[Rouen]

Once I RMA my mobo and my computer is running again, I'm thinking about partitioning a part of my HD for Linux. However, I dont know if its free even though it is indeed open source. I dont know anything about it, but I tend to learn better hands on then reading a book about it. Details?

[Fabyfakid]

Read this; it's my favorite guide. It balances comprehensive information but in a way that doesn't intimidate (which the RUTE guide does). Right off the bat, it starts by comparing windows and linux, plus the advantage/disadvantage of the OSs. Hope it helps.

[Rouen]

Thanks, I'll read over it once my class ends lol

Anyone else have some other ideas? I'll look at all of them at once when i get time later today.

[Fabyfakid]

No problem, check out google.com/linux and tldp.org, there you'll find exactly what you're looking for.

[m3trj]

www.linux.org has good tutorials.

Linux is mostly free too.

[urbanwks]

if you really want to learn all you can, and you learn better hands-on[as i do], i'd say start out with something like slackware, which has a much higer learning curve than something like redhat. redhat will spoonfeed you everything and for the most part not force you to learn what is going on and why, unlike slackware.

also, slack is probably the most stable distro out there.

in case you couldn't tell, i'm a slackware fan.

[Polymorphic]

I feel I have to second urbanwks' support for Slackware. It's IMNSHO the best distro out there for those who like to know how things work and like to make things work a specific way, without building an OS from scratch (a good experience for those who REALLY want to know what each package does, i.e., those graduating from Gentoo ;-P ).

For a more novice user who is more nervous or unsure of themselves, SuSE, Fedora , Mandrake, or one of the other hundreds of RPM-based distros may be a good first step, although you will probably want to try other distribution types after dealing with RPM ****.

[Him]

Im thin king about going the route of Linux as well. Microsoft is debuting all this new technologies that is frankly scaring that **** out of me. I dont want that stuff, with them knowing my EVERY move and making it legal. That just sucks. I want to know EXACTLY what is going on, and, like the morph, I want everything going exactly as I want it to. not as someone else wants it too. My problem is I have NO programmin experience. I learn best as hands on too. I have some crappy computers laying around, pretty slow p3 and a p2 and a p. Like I said, crappy. Linux I'm sure would run great though, right? Any suggestions for a Linux n00b would be awesome.

[horndude]

Ya, linux will run fine on those, but like any OS you have to choose your apps accordingly---->eye candy means resources.Fortunately,most apps for linux are written and compiled in C, that helps alot with the speed issues.Still,some apps like Limewire for example are java based, that is very resource hungry.Some of the GUI or desktop environments eat up resources too, KDE and GNOME arent exactly lightweight, you can run them on older hardware, but the performance wont exactly be "snappy".You dont really need programming experience, just some linux experience to get things setup the way you want.

[Polymorphic]

for an older rig, any distro would work great, just trim it down in terms of running processes (cleaning up/disabling {x,}inetd, init.d/rc.d scripts, inittab, etc), and running an efficient window manager. throw KDE and GNOME out the window, so to speak, and install fluxbox, blackbox, xfce, or even qvwm (if you really cant get away from the 'doze interface. icewm is another moderately fast WM for lower end system thats pretty well beautified.

Oh. that and RAM!!!! more memory, more better. RAM is cheap, dont cheap out on it.

just my .02 new republic credits
-- poly