I am A Newbie!!

[nhazelwood78]

Hey people, I am wanting some advice and possible pointers. I currently run a Windows 7 Compaq laptop with an Athlon x2 and 4gig of DDR2. I want to either set up a dual-boot on my laptop, or make Linux the Primary with Windows running in something like a virtual box.
I am very much into Android and I want to learn Linux as a result of that. So which Distro should be considered in a situation like this. Any information would be helpful and I thank you all for your time.

[MASONTX]

Welcome to the forum, and good luck with your project. If you go to DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD. they have good descriptions and rankings of the different distro's. If you don't find one in the top 100, they have others which you can use their search tools to find, either by name, or category.

[MikeTbob]

Hello and Welcome.
Be sure to check out the distro quiz too, it's really good.
zegenie Studios Linux Distribution Chooser

[nhazelwood78]

Thank you, I have been doing some research on this and from what I am seeing most are saying to have the Windows installed first because a lot of the Linux installers can automatically detect a dual boot scenario? I believe I will be going with Fedora 12 for now but I am going to read more on the distro's available.

[oz]

I have been doing some research on this and from what I am seeing most are saying to have the Windows installed first because a lot of the Linux installers can automatically detect a dual boot scenario?

Hello and welcome to the forums!

Yes, it's true that installing Windows first will greatly simplify things for you if you plan to setup a dual boot system.

Do let us know how it all goes for you.

[zenwalker]

Hey people, I am wanting some advice and possible pointers. I currently run a Windows 7 Compaq laptop with an Athlon x2 and 4gig of DDR2. I want to either set up a dual-boot on my laptop, or make Linux the Primary with Windows running in something like a virtual box.
I am very much into Android and I want to learn Linux as a result of that. So which Distro should be considered in a situation like this. Any information would be helpful and I thank you all for your time.

Welcome, nhazelwood! Glad to see a newbie with a plan. A Google search of about ten minutes rewarded me with the following information in partial answer to your question:

Developing Android applications on Debian | literacy and subleties for open-source bigots and other weirdos
LINUX CLUES: Building Android in Debian Sid
Download Android SDK Release 6 for Linux - Android project is a software stack for mobile devices including an operating system, middleware and key applications. - Softpedia
How to Run Android Applications on Ubuntu - Step-by-step tutorial with screenshots - Softpedia
Saving Android Apps. to SD card - Android Forums

Knowing virtually nothing about Android myself, I would conclude you are looking for a Debian distro with the 2.6 kernel (but prior to 2.6.33), possibly sid; and it wouldn't hurt to use a linux distro related to Ubuntu in order to have ready access to its repositories. These are just preliminary and tentative findings pointing me in the general direction of the likes of MEPIS, antiX, sidux, Mint, and others.
-- Hint: go with the lighter GUIs on a laptop (i.e. stay away from KDE and Gnome) --

Take it from there, my fellow newbie!
Best wishes!

[nhazelwood78]

Thank you very much. I have a readied copy of Fedora 12, but might be looking at the actual Ubuntu version.