First time user with linux

Ehstii · Mar 21, 2008

alright, so as it says this will be my first time using linux. and i just wanted to post this thread to get some good ideas as to which version i should run and how it is also installed.

im guessing its installed just as any other OS would be installed but if you could, please give me some ideas on which version linux.

and what are some benifits and/or disadvantages to using linux?

thanks in advance =]

panchoman · Mar 21, 2008

i'd recommend ubuntu 7.10 x86 because its friendly and windows like.

Solaris17 · Mar 21, 2008

suse/ubuntu/fedora

zatblast · Mar 22, 2008

not going to claim to be an expert, still a noob myself... ubuntu is nice however on my laptop it worked once and was never able to get it bootable again ((litterally 30 tries)) gave up and switched to fedora core 8 which has been great... just havent gotten around to getting mywireless card working on it yet

but main problems you might run into is the occasional problem with getting hardware to function properly, but to be honest there are many tutorials out there on how to get most hardware working, and many many people that are willing to help get it to work..

jbunch07 · Mar 22, 2008

My dad uses fedora redhat he like it and it looks pretty nice!

Wile E · Mar 22, 2008

Add another vote for Fedora. It's both noob friendly, and it's also geek friendly when you reach that level.

Frick · Mar 22, 2008

+1 for Ubuntu , for that's what I'm using now. There are massive help to get on the Internet to. Awesome community, but I guess that's what the distros have in common.

DSL (Damn Small Linux) was extremely impressive though. If you have a very old system I'd vote that one.

A Cheese Danish · Mar 22, 2008

DSL or Fedora. Although I found Fedora to be easier to use

jonmcc33 · Mar 30, 2008

Wile E said:
Add another vote for Fedora. It's both noob friendly, and it's also geek friendly when you reach that level.

The 2200BG Intel wireless didn't work with WPA2 right out of the box. Not that noob friendly.

OpenSUSE 10.3 however? Worked flawlessly.

strick94u · Mar 30, 2008

Gos is a great build runs super fast and clean and is friendly to newer hardware. It's the fastest os I have seen booting from cd also. I want to say its what comes on asus ee laptops. simple to setup its dual boot also at least so far let you know soon as its done decide to try that tonight :laugh:

so far smooth sailing.

strick94u · Mar 30, 2008

Ok install was flawless runs lightning fast Xp is undisturbed except for 30 gigs missing from the 250 hdd. took 30 minutes to setup

SirKeldon · Mar 30, 2008

I'll say completely Ubuntu, at least, for this moment, since they started they're improving their distro and actually it's going flawless, specially on auto-detection of hardware, distro installation and then of course, installation and administration of the packages, simply works and sometimes works a lot better than Windows. The "deb" packages they use slightly better than "rpm" based arch as Fedora or OpenSUSE (though Yast2 it's a great app), also the dependance system it's better as well as some administration features.

Since Ubuntu is winning popularity from 2 years ago they improved a lot on developing a super-easy distro for the begginers and more geek-friendly than anyone since it's based on the old-kickass Debian, as a 9 years GNU/Linux user, i tried several distros and never found anyone more easy, solid and reliable than Debian for the mid and the high user ... so when Ubuntu came out, i gave them a chance, it's a "Debian" that has grown well, without their philosophy of course, but it has been oriented to the newb, beginner, mid, mid-high, high and even some kind of geek. Also there are tons of tutorials, plugins and small scripts on the web for doing practically anything, for Debian and specially for Ubuntu, the community has done a good job.

So my choice will be clearly Ubuntu, fast, quick, reliable, solid, best documented ... clearly UBUNTU!

ps: download the amd64 version so you'll enjoy a full-64 bits operating system

Wile E · Mar 30, 2008

jonmcc33 said:
The 2200BG Intel wireless didn't work with WPA2 right out of the box. Not that noob friendly.

OpenSUSE 10.3 however? Worked flawlessly.

Not everyone has that wireless card. No distro is 100% friendly for 100% of the people straight out of the box. I stand by my assessment of Fedora as a noob friendly distro.

ex_reven · Mar 30, 2008

Wile E said:
Not everyone has that wireless card. No distro is 100% friendly for 100% of the people straight out of the box. I stand by my assessment of Fedora as a noob friendly distro.

