Yet another newb question, switching to Linux

[Jau_Peacecraft]

Yes, yes, another newbie... Anyways, I'm finally taking the time to install a linux distro on my comp (as a secondary OS) since windows dosen't immedatly boot up all the time and figured this would be cheaper than buying a new HD for now. I tried out the Linspire Live 5.0 cd and found it be a lot easier than my past attempts at using linux, but I hear it is not so good despite its ease of use (also there are others out there too). Would would you recommend? I'm looking essentially for something easy to use and requires none if at most minimal time to learn any code to operate. Thanks

[zarquon]

Ubuntu linux is a great place to start, http://www.ubuntulinux.org

Easy to install, and an excellent community, http://www.ubuntuforums.org/

[zaphodiv]

Are you sure your windows problem is not hardware? Linux dosn't magically make unreliable hardware work properly.

You will need to do some learning and figuring out to get used to linux. If you can't look up how to do things with google on your own you are going to get stuck quickly or spend a lot of time asking basic questions in forums. For example the question "What version of linux do you reccommend for someone who wants somthing easy" has been asked about ten thousand times before and you could have read old threads about it instead of asking and waiting for replys.

You must have backups of your important files on seperate media before attempting to install a new operating system.

I strongly recommend getting a spare harddrive to try linux on. If you don't know what you are doing it is easy to end up with windows not booting. You can pull machines with 5GB drives out of dumpsters these days. Find a local geek with piles of old computer and give him $5 for an old harddrive.

[Jau_Peacecraft]

lol, it still seems a bit complicated... im hopeless... :[. Which installation do I follow? (im looking at this page on the site: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Installation?highlight=%28installation%29#head-42fa62c81b02633b39beaf29de47aced9077733e" or rather which would be the easiest...

also, if I were I have 2 drives (c being windows, d being the blank one), if I were to install on d:, would it show up on a menu or something to boot up? this is getting repetitive, i apologize lol.

[.:sp00ky:.]

if you install in on drive D and have windows on C when you boot up your pc you will get a screen where you can pick which OS you would like to boot into.

http://us.releases.ubuntu.com/releases/5.10/ubuntu-5.10-install-i386.iso

thats the one you want,stick it on a disk and boot up into it use default installation.

hope that helps.

[Jau_Peacecraft]

thanks spooky, in retrospect, thats all i actually need to know, the rest i'll just have to go on in and try it out (i'm already checking out http://linuxreviews.org/beginner/, and so far it's not that hard, so my whining about a learning curve shall cease). Aas long as it dosent need to be on c drive i should be fine, if i fuck anything up i can just get another HD to replace my d drive. Although zap has a good point, I was actually considering getting a seperate comp setup for about 500 that came with linspire, but after reading about how linspire operates from the root, yea, probably not a good thing to get lol. Was nice to play around with on the live cd though :]

[ducttapeBigSexy]

First thing, in Linux, there is no C: or D: drive - just hda and hdb. If you want to get really technical :P

And, as for the booting option, if you already have Windows on your system, by default, almost all Linux distros will install a bootloader for you so you can choose which OS to run (it's usually either Lilo or GRUB).

But, here's the advice I impart on everyone to learning Linux:
1. If you get stuck on something, don't reboot into Windows to solve it. Playing around and endless googling can solve any problem :) Just make sure you back up your data, first!
2. Play around with different Linux distros. Yes, for the most part, they're all the same, but they all do work a little different. Personally, I'm a huge fan of Mandriva - I've tried a lot of the other ones, but nothing worked as nicely for me as Mandriva (which I would also recommend if you're looking for an easy-to-use distro).

[Jau_Peacecraft]

there's so many to choose from >_<. I shall reasearch mandriva as well...