zambrotta19

Hi, I am interested in migrating over from Windows. I am of course an absolute newbie but have been doing quite a lot of reading. I am prepared to do some fiddling around, but would like it to be relatively simple at first and then i can start experimenting around a bit with linux. I would like some very general information on whether or not it would be possible for me to effectively migrate over, and if so how would i go about doing so.

I use not specialist programs like photoshop or anything of that kind. My only limitation may be from a gaming point of view although i am aware of 'Wine' and Cedega etc.

I would like to know which distro you would recommend to me as a newb and how easy is it to obtain drivers etc. Essentially is it possile for me to move over as i am keen to rid myself of windows.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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ozar

Welcome to the forums!

I'd recommend setting up a dual-boot machine so that you can boot into Linux or Windows at boot time until you become more familiar with Linux. Most distributions will allow you to set this up during the installation routine.

Any of the top 10 distros at DistroWatch.com should work well for you, and most drivers are built directly into the Linux kernel.

Hope it all works out well for you.

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oz

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GNU-Fan

Hello,

please obtain the Ubuntu LiveCD ISO
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD

and burn it to a CD. You can boot this CD without touching
anything lying on your harddrive. Therefore, this is an excellent
way to get your toes wet without risk.

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I recommend Debian.

zambrotta19

I have read a lot of people recommending 'Ubuntu' and i watched a video of 'Ubuntu Beryl' and it looked sick. I am in now way expecting me to get anything like that yet. Hypothetically say i were to go head first into linux would i encounter problems setting everything up equivalently in linux? Such as drivers for my peripherals, internet etc.?

GNU-Fan

This depends on the particular hardware.

Some hardware manufacturers are very cooperative with the community. They tell the Linux developers how to program the hardware they sell properly and some of them even pay programmers for doing so. Obviously, hardware from these manufacturers works usually very well with GNU/Linux and few problems are to be expected.

And then there are manufacturers who do quite the contrary. Even suing developers when they try to make the device run with Linux. It goes without saying that these device perform very poor with Linux.

Therefore, there can't be any authoritative statements made about whether general hardware will run. There are, however, large databases to be found on the Internet where people write how their devices perform. This can be taken as a first indicator.

You can also post here the kind of your hardware you posses as specific as possible and maybe we can tell you.

Or you just boot the LiveCD and see which device makes trouble.

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I recommend Debian.

zambrotta19

"Therefore, there can't be any authoritative statements made about whether general hardware will run. There are, however, large databases to be found on the Internet where people write how their devices perform. This can be taken as a first indicator."

Could you please tell me the best, or better ones of these databases?
Do you go along with Ubuntu being a safe option for to test the water with? Would it help if i post the relevant information about my system?

GNU-Fan

Hello,

the best thing about the aforementioned LiveCD is that there are no permanent changes done until you explicitly want them to occur.

This means, I see no risk booting such a CD and see how it works. It is also the fastest and most certain way to find out.

The name of the distribution, be it Ubuntu, Debian, Suse, RedHat, you name it, is secondary for that issue. This is because the hardware is driven by the kernel (Linux), which is shared by all Linux distributions (by definition).

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I recommend Debian.

zambrotta19

Which version should i get? 5.10, 6.06, 7.10 or 8.04?

ozar

You'll get the best hardware support with the latest version which is now 8.10, if I'm not mistaken.

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oz

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zambrotta19

I hate to sound like a complete newbie but i have a AMD turion 64 processor. should i choose the second option?