Hi, I'm a total newbie to Linux. I downloaded Mandriva the other day, but I discovered that openSuse probably better suited my needs. The problem is that I don't have a DVD burner, so I'll have to burn it to cds and install it to my computer. So, my question is, if I find that openSuse isn't really what I'm looking for either, is it easy to uninstall it? Is it risky in any way? And on that note, how risky is this partitioning business for a newbie? Is openSuse friendly enough for it?

As a side note, the reason Mandriva didn't look quite as hot to me was because it looked very tough to get a wireless driver to work. Will openSuse make it easier, with a Broadcom 570x Gigabit Integrated Controller and a Dell Wireless 1350 WLAN Mini-PCI Card (I have no idea which is the important one)?

And my final question (if you have become frustrated by all of these questions, feel free to ignore this one), is openSuse significantly faster that WindowsXP? I've read that certain tweaks can speed it up. I don't really care how technical it is, because once I get linux started up, I'll do my best to learn it.

Thanks in advance.

only thing you can mess up with changing systems is data loss so before you delete backup your media such as photos music and vid.... just be be patient though... installing takes like an hour or so on average

shoot i have a hard drive thats like 10 years old and had to be formatted 1000's of times i still use it to this day!!!

and i always say learn on ubuntu then work your way to whatever....


yes most distros are faster then windows

I've actually tried Ubuntu a bit, it was the first taste of Linux I've ever had. Problem was, again, that bloody wireless card setup. But I had even less of an idea of what I was doing then, I suppose. It would be awfully helpful if someone suggested which distro (Mandriva, openSuse, or Ubuntu) would be easiest to set up a wireless connection with. Because once I get the internet set up, I can just spend hours and hours looking at tutorials and whatnot, right?

And on the uninstalling openSuse thing, is their any potential for losing Windows? Because I doubt if I still have the install disk for that anywhere...

90% of the time if a distro dont find your hardware esp. lan and wlan cards none of them will by default try going to your local computer shop and shelling out 10 dollars for a "more compatible" card

edit and yes if you install over windows and dont have your cd.... odds are your not going back

Considering that Ubuntu 7.04 is far more recent than Suse, it is more likely (although not certain) to support the device in question. If the driver isn't included, you'll need to visit the site of the manufacturer and verify whether they are offering any drivers for Linux systems. If not, it may be possible to use ndiswrapper.

O.k, I downloaded Ubuntu (it's so much smaller than openSuse, yay!), and tried the liveCD deal. It looks great and I think I'll stick with it for a while, except, I still can't get that bloody wireless card to work! When I connect with a cable, it works great, but even though I installed those drivers (ndiswrapper worked like a charm), and played around with the network manager for a while (though it didn't quite look like the screenshots I've seen of it while browsing around), it still doesn't work.
Should network manager only be a little dropdown menu (except when creating new connections), or should it become a window?

Also, this disscussion has admittedly gone a bit off-topic. Should I create a new thread?

yea id go into other parts of the forums such as hardware and ask about your card

Thanks, will do.