Okay, sorry for the 186th trillion (probably) thread of "What distro should I use?"

Still. The more I tried to find out about what to use, the more confused I'm getting.

Me:
Been on Windows all my life. From 95 to XP and ignoring Vista. I worked with Linux 5 or 6 years ago, but that was just programing - C - in school. That was mostly the teacher setting up an account for each student and telling us what to type into where.

What I want:
I want to run Linux on my laptop as soon as I get a new harddrive (grandma promised me one - 250GB!). I do some graphics-stuff (GIMP), watch videos and listen to music (VLC), use OpenOffice and the internet. My gaming-profile is low, but I found some how-to's (and my onboard wireless card) for the three games I'm playing - Diablo 2, STV: Elite Force and WoW (if I have the money).

The thing is, all the how-to's I found were for Ubuntu, yet people are saying Ubuntu is not the perfect distro to "get into" Linux.
However, I sometimes feel a little overwhelmed and scared by the amount of... "stuff" some of the how-to's want me to do.


So, any advice for a girl-geek who is not (very) afraid of jumping into a new world feet first?

I can't help you pick distros but I can point you towards Distrowatch.com to help narrow things down for you.

Quote: Originally Posted by eascarface I can't help you pick distros but I can point you towards Distrowatch.com to help narrow things down for you.

That is one of the problems. I've been there. For hours.
First I just needed to decide between the 5-6 distros mentioned on wikipedia, now there are another dozen.
Do I pick the one with the excellent hardware recognition but with the software not up to date, or do I pick the one with the logo I like most? It's sadly all the same to me because I have no friggin idea what 90% of the specs are trying to say.

BTW, I'm obviously not installing the one with the logo I like most because FreeBSD isn't any good with wireless and stuff...

Ubuntu has the advantage of popularity right now. Basically anything you want to do has been done and if you dont know how to do it then chances are that someone does and it is probably explained somewhere online. While some other distributions are "better" or more powerful, very few have the user base and therefore the tutorials and whatnot if you need them.
I personally have used a couple different distributions on my laptop including Ubuntu. I decided on Linux Mint because it just works well for what I wanted, which was media compatibility mainly. It is based on Ubuntu and it comes set up to be able to deal with any and all media files. That works well for what I want, but that does not mean it is for you.

Ubuntu
Download Ubuntu | Ubuntu

wich i tried & like it but could not fix my hz for my resolution stock at 60 hz even with my nvidia driver installed there is a fix you do manually but didn't do it i'm to lazy to learn it

but the most complet of them all is
Sabayon
Sabayon Linux Project Website

it's really nice looking & i think it comes with every softwares there is out there to use in linux
you even got Beryl included

YouTube - Sabayon Linux Beryl
YouTube - Beryl

when i learn more about programming in linux i'm gona go back to install Sabayon

Or kubuntu if you Like A Task Bar on the bottom of your screen...Its the same as Ubuntu, but it uses the KDE desktop Interface (KDE is nothing more than a GUI environment than handles tasks and such, Ubuntu uses Gnome)

I've been running ubuntu 7.10 on my main machine for a while now and it seems to be a good release. It's almost too easy thou, not all the manual stuff as a hardcore linux distro but doesn't have the errors of windows, it's in it's own category.

If you like all kinds of goodies u could try ubuntu ultimate, there's even a ubuntu ultimate gamers addition. Another option would be suse. There's questions u have to choose from then find one that fits the bill. Like gnome or kde, what kind of apps etc come with it, what kind of support does the distro offer, does it stay updated with current technology's etc. Burn the live disc of some distro's and test them out.

If your going to use a 250gb drive u might want to think about doing a dual install of a linux and windows which might make the change easier.

Thanks for all your opinions. I think I'll try Ubuntu - simply because it has NVIDIA drivers (or so it says) and the best "support". I think it is a bit crowded (do I need AbiWord and OpenOffice or kaffeine and xine, really?) and I'd liked a little more hardcore Linux, but that'd be of little use if I couldn't use it and not manage to get connected to the internet to look it up.
Actually I'm totally against running Windows and Linux on the same computer - but maybe it would help me in the beginning.

