Blank Slate!!!

[bigcats374]

Hello All,
I am Bill Henderson and have just joined this group. I have been a windows user for a long while. I have looked at the Linux OS from time to time and still do not know much about it.
I bought a used HP Compaq D530 SFF this last fall with Windows XP Pro installed but no cd came with the PC, It currently has a Samsung SP4002H
40 GB HDD that appears to be dead. I can boot into dos and from cd. The chkdsk program does find bad sectors that I can not seem to fix them.
This PC has a pentium 4 @ 2.8 GHZ and currently has 1.5 GB Ram installed.
I am now looking to replace this HDD with a WD EIDE Ultra ATA/100 in either 200 GB or 250 GB depending on my finances.
This is where I come to you as I have found copies of Linux XP Pro 2007 listed on e-bay Linux XP 2008 NEW Editn. FULL Pro Best Windows-like OS
With the new HDD I will be starting from scratch or in this case a blank slate.
Please help me figure this out so that I can make a decision that will work for both the PC and my own peace of mind. The price is definately right for the Linux cd and will fit into my budget unlike the copies of windows does.
Thanks, Bill Henderson

[MikeTbob]

HIya Bill, Welcome to the forums.
It sounds like you have a fairly nice computer, once you get that HD replaced. I was looking at the Linux XP Pro website and I must say they have a pretty good deal going on, it even looks like WinXP! I think you should have a look at some LiveCD's before you purchase Linux XP Pro.
The LiveCD List
I highly recommend Ubuntu, Knoppix, and MEPIS for the New Linux users.
Just download one, and burn it to disk.
You don't even need a hard drive to use them, just pop it in the CDrom drive, reboot and you have instant Linux! You might find something you like more than Linux XP Pro. In my opinion, they are only selling you the "WinXP" themes and updates, both of which are free (for most distros) by the way. As for Internet Explorer being run on Linux XP Pro, you can run it on any Linux distro with special software.

[techieMoe]

This is where I come to you as I have found copies of Linux XP Pro 2007 listed on e-bay Linux XP 2008 NEW Editn. FULL Pro Best Windows-like OS

Greetings and welcome to the forum! I would highly not recommend you pay anyone for Linux XP Pro, as I've had very unpleasant experiences with it in the past. I would instead recommend you try one of the more popular free distributions out there such as Ubuntu, Fedora, openSuSE or Mandriva. A great place to find links to those is DistroWatch.com.

If you're curious about Linux in general, I also recommend taking a look at our new user orientation thread here:

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/lin...ead-first.html

This thread has a list of several helpful articles and answers to some common questions new users have when trying out Linux.

[bigcats374]

Hello Everyone,
This is a great start and good advice. Here is the problem and why I am even looking at the Linux XP Pro from e-bay site.
I am using my wife's pc for these postings and it does not have the ability to burn a dvd or cd. When I purchased this 8 or 9 years ago I did not forsee this possibility.
The costs of these Linux cds on e-bay is 99 cents plus shipping. Shipping cost range from $3.49 to $4.95 depending on the person selling. To me this is a minor cost for the product. The only other option I have is to download to a 2 GB flash drive.
I use my pc to surf the internet and play computer games [hunting and fishing games mostly with puzzle kind of games following these.] On occasion I also do online chats. This is the extent of my pc use. I do not use IE very much in favor of Crazy Browser.
When I went shopping for this pc, my intent was to be able to watch dvd movies and am thinking about a digital video card so I can also watch some tv programs on the pc.
Please do let me know if there is anything else I may have forgotten about. This may help get what I have in mid a bit clearer.
Thanks again, Bill H

[Jonathan183]

Hello Everyone,
This is a great start and good advice. Here is the problem and why I am even looking at the Linux XP Pro from e-bay site.
I am using my wife's pc for these postings and it does not have the ability to burn a dvd or cd. When I purchased this 8 or 9 years ago I did not forsee this possibility.
The costs of these Linux cds on e-bay is 99 cents plus shipping. Shipping cost range from $3.49 to $4.95 depending on the person selling. To me this is a minor cost for the product. The only other option I have is to download to a 2 GB flash drive.
I use my pc to surf the internet and play computer games [hunting and fishing games mostly with puzzle kind of games following these.] On occasion I also do online chats. This is the extent of my pc use. I do not use IE very much in favor of Crazy Browser.
When I went shopping for this pc, my intent was to be able to watch dvd movies and am thinking about a digital video card so I can also watch some tv programs on the pc.
Please do let me know if there is anything else I may have forgotten about. This may help get what I have in mid a bit clearer.
Thanks again, Bill H

Bill - look on distrowatch as suggested by previous posts. You can get several versions of linux & try them out to see which suits you best. You should not need to pay for updates.
Try to check if the hardware you are getting is compatible with Linux.

[oz]

Hi, and welcome to the forums!

I don't know that it will make any difference to you but here's one more recommendation against Linux XP. It would probably be at or very near the bottom of my list of recommended distributions. If it's the 99 cent CDs that you are after, you can do a Google search for Linux CDs and find vendors that will sell various Linux distributions for as little as 99 cents per CD, plus shipping. I know for a fact that Edmunds Enterprises sells them for that price.

Whichever distro you choose, good luck, and have fun with Linux.

[bigcats374]

Hello All,
It seems that the majority of the people on the computer chatroom prefer Ubuntu Linux Operating System and there are also several listing for this OS as wel for about the same amount of money as the linux XP Pro.
With a blank HDD it will be difficult to do much without some kind of OS installed.
Thanks, Bill H

[MikeTbob]

With a blank HDD it will be difficult to do much without some kind of OS installed.
Thanks, Bill H

I believe the Ubuntu CD/DVD's are actually all you need to install Linux to a blank HD, they are bootable.

[bigcats374]

Hello All,
I have located and will purchase a used WD HDD and there are some things I will need to know before this HDD arrives and is installed.
This HDD does not have a partition and I will be using this for an OS Ubuntu Linux Operating System 7.04. What do I need to know to get this done in NTFS.
I have been to the wine sight and they tell me that their program will work for my pc games. I need to know which download to use for the Linux OS I am going to use.
Any other thoughts and ideas are most welcomed.
Rhanks, Bill Henderson

[MikeTbob]

Once you get Linux installed, you'll be able to add an NTFS partition if you like, it 's fairly easy. Just be sure to leave enough unpartitioned space for the NTFS partition. And Ubuntu has it's own version of wine, you just open the package manager/updater and install it.