Moving to linux, Any advice? - Page 2

I'd only do it because Fedora felt like it had something (the distro not the people) against anything not FOSS. Honestly, any of the buntu variants is a good start.

linux mint 12 is my pick. or buntu 12.04 is good if you want the lts

quick! INSTALL A 6 YEAR OLD VERSION OF SLACK WARE!!!! I use Linux MINT Debian Edition for my netbook and then I use centOS 5.7 CLI 64bit for my server. Been using Linux for 4 years. It's nice.

It does, out of principle, and while I actually kinda agree with them, it is an unfortunate reality that it is not possible to emulate a truly function PC like under Windows 7, under linux without using 3rd party and proprietary software. Ubuntu at least lets you install it to match Windows functionality, and more.

Sometimes. My htpc, compleatly foss.in my main rig however the wifi card wont work without the officel driver. It just depends.

As much as I admire the goal I'm pragmatic so I think it's a bit childish. It was more difficult to get Nvidia drivers working in Fedora than in Slackware (for me). So yeah...not something that's easy if you have a system that has things like Nvidia GPUs and want the "best" drivers for them.

Greetz
IMHO the very first thing Linux first timers should do is research their hardware and it's support. It is smarter and cheaper to replace a problematic 20 dollar NIC, for example, than waste many hours wrestling with something so easily avoided. The frosting on the cake is that you don't start right out-of-the-gate getting upset with all Linux. The bigger bonus is that Linux was invented and developed by people that know all of the hardware they use. I am willing to wager that a very high percentage of Windows users (certainly WAY higher than in Linux) have little clue what they have beyond how much ram, but fewer know anything about that ram beyond how many GB they have. Some don't even care to know that.

This is not a flame against windows users. Windows is largely designed for people who don't care to "look under the hood" and just "get in and drive". That is perfectly valid. It's just that Linux is still primarily for technically oriented people so it is easiest if you learn something about what you have "under the hood" if you want to avoid headaches in any kind of test drive.

I do agree that Fedora would not be my natural first choice recommendation and that some flavor of Ubuntu is a good choice. However, and though I suppose this was an attempt at some kind of joke ----

<<< quick! INSTALL A 6 YEAR OLD VERSION OF SLACK WARE!!!! biggrin.gif I use Linux MINT Debian Edition >>>

I just don't get the punchline. Slackware is also not my first choice for recommending to windows migrants but it is by no means low on the list, especially someone beyond mere casual interest, since it has almost no surprises or quirks and is bound to no restrictions or software repositories. Slackware is like a girl next door who could easily be a supermodel.... it has really long legs.

I agree. If you plan on building a new box, then I suggest you pick out hardware that is Linux compatible. There's plenty of it out there and is not hard to find. Most any motherboard/CPU/RAM combo will work just fine, though some mobos may have one odd feature that might not work. You will want to check the motherboard model on Google to see if there are any Linux issues.

But the main thing you want to check for are wireless adapters and printers. Linux will recognize most out of the box without any configuration needed, so you will want to Google them and check before you buy one.

Same thing with laptops. Google the laptop model number to see if others are having problems with wireless or whatever. Not hard to do and there's plenty of laptops that give no issue whatsoever.

this. linux mint community has a seach/ enter your stuff thing with a big data base of stuff so if your installing mint, you can head over and find if it works and possable problems

Myself, as mainly a Red Hat / Fedora user suggest Ubuntu, mainly because Fedora repositories don't package non-free or non-open source software making it slightly more difficult to start off learning with it, with Ubuntu you can usually just hit "install" and it'll work.