Having nothing but problems since I started using xp. Am too dumb to be involved in "real" Linux. Linspire sounds like my level. Want advice from real Linuxer's if Linspire is a good choice for me. My first problem is that I do not know the language. I looked at the Linspire warehouse and everything is labeled with words that do not mean anything to me. Is there a dictionary or some sort of learning tool so I can function, operating Lindows/Linspire. Will appreciate all the advice I can get. Thanks in advance for any help offered. Oh, ya, I already know that Lindows is NOT Linux.

Don't let people tell you that its not cause it certainly is a Linux Distro.. some just can't grasp the concept that someone with money created a distro derived from another distro (debian) and made it very easy for anyone to use. Thought Lindows does some things different from the traditional distributions out there, don't let people fool you in telling you that its not Linux, cause it certainly is a Linux distro.

Also look at Mandrake as a very new comer's to Linux distro, very easy to use and install.

Try SimplyMepis, Debian based distribution. Im sure Lindows is fine though, I've never used it but I see alot of people getting ridiculed for using it. I dont know if you can truly learn or appreciation Linux using Linspire or not...what kind of problems are you having with XP that you want to make a switch because I cant tell you how many times Ive seen someone make the switch only to curse that they cant understand how to configure something on Linux. Your best be would be to dual boot so and / OR try using a boot CD to try out Linux. Mepis and Knoppix are good distro's that boot right from the CD>

Welcome to Linuxquestions.

The first thing I would like to say is that you are not dumb; you are simply not familiar with a specific technology. Asking questions is good way to learn new things.

From what I can see Linspire looks fairly straight forward as a linux OS. Linspire uses KDE as its windows desktop manager. A desktop manager is a Graphical User Interface (also refered to as a GUI) similar to Microsoft's windows. KDE is very similar in layout and function to the windows desktop.

If you want to see what the KDE desktop looks like you should go to http://kde.org/screenshots/ to check them out.

The operating system underneath the GUI should do all of the things you are already familiar with in windows such as: save things to the hard drive, save things to a CD-RW drive, Hardware stuff.

I am not sure if you are using a dial up modem but since linspire is debian based that should not be an issue.

If you do not wish to install the software yourself you can purchase a computer with the linspire OS already installed and optimized for the hardware on which it runs.

Don't expect windows base software to run on linspire. There are windows emulators but performance is usually an issue.

If you have more specific questions let us know.

Good Luck,

Thorn

There are also some good books your could look out for the next time you go to the library. one of the books that helped me get started was Teach Yourself Linux by Robert Billing

I'm not familiar with Lindows or Linspire but I have used Mandrake and SUSE Linux and both, I feel, are great for newcomers to linux. The installers for both distributions are very straight forward and will configure most of your computer for you. With these two distros you are very likely not going to need the shell (similar to command prompt but much more functional and very heavily used by most linux users) nearly everything can be configured by the GUI. To just browse the internet, read your email, chat on msn, etc and write the odd letter then there is next to no learning involved just simple things like the start menu has been replaced by an Applications or 'K' menu dependant on which desktop manager you choose. When you start doing advanced configuration of the system which requires that you edit text files is when most windows users start to run into problems. One major downside to linux is that there aren't many games available, but this is only a problem if you are a gamer.

Don't sell yourself short Dick! Everybody's got to start somewhere. The Linux guru's amongst us aren't genetically superior or anything (well, perhaps one or two), they just got stuck in and gave it a go.

No matter what distro route you choose, I highly recommend you do the following things:
1) Ensure you have other operating systems available. By this, I mean either set up a dual-boot computer (when you can choose to load either Linux or another operating system such as Windows), or have another computer running Windows readily available. This will make things much easier, because if you have problems you will still be able to access the internet and get help. A "live-CD" version of Linux such as Knoppix, as others have mentioned, is handy here because if you mess up you can just remove the CD and restart normally. And believe me, you will screw something up at some point (been there, done that ).

2) Get a Linux book. It's really handy to have a hard-copy of useful hints when going through complicated procedures like your first Linux install. Eventually you will grow beyond the book, but I really found it useful for the first few months, and I still read it now and then. I myself purchased "Red Hat Linux Bible", by Christopher Negus. Most Linux books will also come with a copy of Linux on an additional CD (or three).

3) Be patient and remain calm at all times. You will mess things up, and at the time they will seem like unsolvable problems. Don't worry though, Linux is extremely hard to kill .

Oh, and if you're having trouble understanding any technical terms, post them or a link to the website and we'll help you translate them .

Cheers

Ovalteen

If you have a high speed internet connection or know someone who does, you might want to look at a live-cd based distibution. Knoppix is a good one, and Slax zips onlong pretty well also. Check out this site for a few of them:
http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=cd
Live-cd's run off of ram disk, they do not load on your system, so when you are finished, take it out of your cdrom and re-boot into whatever system is installed on your computer. Do a search here on live-cd for more information.