Help a Linux newbie (1 Viewer)

[V]

lately i'm really eager to try out this linux stuff, i never saw it, never used it and now i just wanna see what all the fuss is about. from what i saw there are a lot linux users here so i decided i might as well ask some questions here. i read on the internet that the ubuntu version is one of the most popular clients of linux so i ordered a copy from their website(they say it's free ) anyway by the time that gets here, if it gets here at all, i'd like to know what to expect with this ubuntu.
things like:
1.is it stable
2.can i listen to music, watch movies
3.can i install any of the software i have now, like winamp for example?
4.will i be able to play video games?
5.what's the compatibilty with my system? i have amd athlon 64 3500+, abit an8 sli, 1gb ddr, gainward geforce 6600gt 128mb. meaning it's not gonna crash in like 3 days?

anyway if you feel like it explain this stuff to me, i'd really appreciate it, as i'm really getting sick and tired of windows and all the shit that comes along with it.

i did the test i found on this forum(which distro is right for you) and they said suse and mandriva(something like that) are the ones for me. should i get these instead of ubuntu? you could say my knowledge of computers is above avarage, advanced, but then again, as i said, i never came across linux before. problem is internet's really expensive in croatia and i can't download 5 cd's of that suse distro. what's the difference anyway?

much obliged for any help.

 

Buy on AliExpress.com

[V]

i've just been on the opensuse.org page and from what i see i gotta buy their linux...wtf? isn't linux supposed to be free? i don't get it..

 

[mikhail]

i've just been on the opensuse.org page and from what i see i gotta buy their linux...wtf? isn't linux supposed to be free? i don't get it..

Free as in freedom, not as in beer. Ubuntu's as good a place to start as any.

Some companies, like Red Hat, charge you for their distro of Linux. You're paying for tech support, manuals, that sort of thing.

Yes, it's stable, yes you can watch movies & listen to music. Lots of software is available for Windows and Linux. Anything like that, you can get. Anything else, you can generally get something that does the same job.

Video games are a bit tougher - there are some Linux games, but not nearly as many as for Windows. Thing is, you have Windows already, so you could make your PC "dual boot" without much difficulty - you pick which of the two you want to run when you boot the computer. Then you can still play games with Windows, but do everything else in Linux.

 

[V]

i see..well thanks for the reply. how do i make a dual boot with linux the other os? can i run the setup within windows or i have to boot it via the cd? will setup recognize my current os and notify me, or will it just format the whole drive and install linux over everything? is the setup much different than the windows?

i managed too hook up with a friend a dsl flatrate so i should get suse in a day. i'm downloading one dvd 64 bit edition and one the livedvd edition, the latter is for 32-bit will i be able to at least try it out on my configuration? also it says the dvd is a "evaluation" but there is no time deadline. that means i can use it as long as i want? it also says for tech support you gotta buy. what i'm asking is will i be getting the complete suse with this dvd download, or will it be a slimmed lite version?

i hope i'm not too tiring for you.

 

[mikhail]

i see..well thanks for the reply. how do i make a dual boot with linux the other os? can i run the setup within windows or i have to boot it via the cd? will setup recognize my current os and notify me, or will it just format the whole drive and install linux over everything? is the setup much different than the windows?

You need two seperate partitions on your disk for a dual boot. At the moment, you probably have just one, for the whole disk.

There are two things you can do.
1. Get something like PartitionMagic, which can resize your current partition, and leave half your hard drive unformatted. You may lose data doing this kind of thing, so back up anything important.
2. Reinstall Windows, but only format half of your hard drive. Again, you'll have to back up anything you don't want to lose.

Then, you install Linux on the other half, and a little tweaking (like writing one line in a file somewhere) will have you up and running.

When you boot up, you'll get a list like this:

There are websites around that will give you step by step instructions, e.g.
[video=google;-6104490811311898236]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6104490811311898236&q=[/video]
or
A SUSE FAQ answer.
It looks harder than it is.

i managed too hook up with a friend a dsl flatrate so i should get suse in a day. i'm downloading one dvd 64 bit edition and one the livedvd edition, the latter is for 32-bit will i be able to at least try it out on my configuration? also it says the dvd is a "evaluation" but there is no time deadline. that means i can use it as long as i want? it also says for tech support you gotta buy. what i'm asking is will i be getting the complete suse with this dvd download, or will it be a slimmed lite version?

i hope i'm not too tiring for you.

