New Kid with Linux OS Need Direction
 

I have been using Windows since 1998 and thats all I know.So what does this OS have over Microsoft products with the one exception of cost? All knowledge to help me get started on the right footing would be appreciated!!!

No WGA, for starters...

Depends where you want to start. The best thing that separates any *nix from Windows is the superior command line. The GUI's are all pretty much copies of each other, but there are some interesting projects, and more important, if you don't like one you can always use another.

Id say, where would you like to start? Learn the command line and basics, or start like you did in Windows, at the top and hope you never run into the command line?

Either way, it involves reading documentation and tutorials.

It is much more stable, at least in my opinion. I can run more applications and these applications all run much faster then their windows alternatives. I can run my computer for hours (probably days, months or years) without needing to reboot, unlike in windows where something is bound to crash. I get much less RAM usage with Linux too. Windows used to eat about 50% of my RAM, but Linux only 10 to 20% at most.

The software is darn good too. Open Office can open most Microsoft formats and if you don't like it, you can try another office suite. Firefox is excellent and secure for browsing the web and if you ever want to run windows or windows applications without rebooting Qemu, VMWare or WINE can often take care of these.

If you don't feel comfortable with erasing windows from your system right away, you can start with a live CD, which wont touch your hard disk. Then you can install along side windows and dual boot when you are happy.

If you ever get stuck, there are whole websites (like this one) and forums to get help from.

To get started, you have to----get started!! Go to www.distrowatch.com and pick any of the distributions in the top ten on their "hit list".
You will find many reasons why others like Linux, but what counts will be why you like it.

I don't view it as Linux vs Windows--it is much larger. The whole paradigm shift to OpenSource and Open Document standards is affecting the entire SW industry

I like Linux because it is a real operating system.
I like Open source because it just seems like the right thing to do.
Diluting some of Microsoft's power also seems right......

I currently have two machines that have been running for over a month (one FreeBSD, one Gentoo Linux) that have given me no trouble whatsoever. The FreeBSD machine is a VoIP server and uses hardly any resources, and the Gentoo machine is a work desktop that runs Fluxbox. The Gentoo machine, complete with GUI, uses roughly 50 MB of RAM "at rest" with nothing open.

The machine I'm currently on is an eyecandy machine (Beryl/XGL) on Gentoo Linux. Given the amount of graphical processing it has to do, it's still quite amazing to me that it uses less than 400MB of RAM with GAIM, Firefox, and Amarok open (along with a few KDE tray programs). Vista, by comparison (at least Vista RC1), uses roughly 550 MB with nothing open. CPU usage, I'll admit, is roughly the same, except programs on this machine open faster and respond more smoothly than anything I've seen on XP or Vista.

I agree 100%, pixellany!

There are two big advantages to Linux over windows. Security and scripts. The permissions of files and directories makes it hard to get to files to change them. Every file gets separate read write and execute permissions assigned to it for the owner, owners group and then everybody else. You will see these at the front of a dir listing as rwxr-xr-x or modification there of. It tell you the owner can read write and execute, his group and other can only read and execute so they cannot change the program or its content. the second and most power full thing is scripts. Scripts do everything in Linux from the init scripts that bring the server up to simple logins. Look into it you will see what I mean.

The most important thing I can tell you that differentiates Linux from everything else is the community. If you encounter problems, a lot of people will bend over backwards to help you because that's what this group of people are like, because we're all in this together. We help eachother. This is radically different from when you have one of the frequent errors that M!crosoft OS's and programs encounter-- finding a way to fix your problems is much harder because the adequate support just isn't there.

I'd like to second the comment that Linux is much more stable- my Ubuntu has never just frozen on me. The OS will continue to function if individual programs have problems, unlike my lifetime of experience with rebooting Windows... and the programs themselves are much more stable and customizable in general.

I was talking to my mother on the phone (old-fashioned Windows-user), trying to convince her to download Firefox. She was very confused and untrusting about the notion of free (and imho superior) software. I had sent her an email to show her something while we were on the phone, and she was waiting for it to arrive. She was using Outlook and I kept telling her to try finding a button amounting to "get new mail", but she never could find it, and her reaction to my telling her to refresh the data was to restart the entire computer. I found this funny not because she is a newbie at computers but because this is representative of the Windows experience-- if something goes unexpectedly, reboot.

One of the first things that struck me about Linux was that I almost never needed to reboot because it was stable and kept its screen updated. Over the duration of my use of Linux I have rebooted a number of times I could count on one hand, and most of that was my fault (e.g. was programming and got stuck in an infinite loop). When I did need to reboot, I just went to the restart button and it calmly did it: I never had to manually kill the power because of a massive OS freeze. Additionally, the task manager kills the rare unresponsive programs much better than would Windows'.

I also found the GUI more customizable, beautiful, and faster to get around in.

As a fellow newb to Linux, let me assure you that it's worth the work to learn what's going on. Things are different here, but once you have a handle on what's going on, it can be a really joyous and liberating experience. You'll find you have more control over everything and that you'll know more about your computer than you ever knew about your old OS. This is a virtue because knowledge is power, even if it takes patience and effort to earn it. It pays off and makes things easier for years to come.

My best advice is, if you haven't already, become best friends with and get to know everything about the command line.

Ironically, I'm at work right now using their Windows machine, and it just had a complete system freeze while I was posting... and could in no way restart other than to kill the power.

In my experience, when Linux kills a process, the process dies. The rest of the computer doesn't freak out.

Hahahahah~ :p

I am also a newbie. However, I am trying to learn Linux enthusiastically. The reason why is, I am fed up with paying for an OS which is not secure and heavy. What I would like to see is not graphics. Instead, reliable and fast system which can help me do my business properly. For a long time, I have been already using OpenOffice, Firefox, and Thunderbird. So, I realized that open source softwares are much more stable, secure, and more worth to try. And as one of our friends quoted here, you can access immediate help from forums like this one. I have just received so many replies trying to help this newbie.:)

Also, it comes with plenty of softwares, which you will need them in your computer use. For example, even a DIVX player is embedded in the installation file with its necessary codecs. And, you don't need to download so many things and redesign your system.

As you try more and more, you will really love it and live with it.

Yes, yes! Synaptic is so freaking awesome!!!
Sudo apt-get install is also beautifully simple and effective.

For newbies who are not ready to compile certain programs on their own, I also recommend Automatix. I really like going down the list of programs in Synaptic and finding handy things I'd never have found if I'd not been using Linux.