it makes me curious. reccomend some distros for someone whos only programming experience is failed attempts at html, failed attemts at cogging, and a reasonable grasp of forum tags. (which i know doesnt count)

You'd be fine with Ubuntu.

I used Ubuntu for a short while. I don't have it installed anymore, since the Windows 7 beta installed and is working properly. Installation is easy, and there are already plenty of drivers for common hardware.

What Algar said.

I have NO experience with anything at all.
I have been having some troubles with Windows crashing. After not caring about Linux, and someone's post here about it, I saw "Ubuntu" mentioned in it. Downloaded the 700 MB file, burned it, replaced windows with it. Working great.

Installing programs is a bit weird... I have not got the hang of it yet.
I'm going to read up to figure everything out. But even though I don't know anything about it, I like it A LOT better than windows so far. No stupid crap.

Edit - I have windows 7 installed on my other computer as of 20 minutes ago. It was my mom's computer so the XP windows and HD was full of garbage, and it took 5 minutes to boot. Rather than trying to get rid of all the spyware and garbage, I just installed the Windows 7 I was going to put on my computer before I put Ubuntu on.

Both computers are running 10x better than before.

I can't give you a serious suggestion unless you post what you want to do.

Are you looking for a desktop-friendly Windows replacement? Are you planning on running a server? Do you want to learn about Unix and Linux system administration? Do you want to be able to customize absolutely everything on your computer exactly the way you want it? Do you want to spend a month watching text scroll by your monitor before you can use it for anything?

Ehh, you aren't honestly about to suggest that he use Gentoo, are you?


Thats nothing to be ashamed of. I've been failing at cogging routinely since 1999.

My only cog editing was editing names/numbers to hack in MP after being accused of hacking numerous times when I wasn't. I figured if I was going to be called a cheater I mind as well be called a cheater. (Though everyone called everyone better than themself a cheater on the Zone.)

Repeater Conc rifle ftw!

Though I did have to download the mirrors of death (Is that was it was called? I forget, but it sucked ***. After being MoDed a couple times I was like "Fight fire with fire!!"

For the most part installing programs in Ubuntu is just selecting the package in Synaptic and clicking install isn't it?

Then again, I haven't used Ubuntu extensively since like. Hoary Hedgehog. Whenever that was. (2006? I think?). This was back when it couldn't read NTFS out of the box. So it's probably a lot more mature now. I have an install of 8.04 (gah I keep forgetting the release names) on my flash drive and my external that I occasionally boot off of but I don't really use it.

Can it read NTFS now? That'd be pretty slick.

I don't know, maybe, I just started using this within 24 hours.

I've only tried to install two things so far, VLC and a program for burning CDs.
For VLC, I had to search for it through an option in the system menu, and select 3 out of like 20 options and click "download" or something like that.
For the CD burner, I download a rar file and I did not see a typical windows .exe file which would install it. The read-me had instructions about command console instructions for installing and I was like "wtf"

Yes. Read and write.

Yeah I think so. I recall when I booted off my flash drive I was able to see my Windows drive and go through it (which is NTFS).

Whoops gbk beat me to it.


Squirrel King:
For the most part, to install a program you find it in Synaptic (it's under System) and then you check it and click install (sounds like you did it for VLC). Synaptic is just a graphical front-end for apt (which does the same thing -- lets you install a specified package)

Wow. I'll have to play with it some more, then.

Is there a linux distro built specifically for HTPC stuff? I like the way Windows 7 handles things..but it's not going to be free.

Yea... I'll try using the same thing I searched VLC for. But I would like to know more about this.

When something mentions entering command files, how do I get to that menu?
All the read-me mentioned was entering certain commands. How do I get to that interface though?

So you guys got me thinking about this enough to boot off my flash drive and try running it for a day on my laptop to see if I can live with it (mainly because I'm just so used to specific stuff like Launchy on Windows that speeds up my workflow) :p One question though -- does anyone know how to remap keys? As you may or may not remember, my 's' key on my laptop is broken. On Windows I'm using a hotkey/script program to make capslock act as my 's' key -- I need to do the same thing in Ubuntu, because having 's' in my clipboard and pressing Ctrl+V every time is just really stupid.

Squirrel king: System->Terminal (or it might be Applications->Accessories->Terminal now, forgot)

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UsingTheTerminal

your distro of choice and mythtv.

Works pretty much the same way as Windows + Media Center.

yup, apps>accessories>terminal.

thanks!

There's Mythbuntu and a few others.

main use would be desktop replacement i guess, internet browsing and media playing.

also i have windows 7, i used it for about a week, got fed up with not being able to kill hung processes (like explorer) and having to hard reboot, that i've gone back to xp for the moment.

