drivers (though Puppy and a few let you test out others) so what you end up actually installing will be much, much faster especially since you have an nVidia card.

After you've checked out a few, check back here and let peeps know what you like and what you don't like. Then it should be more productive trying to single out just one.

Best Wishes
Jimmy

mattliston

Thanks for the responses guys

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