Switching to Linux, Need Help

[#1cubeplayer]

Hey all. My computer is acting up, missing dll's, and freezing too much. I've decided that since I'm going to have to reinstall Windows, I might as well ditch that and switch to Linux. I've been wanting to try it out for years, and I think now is the time. I'd appreciate it if any of you could give me any help/suggestions and recommend any specific distributions. I think I can use WINE emulation to run a lot of Windows aps but I have to admit I don't know much about this. Help/advice/etc please.

[RoadKill]

Ubuntu is the easiest distribution to start with for a lot of people.

 

If you don't know much about it, use Windows.

[Mr_Odwin]

You could try a Linux Live CD first. You download and burn the CD then just boot straight from it. It won't affect your hard disk in any way so it's a totally safe way to try Linux first.

Knoppix is the most famous and popular but I also like slax.

Of the major distributions that I tired I liked Fedora and Yoper. Fedora is very easy to set up and Yoper is fast.

 

I pretty much gave up on Linux because of my USB modem that was a pain in the ass and I do a lot of video encoding which has loads more support under XP.

[Dieter]

Going a bit further on what Schpick said about graphics cards: getting an ATI card to work under linux is a BITCH to do, at least it is in my experience. But I hope you're not expecting to game much under linux anyway (although it is possible to a certain extent).

[#1cubeplayer]

So I've hit my first bump. I downloaded an ISO, burned it, booted it, and was letting the Linux installation do its thing. Then I noticed something about a USB error, and then it asked me to push enter if I wanted to use the US keyboard configuration or 1 to change it, but my keystrokes weren't doing anything. My keyboard is connected to my comp through USB, and it has some kind of problem with USB right from the beginning. What should I do now?

 

EDIT: So you know, I downloaded a distribution based on Slackware. I found this page http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/archive/14/2003/04/4/51971+slackware+linux+usb+keyboard&hl=en which looks helpful, but I'd like your guys' aid as well.

[Grebe]

Slackware is da best yeah

 

Erm, if you have usb errors, im guessing it came up at boot? and if it did, for me it did, froze your instalation? well, if it did all thats needed is a nousb command at the start of the instalation.

[Shorty]

Ah the age old "no keyboard detected, press enter to continue" error.

[old_gregg]

ie you can run Linux and Windows on the same HDD.

.

 

Hey, i've been thinkin of doin that for a while but havent got a clue where to start. How would you go about doing that and does it create any Problems. I run Windows XP Home at the moment if thats any use.

[Mr_Odwin]

Is this helpful?

Maybe just trying a different distribution may work Cubey?

 

@old_gregg: As part of the installation Fedora can resize your windows partition and install along side it, but it's not perfectly safe to resize partitions and everything can screw up. I did it with no problems though.

[Guest Offerman]

Yea, you will need a serial keyboard. USB has and never will work for a keyboard interface. Its totally unnessercery.

[#1cubeplayer]

Slackware is da best yeah

 

Erm, if you have usb errors, im guessing it came up at boot? and if it did, for me it did, froze your instalation? well, if it did all thats needed is a nousb command at the start of the instalation.

It did come up at boot and it did freeze my installation. Can you tell me exactly what command to type at the beginning of the installation? I tried some commands, but it said something like, "kernel not found."

[DCK]

I have OpenSuSE on my PC now, after Fedora Core 4 which sucked bad. It looks pretty slick, is pretty easy to use with the Yast tool SuSE put in and it reads NTFS partitions so that's all good. I haven't really tried it much cause it's slow like fat poo going upstairs on my old Pentium 2, but I'm upgrading next month (GeForce 6800 oh yeah baby) so then it should work well. So far it seems pretty good though.

[Raining_again]

i shall be moving to suse linux when i buy me a hard disk, im doin as a few people have said and keeping windows, for running windows applications etc.

 

do you guys recommend keepin the 2 O.S's on the one harddisk, or is it better to keep them on two seperate ones?

[#1cubeplayer]

Another little problem. Since I couldn't sort out the usb thing with Slackware and since I don't have a ps/2 keyboard, I decided to use OpenSUSE instead. I'm trying to do the internet installation, where I boot my computer with a tiny boot medium on a disc and give it an installation repository to download the distribution from. I managed to connect to the server the distro was on, but the I got a message saying that I didn't have enough memory for the data (understandably so, I'm on a mere 64mb ) and to enter a swap partition. I figured I should type in /dev/hda but then it says there was an error activating swap space. And so I need your help.

[DCK]

(understandably so, I'm on a mere 64mb )

You only have 64 MB RAM? That's too little for a window manager such as KDE or Gnome. I have 192 MB on my old PC and it still keeps pumping data to the hard disk because I haven't got enough memory, but then again, SuSE is about as heavy as Linux gets so far.

 

About your swap problem, I think you need a partition that's already formatted as a Linux swap partition. I had one left from the Fedora installation I had before so I guess you should get a formatting programm that'll create a swap partition for you.

[#1cubeplayer]

Don't rub it in.

 

If Suse is about as heavy as Linux gets, should I try to get a smaller distribution? I'll look into a formatting program. Thanks.

[Mr_Odwin]

Vector Linux is made with old comps in mind and has a fairly user friendly installer.