I'm loving eeebuntu on my EEE PC. I love when things just work. I'd much prefer using ubuntu on my next desktop, but I still want my games.

its true. it happens.

that's been happening to me with firefox on my xp machine. can't kill the process. if you log out, and log back in, firefox is still there. it's dumb.

Even worse, if you reboot, ITS STILL THERE.

this

i'm dual booting vista and intrepid ibex (ubuntu 8.10) on my dell inspiron 1525. works well. i've found ubuntu can be a complete replacement for vista these days. there's plenty of software available to replace what you're doing in windows. and it does read my ntfs partitions nicely. i don't have to copy my media files over to the linux partition to play them. very nice. i've even found the driver for the on-board wi-fi chip in ubuntu seems to use the hardware better. i just barely accessed an open wi-fi connection near where i work. i rebooted into ubuntu and the signal strength was quite a bit higher giving me a much more consistent connection. and that's from the same desk.

the only glitch i ran into was the hdmi driver. video on the tv and the monitor gets all buggy and stuttery when i try to watch movies on my tv through hdmi. i didn't investigate this at all and it may have been a simple fix. i didn't care enough.

other than that it's a short and shallow learning curve to switch. i say that with some experience. starting with red hat 6.1 right through to fedora core 4 (i skipped 3 for some reason), debian a couple of times, gentoo once, suse once, mandrake (i triple booted mandrake win 2k and red hat 7.x for awhile). kde gnome and enlightenment. all the browsers. all the email clients. chat, irc, ftp, text editors... i've tried all kinds of stuff as a user, not a geek. very rarely did i open a terminal and start typing. admittedly sometimes it's easier to but i didn't like doing it. mind you back in the day you didn't have a choice. getting X to run on slackware was frustrating.

installing and using ubuntu is very easy. they've come a long way.

Can I install Ubuntu after I've installed 7.., and is it easy to pick up network drives from an XP system?

Why wouldn't you be able to?
Anyways, I got 7 on one computer and Ubuntu on the other. Both are cooler than XP.

when setting up a multi boot system you always want to install linux last. windows will kill the option to select linux when booting.
for example, i have vista and ubuntu. ubuntu installed (****... i don't even know the boot loader it installed. lol.) so i can choose between windows and linux on boot. if you install windows after you install linux it will install it's own boot loader and you'll only have a choice of other windows installs to boot to, if they exist (my oldest boy has the choice to boot to vista or windows 7).

Ubuntu's installer will automatically resize your Windows partition and get you all set up. Or you can, obviously, use another hard drive. Windows should also have the ability to resize its partition in Disk Management if you'd like to shrink it that way. Ubuntu also asks if you want to import any of your settings from Windows. (Not sure if this works in 7)

The master boot record will then be set up with GRUB. It should automatically give you both options on boot.

I got a problem with Linux ... weird bars are appearing near the top and bottom of the screen.
sometimes they will appear around other things too.. what's up with that?

It didn't start off like this.

Yeah, it worked perfectly- only issue is it defaults to Linux and I'd prefer it to default to 7.

I can't figure out how to assign a static IP address- I want to set a static IP and a gateway so I can get it online. Hmm.

i mean the app is still open, still locked up.

you *******

Just for the record, if you want ubuntu, but you have an older computer and want a lighter-weight interface, give xubuntu a try. It runs xfce instead of gnome which is nice.

And installing software isn't as easy as clicking some checkboxes in a gui when you have to add another source (like SK had to do for vlc). Then you probably should have some understanding of the way the package repositories work (although this is still arguably less complicated than visiting 30 different websites for each of your 30 desired programs).

https://help.ubuntu.com/8.10/switching/dualboot-custom.html <-- for JLee

Edit: Well, that figures. I go to install gedit and I need an internet connection...which I won't have until I figure out how to give this a gateway.

Edit: found this...woot

System > Preferences > Network Configuration

Select network, click edit. allow keyring access, IPv4 tab, drop down menu, manual.

thats just from me looking for it for you...

I tried that the other day and the settings wouldn't hold for some reason..just did it manually and an ifconfig says it's right, but the GUI disagrees. Rebooting.

Edit: I can now ping my other system, but no internet access..and my network icon in the taskbar has disappeared. This sucks.

http://www.linuxmce.com/

That looks like a failure of compositing. The areas where you're getting corruption are supposed to be drop shadows. Do you have Compiz (System->Appearance->Desktop Effects) turned on? What kind of graphics card do you have? Ubuntu has great support forums if you want to hunt around to see if anyone else has your problem.