[jagdeep]

Hi

I am from New Delhi, India.
For the past some time I have become really interested in Linux and want to install it on to my PC! I do not know Linux properly, and therefore seek your guidance. Please advice me on the following:

1) Which Linux version/brand should I go in for? Should I download it from the net or buy a CD set. (I am more comfortable with the graphical version, anything that is command line operated scares me). Would I need to take a special course to learn Linux or would I be able to understand it simply by navigating through it.

2) I chiefly work on these softwares on my computer:
-GRAPHICS : adobe Photoshop, illustrator, PageMaker, Corel draw, macromedia freehand, 3D studio max and flash
-OFFICE: Microsoft office, adobe acrobat
-INTERNET : opera web browser

After I switch over to Linux would i be still able to use these softwares????

3) Does Linux have special softwares and games specifically for it and are they very costly (or freely downloadable).

4) If I get CD?s or floppies with windows files inside it would I be able to access them properly on my Linux PC. Again if would need to get files printed shares on windows machines would I able to do it smoothly.

5) Is it possible to keep windows installed along with Linux while I get my hand set over it?

6) Anything else important that I should know before I finally take the plunge into LINUX????


Following is my computer configuration:
INTEL P4 1.7 GHZ
INTEL D845GBV MOTHERBOARD
256 MB RAM
40 GB HDD
SAMSUNG CD R/W


I WOULD BE ENORMOUSLY THANKFUL FOR ANY GUIDANCE!!

THANK YOU

[gwalters]

Hi!

1. I would suggest SuSE because thats the only brand Ive used. Also, I would go for the CD's because Ive got a 56K If you have a faster internet connection you could download ISO's of your distro 4 free. No special courses.

2. Im not sure on the image manip. programs but adobe acrobat works on llinux and there is Open Office as a replacement for Microsoft. Im looking at this page with opera right now.

3. If you can do it on windows you can do it in linux for free!

4. Yes, and samba for windows shares

5. Yes, bual booting is very possible.

[Dolda2000]

1. I normally recommend RedHat or Mandrake for people who are new to Linux. Both have their cons and pros. RedHat is in my opinion a better system than Mandrake in terms of stability, performance etc. Mandrake, on the other hand, might be a bit more user-friendly and comes with popular software like MP3 and movie players and so on. Even so, I would recommend (note this is my personal opinion - there is no Linux distro that is right for everyone) RedHat. The latest version is Fedora Core 1 and you can download the CDs for free from http://fedora.redhat.com/.

2. Many of those programs cannot be directly used under Linux (especially MS Office...), but some are, and for others there are counterparts that do the same thing but differently.
- Opera: is available for Linux, although personally I'd recommend that you use the Mozilla version that comes with the distro.
- MS Office: That's not going to happen. However, there is OpenOffice.org that comes with most distros and does almost everything the MS Office can do and some other things. It can also read most MS Office file formats.
- Adobe Acrobat: is available for Linux, although there are free programs that comes with the distro that can also read PDF files.
- Graphics software: I don't deal much with such things, so I can't tell you any specifics. However, the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) comes with most distros, and many people uphold that it's better than Photoshop et. al.
- 3D Studio Max: I don't know honestly. However, there are other 3D modelling programs. Blender is one.
As for the others, someone else will have to answer since I have no idea.

3. There is an almost infinite amount of free software available for Linux - you can do almost anything that you want. As for games, that's not quite as common, but some manufacturers do port their games to Linux. Some of the later games that have been ported to Linux include Quake 3, Return to Caste Wolfenstein, Unreal Tournament 2003, Neverwinter Nights. They cost as much as they would for Windows. There might be more, but I do not know of them. There are also a great deal of free games that come with most distros, although they might not be the most advanced games ever made. =)

4. Almost all Windows file formats can be read by one program or another. And yes, you can access Windows file shares and shared printers, and you can also share files and printers with Linux computers.

5. It is possible to preserve your existing Windows installation, although it's not necessarily very easy. It's much, much easier to have both Windows and Linux if you reinstall Windows instead. If you go for that, install Windows first, and when you create the Windows partition, leave some unpartitioned space on the hard drive for Linux. Then install Linux. If you install Linux first and Windows after, Windows' installer will overwrite Linux's boot loader, which makes it impossible to boot Linux. Linux's installer, however, will configure its boot loader to boot both systems.

6. You should be aware that although mostly anything can be done in Linux, it is often done in a very different way from how you're probably used to do it. It's made worse by the fact that many interfaces in Linux are made to look similar to Windows' interfaces. That confuses many new users since some things look alike, but then they don't at all work alike. However, if you give Linux an honest chance, I do believe that you will come to like it.

[kpzani]

All modern distributions provide an option to setup dual booting duing the install. I would recommend a second hard disk though.

GIMP is reasonably good but a bit quirky. Takes a bit of getting used to. It is definately powerful but not necessarily easy to use. Think Adobe Photoshop not Macromedia Fireworks.

Scribus seems to be well liked as a DTP / Layout package. But I haven't used it myself. I did install it though and it looks pretty!

3DS MAX is a hard one. Blender is an alternative but is difficult to use. Then again so is 3DS MAX so you might be ok.

There is no real replacement for Flash. Yet!

However, it is possible to set up WINE and from this run some windows based apps. CodeWeavers make a commercial product based on WINE called CrossOver Office. They say you can run Flash, MS Office 2000 and Adobe Photoshop very well. WINE is free but can be hard to configure (judging by the number of posts I've seen).

Depending on the version of windows you run it can be really simple or quite easy (once you know how) to gain access to your windows files if you choose to dual boot.

I run Fedora and like it a lot. Have used Mandrake. Pretty straight forward but had a few issues with it and switched to Redhat. If you've never used Linux stay away from the scary distros like Gentoo & Debian.

I recommend buying a few copies of a linux mag (I subscribe to Linux Format) and see what they think of various distros and software apps. The mags normally have a distribution on the free cd every month as well.

[dazbuk]

Originally Posted by jagdeep

2) I chiefly work on these softwares on my computer:
-GRAPHICS : adobe Photoshop, illustrator, PageMaker, Corel draw, macromedia freehand, 3D studio max and flash
-OFFICE: Microsoft office, adobe acrobat
-INTERNET : opera web browser

After I switch over to Linux would i be still able to use these softwares????

I think you would... check this: http://www.winehq.org/

[anand]

Hi,
Try fedora. When i was a newbie i tried many distributions and finally settled on redhat series.
i never tried slackware,debian and gentoo though.
Fedora satisfies me and i play Q3A, RTCW on it

I have migrated completely!

xcdroast can be suited for your cd writer
Bye

[fingal]

If I can add my bit, I like to recommend Knoppix (the current version is 3.3). It's available as a 'live' cd, so you can boot it from the cd-rom to evaluate the distro without having to install it.

You *can* install it to your hard drive, though, and once it's on there you've got yourself a Debian OS. You can then get hold of the Debian cds and install binaries from these. It's not perfect, but it has excellent hardware detection and a lot of interesting packages (Scribus being one of these). I've used Mandrake and SuSE, and though they are okay(ish) and look pretty, IMHO Knoppix is better... Of course, other people have different opinions, but this is the beauty of Linux: VaRiEtY!!

A lot of people on here love Slackware, and they have talked me into it! I'm going to order a copy and try it out very soon. I hope it's as good as everyone says