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admars · 03-05-2008, 07:33

Hi

A lot of the more user friendly popular ones, such as Ubuntu, Fedora, and Mandriva when you go to install them will look at your hard drive, and allow you to sort out partitions, resize them etc, but that may be a lot to learn get right in one go. Actually, I'm jumping the gun a bit!

go to
www.distrowatch.com

read about the different Linuxes. I try a different one every few months

The 3 main Window systems are KDE, Gnome, XFCE, they all have their pros an cons, but if you go to Ubuntu, KUbuntu, XUbuntu you can get livecds which let you try the OS and window manager without installing it. Mandriva, Fedora, openSUSE and many others do the same thing. That's a quick and easy way to test OSs to see whcih you like, which work with your hardware. You don't get the same performence as you get from an install, but you can see what they are like.

It's then probably easiesit to use partition magic or something lke that to re partition your hard drive in Vista, since you are familiar with that for the moment. Or have you already doen that, so your 2ns NTFS will be your Linux one?

back up everything

so assuming you have 1 physical hard drive,2 big bartition, and 1 recovery partition at the moment.

in Linux the HD will be called sda, when you divide it, windows will see 3, when you go to install Linux, it will ask where to put it, sda1 , sda2, sda3 (or similar), put it on sda2 (i.e. the partition when Vista, and recovery partition aren't) I've done this on a dell laptop no problem, all in tact

it will ask you a few questions, and most of th newer ones will create a GRUB menu.lst file, and write to your MBR so next time you start up, you geta simple menu which OS you want. Linux will want it's own filesystem, and will ask you to format to your choice of several ext3 probably being the most common one at the mo.

It's all really easy these days. My main PC currently has XP, KUbuntu, and openSUSE on it, later on today I'm getting rid of KUbuntu, and replacing it with Mandriva, for a change

I have used Unix a bit at work, and back at uni, but never installed it, and I've learned so much more form having to do installs, re-installs, fixing my mess ups where I have tried to be too clever

Good luck

Al

03-05-2008, 07:33	#2
admars cf.member Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 82	Re: Linux advice, please! Hi A lot of the more user friendly popular ones, such as Ubuntu, Fedora, and Mandriva when you go to install them will look at your hard drive, and allow you to sort out partitions, resize them etc, but that may be a lot to learn get right in one go. Actually, I'm jumping the gun a bit! go to www.distrowatch.com read about the different Linuxes. I try a different one every few months The 3 main Window systems are KDE, Gnome, XFCE, they all have their pros an cons, but if you go to Ubuntu, KUbuntu, XUbuntu you can get livecds which let you try the OS and window manager without installing it. Mandriva, Fedora, openSUSE and many others do the same thing. That's a quick and easy way to test OSs to see whcih you like, which work with your hardware. You don't get the same performence as you get from an install, but you can see what they are like. It's then probably easiesit to use partition magic or something lke that to re partition your hard drive in Vista, since you are familiar with that for the moment. Or have you already doen that, so your 2ns NTFS will be your Linux one? back up everything so assuming you have 1 physical hard drive,2 big bartition, and 1 recovery partition at the moment. in Linux the HD will be called sda, when you divide it, windows will see 3, when you go to install Linux, it will ask where to put it, sda1 , sda2, sda3 (or similar), put it on sda2 (i.e. the partition when Vista, and recovery partition aren't) I've done this on a dell laptop no problem, all in tact it will ask you a few questions, and most of th newer ones will create a GRUB menu.lst file, and write to your MBR so next time you start up, you geta simple menu which OS you want. Linux will want it's own filesystem, and will ask you to format to your choice of several ext3 probably being the most common one at the mo. It's all really easy these days. My main PC currently has XP, KUbuntu, and openSUSE on it, later on today I'm getting rid of KUbuntu, and replacing it with Mandriva, for a change I have used Unix a bit at work, and back at uni, but never installed it, and I've learned so much more form having to do installs, re-installs, fixing my mess ups where I have tried to be too clever Good luck Al Last edited by admars : 03-05-2008 at 07:39.