New to Linux

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Hi guys, i am hoping to install a linux operating system on to my 64 bit computer.I have had a look at a couple of the pinned threads,but for some reason the pages will not load.

I will be totally honest,i have no idea where to start. If any one can give me some helpful tips,that would be most welcome.

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Ubuntu is probably the best one to start with. Should fit on a CD, should install on nearly anything you can throw at it, is very easy to setup. You cannot go wrong with it.

Play with the UI, the terminal, etc... and then get a progressively harder distro which requires that you do more of the legwork yourself before you can get things to run on the box.

Others may have their own recommended way to get a beginner to dip their toes into the *nix environment.

 

Thankyou sir, it all sounds dutch at the moment, but im sure all will become clear.Thankyou for the advice

 

Ubuntu is a great place to start as its quite easy to use

 

I started out with Mandriva Linux, then jumped to Red Hat, then OpenSuse, and finally Ubuntu.

It depends on what u like or prefer. To start out with, as pointed out, pick up Ubuntu and install it on a separate partition. Play around for a while, see training videos to know some bits and bytes of how linux works (LOADS of them are available online for free) , how to install software tar, bin, deb files etc etc. Most importantly, try finding alternatives to the software that u use on windows on a daily basis, to make yourself comfortable on linux.

Best of luck! `

 

Thankyou gentlemen,advice much need as well as appreciated.cheers

 

I echo what others have said . .. . .but . .

Linux is pretty and easy to install these days and very user friendly and therein lies the issue.

No longer is it the preserve of long haired men with no tan and " If at first you don't succeed; call it version 1.0" t shirts.

We want to learn the terminal and commands, file system layout and many other things. Sure, start with Ubuntu but please once you get over the initial romance with the GUI start using the terminal for everything . Then get a book on the subject. I like "Linux in a Nutshell"

Enjoy

 

If you are looking at using your linux skills in a commercial environment I would suggest starting with CentOS. This is as close to RHEL as you can get the only real difference being the price. RHEL: Support subscription required, CentOS: Free.

Ubuntu is what most people will opt for to use in a home/semi-professional environment.

Fedora is also a great start but you have to remember it is Red Hat's test bed for new technologies. You may want to get yourself a copt of O'Niells Linux in a knutshell. < a very handy reference guide to starting out. I hope this helps.

 

+1 on Ubuntu, is good to start and makes it all easier.

I started with Slackware in circa 1996, this distro is more of the older Unix way of doing things. But that was the days when I actually sent disks to a BBS admin to copy me the files off his board as it was far to much of a download for a 28k modem lol

The older tar/scripts type stuff is still fine today and gives you control over everything and a great way of understanding how it all goes together. A base slack install is quite straightforward but gets down to the unpacking packages and running setup scripts, much like Ubuntu hides to the user. When it comes to system patches you used to have to do that manually, or run an update script with the program. Later there was extensions to slack with scripts like Swaret (iirc) to do updates.
You can still run X windows with a window manager like kde/gnome etc.. but its much more of a barebones type of distro and depends on your time, interest, patience ..
Great learning experience though, but if you just want the computer up and running for more of an end-user type experience, as oppose to true computing spirit, then you'd find the more popular distros better.

Of course you can go for distro `linux from scratch` too, and compile the system

 

You can also try CentOS, its also good one.

 

Amen to that, I started with CentOS and its predominately the OS I work with(RHL as well but there not much difference)

 

+1 very stable had it running as a production server for a couple of years now

 

i run mint 10 (julia) the gui is taken from the gnome engine i think and i love the open office software and gimp, the open office draw program is like a really easy to use desktop publisher. If i'm doing a flyer for my brother or some sort of design that doesn't require photo manipulation, i'll use it. plus linux seems so much faster than any windows edition i've used. Haven't got round to the terminal instructions as i've just studied for my A+ which is command line based for fault finding etc and i wasn't very good with those at the start.

 

Yeh is gnome based

I got mint on the other partition, it just works (no antivirus etc. lol). Boots up very quickly. I use Mint for most things but boot into the windows system for the odd game, or cert related stuff.

I have Win7 on the other partition and its quite annoying to use for web-browsing (slower and jumpy on some page scrolls etc.) although I have better graphics card drivers setup on Win7. Thats on a quad core Phenom2 2gb system!

However I chose to cert in because of the amount of jobs and percentage of use