XP64 still doesnt and never will support my dlink wireless card.
Bastards. :roll:

xfire · Mar 30, 2008

Wile E said:
Not everyone has that wireless card. No distro is 100% friendly for 100% of the people straight out of the box. I stand by my assessment of Fedora as a noob friendly distro.

Most of them are as long as your Hardware works out of the box. Otherwise its Linux s**ks

jonmcc33 · Mar 30, 2008

Wile E said:
Not everyone has that wireless card. No distro is 100% friendly for 100% of the people straight out of the box. I stand by my assessment of Fedora as a noob friendly distro.

That was pretty much the standard wireless card for Centrino enabled laptops for quite some time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrino So in fact, a lot of people have that wireless card.

Given that the 2200BG does support 802.11b and 802.11g and it's an Intel product I would see no reason why any distro wouldn't fully support it. Fedora Core 8 does support recognizing it but only WEP out of the box. My wireless network requirement is WPA2 and no less. That was what FC8 didn't work with at all.

I consider myself to be a Linux noob so given the efforts that I have taken over several distros I wouldn't put FC8 at the top of any list for ease of use.

http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

Even DistroWatch doesn't consider it to be one of the easiest to use. Instead they put it along with OpenSUSE for "middle-road" which means some configuration required. The only problem I'd really put with OpenSUSE 10.3 is that I needed to add other repositories. Of course most "noob" people can just use the DVD as a repository, which is enabled by default.

Wile E · Mar 31, 2008

Well, I disagree with Distro watch and with you. I didn't start using Fedora after I already new how to use Linux, I used it as a beginner. I tried it after numerous failed attempts with Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Debian, Suse, and a bunch of others I can't even remember. Fedora was the easiest to configure and use. So, a "professional" opinion of a site like Distrowatch means little to me, due to my contradictory experiences.

It's the little things that make Fedora noob friendly. Such as misconfiguring the Xorg.conf file. In most distros, if you screw it up, it fails to boot to a gui, Ubuntu included (used as an example due to it's popularity in being recommended to beginners). Whereas Fedora rebuilds it for you. Fedora also comes out of the box with Gnome, KDE, and XFCE as desktop options. Sure, you can download and configure alternate Desk environments for other distros, but that isn't exactly noob friendly either, and often times your install can break on upgrade when you do manage to get another environment running.

All that said, it's like I said before, not a single distro on this planet will be noob friendly 100% of the time. I've tried dozens, and I have the most success with Fedora. Somebody else's mileage may vary, but that doesn't mean it isn't noob friendly. If one distro doesn't work for you, you move on to the next, but don't try to discredit the one that didn't work for you, just because you didn't find it to your liking.

PS: For the purpose of this thread, you point is moot anyway. I somehow doubt the OP has an Intel 2200BG wireless adapter in his desktop.

Zedicus · Mar 31, 2008

Mepis. it blows all the other out of the water. seriously, especially if you need easy to set up wireless. give mepis a try, its my favorite beginer distro.

its on my fiance's laptop.

System Name	Betty
Processor	AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Windsor 3.0GHz @ 3.16(weak i know, waiting on better HSF)
Motherboard	GIGABYTE GA-MA69G-S3H AM2 690G HDMI
Cooling	Standard heatsink
Memory	A-DATA 2GB(2x1GB dual channel) DDR2 800
Video Card(s)	EVGA GeForce 7900GS 256MB
Storage	2x250GB Seagate SataII, 2x250GB Maxtor SataII, 1x120GB Maxtor SataII
Display(s)	22" Widescreen Acer LCD Flat Panel Monitor
Case	AMS CF-6129BKS Black w/Silver bezel Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Audio Device(s)	OB
Power Supply	Rosewill RP550-2-S ATX12V v2.01 550W Power Supply
Software	Windows XP SP2, Adobe Master Collection CS3, WoW, COD4, Cubase LE, Office 2007, Bit Comet, & more...
Benchmark Scores	3DMark06 - 4710

Processor	Amd Athlon X2 4600+ Windsor(90nm) EE(65W) @2.9-3.0 @1.45
Motherboard	Biostar Tforce [Nvidia] 550
Cooling	Thermaltake Blue Orb-- bunch of other fans here and there....
Memory	2 gigs (2x1gb) of patriot ddr2 800 @ 4-4-4-12-2t
Video Card(s)	Sapphire X1950pro Pci-E x16 @stock@stock on stock
Storage	Seagate 7200.11 250gb Drive, WD raptors (30/40) in Raid 0
Display(s)	ANCIENT 15" sony lcd, bought it when it was like 500 bucks
Case	Apevia X-plorer blue/black
Audio Device(s)	Onboard- Why get an sound card when you can hum??
Power Supply	Antec NeoHe 550-manufactured by seasonic -replacement to the discontinued smart power series
Software	Windows XP pro SP2 -- vista is still crap