No worries. I'm afraid I don't know the answer to that one though, but you should be able to ask someone on a SUSE forum like this one.

 

[V]

You need two seperate partitions on your disk for a dual boot. At the moment, you probably have just one, for the whole disk.

There are two things you can do.
1. Get something like PartitionMagic, which can resize your current partition, and leave half your hard drive unformatted. You may lose data doing this kind of thing, so back up anything important.
2. Reinstall Windows, but only format half of your hard drive. Again, you'll have to back up anything you don't want to lose.

Then, you install Linux on the other half, and a little tweaking (like writing one line in a file somewhere) will have you up and running.

When you boot up, you'll get a list like this:

There are websites around that will give you step by step instructions, e.g.
Ubuntu/Windows dual boot video on Google
or
A SUSE FAQ answer.
It looks harder than it is.

damn! i knew there was gonna be a catch. but no worries, i have 2 hard disks, one of 40gb which i use for windows and programmes, and other 120gb which i use for everything else. i'll just split the 40gb one in 2 partitions, one for windows and one for linux, each 20gb, that should do it.

No worries. I'm afraid I don't know the answer to that one though, but you should be able to ask someone on a SUSE forum like this one.

ok, i'll check it out. thanks.

 

[V]

how about security issues in linux? i heard that there aren't any viruses for linux. is there any other malware, spyware, spam...that can infect linux?

 

[mikhail]

how about security issues in linux? i heard that there aren't any viruses for linux. is there any other malware, spyware, spam...that can infect linux?

Nearly true. Linux is more innately secure, but its main advantage is that it isn't targeted as much. You'll have little or no security issues with it, but they're not impossible.

 

[ReBeL]

Hey vlatko,

If you want to learn how to use Linux, you can use KNOPPIX Live CD, and it will not be harmful for your PC because it doesn't need any formatting and you can use Linux anytime you want, and you have not to do anything but inserting the CD in the drive and restart the PC...

When you are totally convinced with Linux, you can choose the suitable distribution for your system from the link below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux

 

[V]

thnx luciano. i'll be getting my hands on a livedvd soon enough.

though it seems my linux adventure is going to stop before it even began. i was really excited in switching to linux but with more info, more problems came, and this latest obstacle is a big one, 120gb big. from everything i read linux can't read NTFS drives, only FAT. now both of my drives are ntfs, now the system one(40gb) i can format and switch it easily but my other one(120gb) contains all my music, movies, pictures, stuff i really don't wanna loose.

so i basically have to options;
1. back-up everything onto a third drive, which i don't have, and don't have money to get
2. back up on dvd's or cds, which would cost me a fortune cause i have about 110gb full of that discs

so basically if i switch to linux, i won't be able to play games onit, cause there are few linux games, and i won't be able to watch any movies or hear any music, cause linux isn't able to read from a NTFS drive.

i'm really sad, so if anyone has any idea be sure to post.

 

[mikhail]

thnx luciano. i'll be getting my hands on a livedvd soon enough.

Ubuntu posts you live CDs as well.

...both of my drives are ntfs, now the system one(40gb) i can format and switch it easily but my other one(120gb) contains all my music, movies, pictures, stuff i really don't wanna loose.

You wouldn't have a mate with a recently purchased (i.e. realatively empty) computer? You could back up your stuff on his computer.

If the music, etc. drive was FAT, both OSs could read and write to it.

 

[V]

Ubuntu posts you live CDs as well.

yeah i know. i should have that soon as well.

You wouldn't have a mate with a recently purchased (i.e. realatively empty) computer? You could back up your stuff on his computer.