I'd love to try various Live CD, but the main-partition of my current harddrive is NTFS so there'd be little I could do (with just 1,5GB free space on my back-up fat32 partition), right?

Most if not all distributions now support writing and reading from NTFS drives, this includes Ubuntu. Remember though if you are going to actually install after saving stuff to the hard drive that you want to keep you are going to have to back that stuff up to another drive.
I personally used different live cds for close to a month before I actually installed anything, then after I did install one I (Ubuntu) I decided to change to something else.
If you dont mind reinstalling if you don't like what you get then go for it and install, but if you want to be fairly sure then use a live cd for a little while first.

Quote: Originally Posted by Nerdz Or kubuntu if you Like A Task Bar on the bottom of your screen...Its the same as Ubuntu, but it uses the KDE desktop Interface (KDE is nothing more than a GUI environment than handles tasks and such, Ubuntu uses Gnome)

You really love KDE don't you.

You can move the Ubuntu task bar to the bottom of the screen if you want...

Also if you do want to try thr KDE version, you don't have to install Kubuntu, you can just change it in Synaptic Package Manager, it will download it and change the desktop for you, and you can go back too.

Ubuntu isn't a favorite for l33t linix users, we tend to lean towards Debian, Redhat(not always), and more complicated distros where we can still type lots of code (lol, j/k)

It's a good starter, I started with it. Knoppix is currently my favorite, alng with a few different copies of it. Ubuntu is pop it in play with it, then use it. It will support your wifi device out of the box, and/or with a few updates. I suggest it for beginners along with Xandros, (which is kinda like Lindows, a windows program guarantee necessarily).

@Snake2Snipe: Tried a Ubuntu Live CD last night and it froze during booting. My guess is the NTFS drive, unless a not moving orange bar and no reaction for 5 minutes is normal, of course.
Backup will be provided since I will get a brand new harddrive. It's good to read (found another source that told me about NTFS 3G) that I'll be able to use my old 40GB backup drive (don't laugh, the 80 and 160GB burned out), though.

@s1ugh34d:
Actually Debian was my first choice before I dug deeper. I'll definitely switch later, since I really want to type code (after I know a bit more about it). I think I have a reputation to maintain (before my family&friends)

Regarding Gnome and KDE... I'm not sure. KDE sounds nice and crazy in a good way, it looks like what we used in school, but right now I'm totally okay with Gnome, I think I need to find out how far my hardware will be supported (and how I can change it if it isn't), then I can go and try out which desktop environment I like better.
Right now I still feel a little like I'm asking "A or B?" and the answer is "Have you thought about C to Z?" - no offense.
(Right now I just want to get into it.)

Quote: Originally Posted by DraQla @Snake2Snipe: Tried a Ubuntu Live CD last night and it froze during booting. My guess is the NTFS drive, unless a not moving orange bar and no reaction for 5 minutes is normal, of course. Backup will be provided since I will get a brand new harddrive. It's good to read (found another source that told me about NTFS 3G) that I'll be able to use my old 40GB backup drive (don't laugh, the 80 and 160GB burned out), though. @s1ugh34d: Actually Debian was my first choice before I dug deeper. I'll definitely switch later, since I really want to type code (after I know a bit more about it). I think I have a reputation to maintain (before my family&friends) Regarding Gnome and KDE... I'm not sure. KDE sounds nice and crazy in a good way, it looks like what we used in school, but right now I'm totally okay with Gnome, I think I need to find out how far my hardware will be supported (and how I can change it if it isn't), then I can go and try out which desktop environment I like better. Right now I still feel a little like I'm asking "A or B?" and the answer is "Have you thought about C to Z?" - no offense. (Right now I just want to get into it.)

