New here...Intro

[sojournr]

Hi gang,

I'm new to the forum. Just joined tonight. I am writing this message on a Dell Latitude laptop that is currently running Windows XP Pro. However, it's getting "tired" and I really like Linux and am going to convert this pig to Linux as soon as I get home (I'm on a business trip right now).

My job requires that I use Unix, Linux, Windows, Solaris, Red Hawk, and God only knows what else. I have used Mandrake in the past and it worked OK but not great. Since that time I have seen many new distros hit the street and Ubuntu seems to be at the forefront of most of the conversations I hear about Linux. I think I'd like to try installing it on this laptop after I clear off all of my files.

My use of Linux has been very high-level and so I don't consider myself to be well-versed in the finer details of the OS. I'd classify myself as more of a general user. I thought about trying LFS but think that I'd be getting myself in way over my head and so Ubuntu sounds better.

I'd appreciate your thoughts on this changeover. Are there any special considerations I should take into account before installing Ubuntu over Windows on the laptop?

Thanks and have a great week!

Mike

[jayd512]

Welcome to LinuxForums!

The main thing you will want to take into account is whether you want to make a dual boot, or a complete Linux system. Either way, the Ubuntu installer will walk you through everything. It's fairly intuitive and easy to follow. Just let us know if you run into any problems with it.

Again, welcome!

[elija]

I always recommend trying a few different distributions to see which one grabs you. The good news is that you can try many of them out without installing them by grabbing a live cd. It will run slower than an install but at least you will get a feel for it.

You don't give the spec of your lappy but you do say it is getting tired. So if you decide you like Ubuntu (which should run on it OK if it can handle XP) but you decide it is too slow, you could try XUbuntu which is Ubuntu with XFCE rather than Gnome as a GUI. It is much lighter on resources but not as fully featured or so they say. I haven't noticed much if anything that is missing....

[sojournr]

Thanks for the suggestions, guys! I downloaded the distro last night and then created a virtual CD player on my laptop so I could extract the ISO file and then try to install Ubuntu. I'm a bit confused though because I downloaded all of the files last night but when I went to run the install file, it started RE-downloading the files. I guess it's not seeing the files already downloaded. I'm not fluent enough with Linux to know how to install it without it downloading everything all over again. It'll only take an hour but there must be a better way.

Take care.

[elija]

When you have the .iso file you simply burn it to a cd as an iso image. Doing so will create a whole file system on the cd.

There is a powertoy for Windows that will give you right click iso handling which can be found at ISO Recorder v 2 or any burner should have the option.

[sojournr]

Thanks, elija. I'll give it a try. I thought creating a virtual CD drive on my hard drive would net the same result but that either doesn't work or I'm doing something wrong. I'll pick up a CD today and give it a shot.

[oz]

Welcome to the forums!

Hope you have fun here and have fun with Linux.