[Bubbafat]

I was contemplating it since i have been accustomed to Dos and windows my entire life, and i barelyy remember dos. I used to love my commadore though

But what are some advantages to it? Might give it a go in dual boot.

 

[Omegainf]

You don't even need to install it, most linux distributions come in live cds or dvds so you can try them with no harm to your system. I've been using linux for 2 years and I'm really happy with it!

I recommend you give Linux Mint 7 a try: Main Page - Linux Mint

 

[DoktorSeven]

Try it as a live CD or even in a virtual machine (VirtualBox) first. That way you can mess around with it as much as you like with little to no danger of messing anything else up through inexperience.

Definitely worth trying, the advantages are insane amounts of customization and better security (though you're still going to be in danger of the worst security hole of all, the person sitting in front of the computer, which is true with anything). Definitely has a bit of a learning curve though, even with the most user-friendly distributions like Ubuntu.

Tons of native emulators and even a few native games (mostly FPS) await when you're ready to go to it for real, though, and it's fast and nice when properly set up.

 

[Cheesus]

And if a LiveCD is just to slow for you, there's always Wubi.

While I'm not exactly a Linux fan, everything is worth a shot at least once.

 

[Bubbafat]

Ehh. im just gonna make it easy. I have a spare 80gb, i am just gonna install Mint straight onto that. Let people know how it goes.

 

[neoxalucard]

Try Ubuntu also, the cd or dvd that you use to install will put you right in the OS before you start installing it.

 

[Bubbafat]

Alrighty. Am i gonna have any driver issues?

 

[neoxalucard]

Alrighty. Am i gonna have any driver issues?

Do you have an ATI video card?

 

[Squall-Leonhart]

i'll try ubuntu again then they ditch ALSA/Pulse audio and use OSS4.

 

[gamefreak94]

Linux is good....but Windows is better

Anyway, if you just want to play around with it then just install it onto a virtual machine. That's what I did, with the intention of getting used to it and then finally dual-booting it with XP and Win 7. But I came to the conclusion that it lacks some crucial features and you can't help but notice the software library is rather limited.

Oh, and there's the annoying CLI you have to use many times to get tasks done. Come on man! This is the 21st century!

 

[Bubbafat]

Do you have an ATI video card?

I currently have an nvidia, Geforce 6200LE i beileve. Very old agp card lol.

 

[Ignis]

If you're a masochist you should definitely try linux out. It'll hurt so bad you'll enjoy every minute.

 

[Mad]

That videocard will work just fine, even compiz works great on it.

 

[gamefreak94]

Compiz Fusion looks really awesome in YouTube videos, but when you use it, you'll realize that in terms of practicality Aero is better. I mean, what kind of "effect" is it that you can draw flames on your desktop by holding down 2 keys and using the mouse? oO

It's really unprofessional.

 

[P_RePTiLe]

Ubuntu could be a nice first start, but then if you want to learn more and build your linux system a bit more from scratch, you could try slackware.

Or Archlinux-ftp-64-bit if you want to be very cutting-edge, since it is aimed towards frequent updates and fetches the installation-packages from an ftp-server.
It is what i am tweaking around with now, but you have to download and configure X and a desktop-mananger for yourself, fix the partitions, mounting, fstab and so on

 

[krissgjeng]

linux can offer great customisation, from different kinds of DE to different types of menus and themes, you can also get many kind of widgets like screenlets. there's also many distros to choose from depending on what you want.

i just started using Archlinux, and i'm liking it so far, you have to use the CLI a bit, but thats not necceserrily bad, you get to know more about linux and learn to do things sometimes faster, and after installing yaourt you can download most packages you may want, there are many up-to-date emulators, among them dolphin, pcsx, mupen64+. all in all it's a good distro if you like to customize, but not so much for new users, ubuntu or linux mint would be best to start with.

Compiz Fusion looks really awesome in YouTube videos, but when you use it, you'll realize that in terms of practicality Aero is better. I mean, what kind of "effect" is it that you can draw flames on your desktop by holding down 2 keys and using the mouse?

It's really unprofessional.

compiz-fusion has many gimmicky and useful features, i for one like to have a choice. currently i use a burn effect when i close windows and transporter effect when i minimize windows, useful? not particulary but i like the effects, also the 3d cube is useful for me, it gives me easy access to more desktops where i can have a browser in one and for example a movie or a document in another.

 

[DoktorSeven]

Compiz Fusion looks really awesome in YouTube videos, but when you use it, you'll realize that in terms of practicality Aero is better. I mean, what kind of "effect" is it that you can draw flames on your desktop by holding down 2 keys and using the mouse? oO

It's really unprofessional.

More than what was said above, Compiz has that stuff if you want it, but normal (sane) Compiz settings is just subtle things that are about what Aero offers. If you install Compiz you're not going to instantly get a bunch of these "unprofessional" features, just the professional ones.

And if you WANT to be "unprofessional", you can enable them. Choice is good!
:thumb:

 

[P_RePTiLe]

There is actually nothing "professional" about desktop-effects or 3d-effects on the desktop in my opinion.
Regardless if it's aero or compis fusion/xgl a.s.o
But as Krissjeng and DoktorSeven says, it is always optional

Function over Form, but when the functions are all in place and if you have spare resources - then you can put some "flare" into the equation if you want to.

 

[nanaya]

yes you can try slackware, arch, gentoo or even LFS if you feel like spending most of your time trying to make it run rather than running the OS itself (and at the same time gaining enormous knowledge or frustration...)
otherwise you might better off to start with Ubuntu or any linux newbie friendly distro
see distrowatch to familiarize yourself with plethora of linux offering

 

[gamefreak94]

I'm surprised no one mentioned Debian or Fedora. They're pretty easy to use for beginners too (I've used Fedora 10 on VM for some time).