Ubuntu live uses nothing of the hard drive. and NTFS 3G is awesome. Yes you can use you NTFS drive, but if you can wipe it clean and install ext3 on it it would work out better for you.

I've been on Slackware for a LONG time now but I'm rapidly coming to LOVE centOS. It's red hat with all of the upstream branding removed and it's not the minefield that fedora can be. The install is self explanatory and it has a lot of newbie friendly features. It also has a ton of stuff for the power user or guru. The important thing to keep in mind is that you can everything on one distro that you can do on the other, nothing is crippled ie home vs pro, etc. Don't let any distro elitism snag you, get what you like. Whatever you decide I can pretty much help with any distro so always feel free to drop me a pm.

Quote: Originally Posted by s1ugh34d Ubuntu live uses nothing of the hard drive. and NTFS 3G is awesome. Yes you can use you NTFS drive, but if you can wipe it clean and install ext3 on it it would work out better for you.

For something that does nothing to my hard drive Linux fixed up my new external harddrive pretty good. When I finally managed to get the Live CD to work I thought I might be able to get that HDD to work there (or rather I thought: "It's not working under Windows, what can go wrong?") - the HDD that would show up as an unformated external drive. Trying to formate it more than half of it was not available (32.4GB from 80). Plugged it in under Linux and it showed up as a perfectly fine 76.6GB NTFS harddrive.
I'm not questioning this, I don't want to know how it works, I'm just accepting that it works!
As for the ext3, that's sure all fine and dandy and will be on my lappy's new main-drive (which has been ordered, wh00t!) but since I want to access my back-up/external drives from various pc's (who all have Windows and one Mac) and I don't always have a Live CD on me I think I'll keep them the way they are (for now. I might be eating my words).

Quote: Originally Posted by thedemonxanth I've been on Slackware for a LONG time now but I'm rapidly coming to LOVE centOS. It's red hat with all of the upstream branding removed and it's not the minefield that fedora can be. The install is self explanatory and it has a lot of newbie friendly features. It also has a ton of stuff for the power user or guru. The important thing to keep in mind is that you can everything on one distro that you can do on the other, nothing is crippled ie home vs pro, etc. Don't let any distro elitism snag you, get what you like. Whatever you decide I can pretty much help with any distro so always feel free to drop me a pm.

Thanks for the offer, I might take up on it.
Right now I still have no idea what's waiting for me since I found it a bit hard to work with a Live CD. It doesn't support my wifi card out of the box and installing the driver with a Live CD doesn't work, so all I could do was typing stuff with Open Office, do a bit of work with Gimp - things I do on a daily basis right now - and then I got bored without the internet.
I think I'll just use Linux and coax my Mum into buying a book. I'd have taken an adult education course, but like anything else I'd like to learn (=Welsh) there aren't any course (any more) - everything's Windows, Microsoft Office and Adobe (or Italian, French and contemporary Greek in the language department).

Quote: Originally Posted by DraQla For something that does nothing to my hard drive Linux fixed up my new external harddrive pretty good. When I finally managed to get the Live CD to work I thought I might be able to get that HDD to work there (or rather I thought: "It's not working under Windows, what can go wrong?") - the HDD that would show up as an unformated external drive. Trying to formate it more than half of it was not available (32.4GB from 80). Plugged it in under Linux and it showed up as a perfectly fine 76.6GB NTFS harddrive. I'm not questioning this, I don't want to know how it works, I'm just accepting that it works! As for the ext3, that's sure all fine and dandy and will be on my lappy's new main-drive (which has been ordered, wh00t!) but since I want to access my back-up/external drives from various pc's (who all have Windows and one Mac) and I don't always have a Live CD on me I think I'll keep them the way they are (for now. I might be eating my words).

I meant that with the Live CD, while ubuntu is running live, it is only running in RAM, there is no data being written to your HDD.(although you can setup a swap and trash file in my docs, or at least i did. I also use jump drives for HDD space to replace real HDDs.