Hello

[Joey_Redd]

New linux user or rather soon to be. i recently bought a new sony vaio laptop and I'm not satisfied with vista so I will be installing slackware 12.0 on it. I was wondering what i should do beforei make this switch, like saving anything fonts and such, also I would like some help with using wine and running windows applications. Many thanks

[Manchunian]

Hi there and welcome,

Saving fonts is a good idea before you make the switch. You don't have to do this, as you can find the equivalents, but I find that it helps the transferability of your documents between Word and Writer.
Can I ask why you chose Slackware? It's an excellent distribution, I use it on my second computer, but it isn't the easiest for beginners. You might be better advised installing Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva or any of the other "newbie-friendly" distros.

[Joey_Redd]

well I chose slackware because I have heard allot of positive things about it, and I installed ubuntu on my father's laptop for him instead of vista, and to say the least I liked it ok enough but I wanted something a little different and someone suggested slackware so I just decided to download the iso and now i have it on a disk, so i thought why not.

[Manchunian]

Well, why not indeed! You can always install something else if you find it too difficult.

[Joey_Redd]

yeah I have several linux os on dics so if that one is too hard for me then i can always switch , the only thing i had problems with is the wireless chip, i think once i can get around that i can move on to mastering wine.

[Manchunian]

Wireless can be a bit of a pain for the moment. Don't hesitate to post if you have any difficulties with it - someone here will know how to do it (not me, though! I don't have wireless as yet.)

Good luck

[Joey_Redd]

hmm I think I need to take your advice so i can get the wirless working on my father's laptop..

[Manchunian]

In that case post a thread somewhere, maybe in the Ubuntu section. Don't forget to give any relevant information, like any error messages you might receive, hardware details and the like. I'm sure someone in the know will get back to you.

[Joey_Redd]

this is harder than i thought

[Manchunian]

That's what I meant when I said wireless is a pain! It's the reason I haven't bothered with it yet!

Edit: I've just looked at your new thread. You're in good hands there: daark child is very competent and very helpful. If you're having problems, tell him. He can't actually do it for you, which is why he's given you a link, but he will help when you encounter a problem.