System Name	Rocinante
Processor	I9 14900KS
Motherboard	EVGA z690 Dark KINGPIN (modded BIOS)
Cooling	EK-AIO Elite 360 D-RGB
Memory	64GB Gskill Trident Z5 DDR5 6000 @6400
Video Card(s)	MSI SUPRIM Liquid X 4090
Storage	1x 500GB 980 Pro \| 1x 1TB 980 Pro \| 1x 8TB Corsair MP400
Display(s)	Odyssey OLED G9 G95SC
Case	Lian Li o11 Evo Dynamic White
Audio Device(s)	Moondrop S8's on Schiit Hel 2e
Power Supply	Bequiet! Power Pro 12 1500w
Mouse	Lamzu Atlantis mini (White)
Keyboard	Monsgeek M3 Lavender, Akko Crystal Blues
VR HMD	Quest 3
Software	Windows 11
Benchmark Scores	I dont have time for that.

Processor	E8400@3.0
Motherboard	Asus P5N-D
Cooling	mx-2//Artic freezer 7 pro
Memory	2gb Corsair XMS2 800mhz
Video Card(s)	MSI 8800gt
Storage	Seagate 320 7200.10
Display(s)	Syncmaster 220WM
Case	Antec P182
Audio Device(s)	Motherboard
Power Supply	Corsair HX620
Software	XP pro (32bit)

Processor	i5-2500k
Motherboard	ASRock z68 pro3-m
Cooling	Corsair A70
Memory	Kingston HyperX 8GB 2 x 4GB 1600mhz
Storage	OCZ Agility3 60GB(boot) 2x320GB Raid0(storage)
Display(s)	Samsung 24" 1920x1200
Case	Custom
Power Supply	PC Power and Cooling 750w
Software	Win 7 x64

First time user with linux

Ehstii

New Member

panchoman

Sold my stars!

Solaris17

Super Dainty Moderator

zatblast

New Member

jbunch07

New Member

Wile E

Power User

Frick

Fishfaced Nincompoop

A Cheese Danish

jonmcc33

New Member

strick94u

New Member

strick94u

New Member

SirKeldon

Wile E

Power User

ex_reven

New Member

xfire

jonmcc33

New Member

Wile E

Power User

Zedicus

System Name	The ClusterF**k
Processor	980X @ 4Ghz
Motherboard	Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 BIOS F12
Cooling	MCR-320, DDC-1 pump w/Bitspower res top (1/2" fittings), Koolance CPU-360
Memory	3x2GB Mushkin Redlines 1600Mhz 6-8-6-24 1T
Video Card(s)	Evga GTX 580
Storage	Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB, 2xSeagate 320GB RAID0; 2xSeagate 3TB; 2xSamsung 2TB; Samsung 1.5TB
Display(s)	HP LP2475w 24" 1920x1200 IPS
Case	Technofront Bench Station
Audio Device(s)	Auzentech X-Fi Forte into Onkyo SR606 and Polk TSi200's + RM6750
Power Supply	ENERMAX Galaxy EVO EGX1250EWT 1250W
Software	Win7 Ultimate N x64, OSX 10.8.4

System Name	Black MC in Tokyo
Processor	Ryzen 5 5600
Motherboard	Asrock B450M-HDV
Cooling	Be Quiet! Pure Rock 2
Memory	2 x 16GB Kingston Fury 3400mhz
Video Card(s)	XFX 6950XT Speedster MERC 319
Storage	Kingston A400 240GB \| WD Black SN750 2TB \|WD Blue 1TB x 2 \| Toshiba P300 2TB \| Seagate Expansion 8TB
Display(s)	Samsung U32J590U 4K + BenQ GL2450HT 1080p
Case	Fractal Design Define R4
Audio Device(s)	Line6 UX1 + some headphones, Nektar SE61 keyboard
Power Supply	Corsair RM850x v3
Mouse	Logitech G602
Keyboard	Cherry MX Board 1.0 TKL Brown
VR HMD	Acer Mixed Reality Headset
Software	Windows 10 Pro
Benchmark Scores	Rimworld 4K ready!

