Ready to say goodbye to windows

[questio verum]

I've flirted with the idea of switching to linux for a long time now, but for one reason or another I always held back from commiting. There was the reluctance to learning linux commands, the question of being able to work on and share files with friends and coworkers, the (now irrelevant) question of being able to run any of the popular games and, I guess, just a resistance to change.

Now I've reached the point where I'm so disgusted with the whole windows world that I'm ready to take the plunge. I'm tired of being coerced into ever more resource-consuming bloatware in the form of upgrades and updates and protection. I don't think there's a single piece of commercial software written for windows that performs as advertised without infecting my machine with some form of malware. The time and effort required to keep windows functional just doesn't justify the returns. And now I can't purchase a system from any major retailer without being bludgeoned into joining the latest exercise in wasting time and resources - Vista.

Forgive my ranting, but I've reached critical mass. I'm ready to take the steps necessary to rid myself of the MS affliction. I have a few questions though. What distributions are a good solid starting point? I've loaded SuSe and Red Hat on systems in the past, but after some idle puttering they were neglected. I think the last time I loaded a distro was SuSe 7.1 or something like that. I remember it had a program included that allowed me to run MS Word. Which distro's are truly representative of the linux experience? It seems to me there's been a push to soften the shock of learning linux. Wouldn't it just be better to just jump into it instead of trying to ease my way in slowly? If there's anyone here who's gone through this, how did you push yourself past the urge to relapse back into the familiar? Any recommendations for reading?

THX!

[oz]

Welcome to the forums!

Check the link in my signature for lots of good information on getting started with Linux. Don't forget that you can always dual boot if you need to keep Windows around for a while.

Have fun with your Linux experience.

oz

[wsurritte]

I got my start by buying several disros cheap from Frozentech (to avoid downloads on my dial-up), and playing with the ones I liked, or the ones I could run. Fedora seems to be my favorite, (because I already have a little Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 experience), and it has everything I need. Opening M$ Office files isn't hard w/ OpenOffice, which is included on Fedora and most every other larger distro I've seen. The good part about linux also, I run Fedora 6 on a system that bairly ran XP, and it works great.

wsurritte

[questio verum]

Thx,
I've started by d/l'ing Ubuntu, but I can't get the checksum to match. I'm pulling it again, right now, from the S. African site. Five attempts at N.A. mirrors haven't worked.

I'm still running a pre-SATA box w/ a switching drive controller; so keeping XP around, if needed, is painless. Got any recommendations for a good command & syntax reference?

[bigtomrodney]

If you want to get a handle on BASH you can check out

http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/

To be fair it's mostly up to you how much you use the command line and scripting. Ubuntu is a distro that 99% of the time just works. Even when it comes to support you'll generally just be copying and pasting commands from a web browser to the terminal. If you have any DOS experience you'll find Bash to be great. It'll be familiar in some ways but once you get a handle on it you'll see that it's infinitely more powerful. Well, almost inifinite

[questio verum]

Whoo-hoo! Got it sorted out.

Very minimal user input during install. Not sure if that's a good thing yet. So many questions, but I'm sure I'll find answers. Install time compared very favorably to WinXP, and without multiple reboots and missing driver dialogs. Is it just wishful thinking, or do I hear a marketing rep in Redmond cursing under his breath.

Thanks for the feedback, guys. I can feel those chains loosening already.

qv

[themonandman]

Most distributions are pretty similar. I definitely recommend getting a distro with some sort of package management. It saves a lot of time. Nice to see you switching but I also recommend the underlying reason for GNU/Linux systems The Free Software Definition - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF) . In my opinion the philosophy is more important than the product.

[wsurritte]

I haven't used Ubuntu since version 5.10, because after that I never could get it to run. I cant get Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or Xubuntu 6 or 7 to run on any of my hardware. I mainly use RHEL 3, Fedora 6, and Damn Small Linux. I like and used to use Puppy Linux alot until I lost the CD, and can't afford to buy one, and don't have the ability to download it over my dial-up. If you can get it to work, Ubuntu is a great distro. The install time for Ubuntu is comparible to XP.

wsurritte