[Drogos]

hi im currently operating on win xp but i saw this video of linux ubuntu i never used any other OS other than win b4
i have a few questions how good and stable is linux will i be able to listen to my music and watch videos with no problem?
and is the video and sound quallity good will i be able to use some win programs? is there good security for it like inti spyware and virus protection?
and will i be able to tranfer music to my mp3 player and
will it run good as a media center non gaming purpose

thanks in advance

[Nitestick]

linux is generally considered to be a lot more stable than windows. one of the reasons for this is the separation of functions within the system so that errors in one component don't crash the system.

linux has a HUGE amount of software and 99.999999% of it is completely free. there are many good media players including kaffeine (works with DTV cards and pretty much any media format there is a codec for), mplayer and vlc. mplayer is so good it's a part of a few windows media players.

virus protection is virtually not required as long as you don't deliberately try to install one of the few existing linux viruses. i've never heard of any spyware on a linux platform! the inbuilt security in Unix/BSD/Linux is pretty much superior to anything you could install in windows. security issues are patched very quickly with linux OSs.

you can run a good number of windows programs using WINE which is a compatibility layer that runs between the linux OS and the program. in general there is no need to use windows programs anyway as there are alternatives to almost everything in windows.

as a media centre you can use mythtv and it's range of plugins. in my humble opinion it's far better than windows media centre. you'll be amazed at how fast it can run in comparison to windows.

as for your questions about sound quality, video quality and whether you will be able to transfer music to your mp3 player, that comes down to what hardware is in your computer and what mp3 player you have. apple and microsoft keep making moves to block linux from using their products. some video chipsets and sound chipsets don't have brilliant driver support, most work fine though.

[Mak213]

Moved to Linux Area. More appropiate there.

[Drogos]

oops sorry about that i missed the linux section but yeah im gona switch to linux is free right? my pc is to old to game on so since linux seems to be faster and stable ill switch

[Mak213]

Yeah Linux is free. Personally i use Ubuntu as well. It is a great distro. Very easy to switch from Windows to Ubuntu without losing your head.

Just check thru this section here and you will see the various topics we have on getting started with Linux. It feels odd at first but it is worth it when you get it working just the way you want.

[Drogos]

ohh i tho that linux and ubuntu were the same OS
as long as my pc runs fast and good im good with either

[Mak213]

Ubuntu is Linux. Just a specific distro of Linux. Linux is only the generic title for the Open Source Operating System. But there are several thousand varieties of Linux.

Fedora, Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, Knippox, SuSe, OpenSuSe among many other are all Linux but react very differently to a user. Some use Gnome as the desktop manager while others use KDE. Some use Debian as the package manager while others do not.

So you see Linux is just the generic title. You will have to find a specific distro to work with. Since you say you haev used Windwos XP i suggest Ubuntu since that is the easiest distro of Linux for a user to make the transition from Windows to Linux with. Others say PCLinuxOS is the easiest but when i worked with Ubuntu and PCLOS i found it harder to work with PCLOS.

Linux runs great on older machines. So you should be fine.

[Drogos]

sweet my pc is old but it still got some power in it is p4 2.8
1.7gb ram i have a ati radeaon 9550 256mb ram is not a gaming pc anymore but i want it as a media center music,movies,web burning and study im downloding ubunto as i write this

[Mak213]

That is good. You should be able to accomplish all that easily with Ubuntu. Sadly i am still a n00b at Linux. But we have several users here that are very good with Linux and can help you get everything sorted.

[Baez]

Great let us know if you have any questions about the install or running it after. I've been using Ubuntu and SuSE for quite a few years now (especially SuSE) and know quite a bit.

First thing that tends to be difficult for new users is the driver installation.