Few questions from a Newbie

[TJ_Roberts]

hello, im currently studying a software development course at university and one of my lecturers informed me that by learning linux i can improve my chances of getting a job when im done as lots of organisations use linux, however they dont actualy teach it in university so a few quick questions

1) i have an old pc (old not ancient ) that i was thinking of wiping and installing linux on to have a play about with and get to grips with, so i dont accidently loose anything of my new pc that i need. anyone have any idea how i actually wipe the old pc ready to install linux

2) can i install linux via portable hardrive instead of cd?

3) from your knowledge of exisiting linux distro's which would be bessed for a newbie who uses visual basic for programming and mozilla firefox for internet (i also play games in my spare time)

4) from what ive read, am i right in saying that no matter which distro you choose , you can still choose a number of different GUI's to go with it??


Thanking you all in advance, any answers or links would be helpfull

[ultimatelinux]

hello, im currently studying a software development course at university and one of my lecturers informed me that by learning linux i can improve my chances of getting a job when im done as lots of organisations use linux, however they dont actualy teach it in university so a few quick questions

1) i have an old pc (old not ancient ) that i was thinking of wiping and installing linux on to have a play about with and get to grips with, so i dont accidently loose anything of my new pc that i need. anyone have any idea how i actually wipe the old pc ready to install linux

2) can i install linux via portable hardrive instead of cd?

3) from your knowledge of exisiting linux distro's which would be bessed for a newbie who uses visual basic for programming and mozilla firefox for internet (i also play games in my spare time)

4) from what ive read, am i right in saying that no matter which distro you choose , you can still choose a number of different GUI's to go with it??


Thanking you all in advance, any answers or links would be helpfull

u can install linux through USB,Unetbootin is a software that makes it possible.you need to have the iso image of the distribution.
many newbies are suggested to use Ubuntu.
follow the instructions carefully before installing,screenshots of how to install Ubuntu without wiping windows are available,just google.

[arochester]

1) Many of the big distros will wipe/partition/format automatically.

2) There used to be a saying, something like, if you use Ubuntu you will learn Ubuntu, if your use Slackware (Gentoo/Arch/some alternative) you will learn Linux. While Ubuntu is easier you might be better to steer away from it. If you want to work in a commercial environment, many of them use Redhat, you might be better with Centos or Fedora.

3) Yes there are many alternative GUIs...although a Server usually has NO GUI and is usually text based.

[undermind]

As for portable Hardrive installs, there's numerous sites with guides on installing various distro's from a pendrive or USB harddrive. It's certainly not impossible, although i have limited experience with it myself

[sixdrift]

My thoughts:

1) Most live CD versions of Linux handle repartitioning and reformatting hard drives for you. Just boot from the CD (or other media) and follow instructions.

2) You can install Linux via flash drive or portable hard drive provided your computer's BIOS allows booting from USB device. If it only allows booting from hard disk and CD, then you need to burn a CD.

3) For conversion from Windows user to Linux user, I suggest Ubuntu or Linux Mint as they may be the easiest path and have significant resources online for support. Certainly there are viable alternatives, but that is my recommendation. As far as visual basic, you could try Gambas. There are some other free basics out there for Linux, but that one includes the GUI designer elements. I am not sure about the others. Running Linux may be a great time to learn something else, like Perl, PHP, TCL, or some other interpreted language. That would be an advantage when you left university and went out looking for a job that involves Linux.

4) Yes, you are not limited to the default desktop in most distributions. Most distros allow you to simply install the new desktop while a few others don't make it so easy to change them, but you usually can with a bit of fiddling. If you install Ubuntu, it defaults to GNOME. You can simply install LXDE or KDE (or others) from the Synaptic Package Manager and then at the login screen, pick the desktop for your login session in the options.

[techieMoe]

...There used to be a saying, something like, if you use Ubuntu you will learn Ubuntu, if your use Slackware (Gentoo/Arch/some alternative) you will learn Linux.

...and it's a saying I strongly disagree with. Any major distribution of Linux can be used to learn the ins and outs of the Linux OS, regardless of how granular you want to get. The key difference between Ubuntu and Slackware (or Gentoo/Arch) in this respect is that with Slackware, you're forced to learn everything, and learn it up front. It does very little automatically. To some that's a strength. To others, a weakness. It depends on your patience level and ultimate goal.

If you want to work in a commercial environment, many of them use Redhat, you might be better with Centos or Fedora.

I'd also CentOS (but not Fedora) if you're looking to learn the more popular corporate environments. SuSE has an enterprise desktop product as well, but it's only available on a trial basis.

[sixdrift]

As far as learning Linux, you can learn Linux with any distro. Like was said, distros like slackware force a steep learning curve, generating frustration from new users. Its like learning to play the piano by first building your own piano. While it can be done, one must ask "why?".

While many commercial installations still run RHEL or Suse (Centos is just RHEL without the branding), the differences usually come down to how to administer the system. The major distros have their own guis and such. But if you are looking after servers, often all you have is a command shell via ssh. In such cases, you need to know the init, cron, and package management systems used by the installation.

For the last few years, we have been using Ubuntu for our development hosts, our cloud servers run Ubuntu server, and we had 2 servers running RHEL. Personally I think the Debian-based distros are overall easier to manage. I quit running Suse entirely a few years ago when I switched to Ubuntu for my development host box, and my entire team followed suit. We kept a Suse distro around to install some commercial packages that did not support Ubuntu, where we migrated those apps manually over to our Ubuntu hosts from their Suse installations.