System Name	HTPC\|\|Lenovo IBM ThinkPad
Processor	AMD Phenom II x4 965 stock 3.4GHz\|\|Intel C2D T9300 @ 2.5GHz
Motherboard	Zotac 890GX-ITX WiFi\|\|Lenovo 8918CTO
Cooling	Stock 3x 120's\|\|Stock stuff
Memory	8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 6-6-6-15\|\|3GB DDR2
Video Card(s)	Asus 3870x2\|\|nVidia Quadro NVS 140M
Storage	1TB Seagate Barracuda, 1x 2TB WD EARX \|\|Hitachi 160GB 7200RPM
Display(s)	Samsung T260HD\|\|
Case	SilverStone Grandia GD05\|\|
Audio Device(s)	on-board\|\|on-board
Power Supply	Cooler Master 450W\|\|6-cell
Software	Windows 7 Pro x64\|\|Windows 7 Pro x64/Linux Mint x64

System Name	BLACK
Processor	Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 @ 3.2GHz
Motherboard	Abit IP35-E @ 1600FSB
Cooling	Thermalright XP-90 w/92mm ADDA fan
Memory	4GB Hynix DDR2-667 @ 800MHz
Video Card(s)	PowerColor Radeon X1900XT
Storage	(2) 320GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10
Display(s)	Samsung 225BW
Case	Antec Nine Hundred
Audio Device(s)	Audigy2 ZS Platinum
Power Supply	Corsair HX520
Software	Windows Vista Business x64 SP1

System Name	CrashMaster 17.2/ crashmaster(M) ROG
Processor	CD2 E8400@4.0 ghz/ i5 430@ 2.577 mhz
Motherboard	EVGA 680i/ patogram inc intel north bridge
Cooling	Monsoon vigor gaming II/ fan and vents
Memory	4 gig OCZ pc8500 DDR2/ 4 gigs ddr3
Video Card(s)	2 X EVGA 8800gts 512 735/1045/nvidia 360 gtsm gddr5
Storage	2 X WD 150 Raptors Raid 0+600gig usb/ 500 gig hitachi
Display(s)	Samsung 2232 bw Sync Master 22" HD/16.9 inch asus
Case	Enermax uber chakra/ asus republic of gamers
Audio Device(s)	Creative SB X-FI 5.1 speakers/creative eax 4.0
Power Supply	OCZ extream Gaming 650 watt 4x18a/ external
Software	Dos 6.22/ win 3.11 for networks/ms bob server
Benchmark Scores	3dmark06 18,201/10601 3dmark05 23,943/not run Aquamark 218,094/not run

System Name	The Phoenix (rev. 3.0)
Processor	Intel Core i9 9900K @ 4.9GHz (1.18V)
Motherboard	ASUS TUF Z390 PRO-GAMING
Cooling	Custom Full Loop w/EKWB & Swiftech components
Memory	32GB Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 3200MHz (C15)
Video Card(s)	MSI GTX 1080 SeaHawk X EK @ 2.15GHz/5.5GHz
Storage	Samsung 970 EVO+ (2x500GB) + Toshiba X300 (4TB)
Display(s)	LG 29UM65-P (2560x1080 @ 75 Hz)
Case	Thermaltake Core V51
Audio Device(s)	Razer Kraken 7.1 & Scarlett 2i4 w/M-AUDIO BX5-D2
Power Supply	Corsair RM750 (ver. 2019)
Mouse	Logitech G700s
Keyboard	Razer Blackwidow Chroma V2
Software	MacOS 10.13.6 "High Sierra" & Windows 10 Pro x64

System Name	MSI apache ge62 2qd
Processor	intel i7 5700HQ
Memory	12 Gb
Video Card(s)	GTX960m
Storage	1TB
Display(s)	Dell 24'

Processor	dual G34 6128he
Motherboard	h8dg6
Cooling	OEM
Memory	48gb DDR3 ECC REG
Video Card(s)	onboard
Storage	12x 3tb 4x 15k sas
Display(s)	crappy lcd
Case	chenbro rackmouunt
Audio Device(s)	onboard
Power Supply	seasonic 3x redundant
Software	ProxMox