If the music, etc. drive was FAT, both OSs could read and write to it.

yeah but with my luck i wouldn't. would you believe me that all my life i've used fat32 with windows, don't know actually why, i know ntfs is better, only the last time i formated my hard disks i used ntfs, i said let's give it a go, and i left it at that! and it's been like that for like a year and a half... go figure. it came back to haunt me.

i've been doing some more reading, and on http://www.linux-ntfs.org/ they say all linux distros can read from ntfs, except red hat, but can't write to it. so meaning i would be able to at least open stuff like music, movies from my ntfs drive. there are some beta tools there but as a complete newbie in all of this i'll stay away from it. still unable to write on my disk is definetly a minus..

 

[Martin]

Hey vlatko,

If you want to learn how to use Linux, you can use KNOPPIX Live CD, and it will not be harmful for your PC because it doesn't need any formatting and you can use Linux anytime you want, and you have not to do anything but inserting the CD in the drive and restart the PC...

When you are totally convinced with Linux, you can choose the suitable distribution for your system from the link below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux

Knoppix is not much fun, though. Apart from the fact that it stalls and freezes the computer whenever it has to read data from the cdrom to complete an operation, it also has a poor selection of software and it looks kinda crap. Linux is much more fun once you install it.

 

[Martin]

vlatko: I for one would strongly advise you to stay away from ntfs in linux. I did some research on the matter a few months ago and even after so many years have passed, linux support for ntfs is very poor. Reading support is fine, writing support doesn't work at all. I use fat32 and that works perfectly well (only thing is you can't have files bigger than 2gb).

 

[V]

vlatko: I for one would strongly advise you to stay away from ntfs in linux. I did some research on the matter a few months ago and even after so many years have passed, linux support for ntfs is very poor. Reading support is fine, writing support doesn't work at all. I use fat32 and that works perfectly well (only thing is you can't have files bigger than 2gb).

thanks for the tip martin.
any other limitations i should know about? the 2gb size limit while using fat, that only apllies to linux or windows as well? i don't remember but i don't think there was such a limitation when i was using fat32 with winodws, but i really can't say for sure...

 

[V]

one more question. what about p2p on linux? is there a way to use dc++ with it? torrents are probably supported. what about other p2p software?

 

[Martin]

thanks for the tip martin.
any other limitations i should know about? the 2gb size limit while using fat, that only apllies to linux or windows as well? i don't remember but i don't think there was such a limitation when i was using fat32 with winodws, but i really can't say for sure...

"fat", also known as fat16, is a legacy filesystem used in Dos, Windows <95. I believe Win98 still used it, but since then Windows has always used fat32, a newer version of fat if you will. fat32 (correct me if I'm wrong someone) uses 32 bits for file sizes, so it can only store files 2^31 bytes (=2147483648b =2gb) in size.

In linux, fat16 is called fat, fat32 is called vfat. vfat works just as well on linux as it does on Windows.

 

[Martin]

one more question. what about p2p on linux? is there a way to use dc++ with it? torrents are probably supported. what about other p2p software?

There are linux projects to replace every Windows p2p program, it's just a question of how good they are. dc++ I don't know, kazaa is supported by apollon, gnutella is java so it runs everywhere, amule (edonkey) runs on win, linux, macosx, azureus (torrent) is java, runs everywhere, for soulseek there is nicotine.

 

[V]

ok i installed suse and i must say i'm impressed but also i am having some major problems finding anything and getting anything to work.
these 2 problems are the most important
1. i can't boot in windows anymore
2. i can't connect to the internet


ok so here's what i did. i took mikhail's advice and i used partition magic to create another partition within windows on which i will install linux, i managed everything, the installation process is quite nice, and i installed wih no problems. first i couldn't connect to the internet. i use a dsl modem which uses the PPPoE protocol. now i don't now how to make a network connection? can you help me out?

second, when that GRUB things starts, i am presented with options:
1.linux
2.windows 1
3.windows 2
4.some safe mode linux mode
i looked around and found out that windows 1 is the hard disk where windows is installed and windows 2 is my other hard disk which has no operating system. when i click on the windows 1 everything appers to be fine, the windows xp logo appears, everything seems to be loading, but then after the black screen with the windows logo i get a windows screen for half a sec saying something program not found.

could you guys help me out? especially with booting windows! please!

 

[Zlatan]