Hi everyone, I'm new to the forum and to Linux. I purchased an Acer Aspire 3680, which came with Vista Home Basic pre-installed, just over a year ago. I've been tired of it, but I haven't had much time to fiddle with anything. I've been researching Linux and was thinking of switching, currently thinking about Ubuntu, but an open to suggestions. I'm just worried about screwing up my laptop since it's all I have right now, though I will be building a gaming computer shortly, which will be running XP. However, this laptop is awful with Vista, especially Home Basic, which never should've been released.

Anyway, any help will be much appreciated.

Hi and welcome to LQ, go to DistroWatch and pick a live distro and test run it to see if you like the flavor. I suggest one of the top five or six.

you could d/load a 'live' linux cd to give you an idea before installing to HD. there are plenty around, take a look at www.distrowatch.com

the actual distro you end up using will depend on what kind of a person you are. are you someone who just wants to get things done on his computer? then look to ubuntu or something like that, or are you a control freak who wants to learn linux and customize? look at slackware maybe.

Hello and welcome to the wonderful world of GNU
I suggest you try several distros before you decide which one suits you better. Most popular distro have what we call a "live CD" to download. With a "live CD", you can try the distro without affecting your Vista install or touching your hard drive at all. This is a safe way to test a distro, and when you eject your CD, Vista will boot just as well as before.
When you are decided, you can setup a "dual boot", which means you divide your hard drive in 2. One part is for Vista and one part is for linux. When you boot, you have a menu where you can choose to boot Vista or linux. That way, you can easily go back to Vista if you are not confortable with your distro.
The most popular distros for beginners are (from the top of my head, in random order): Mandriva, Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse.

Thanks all. Wow, people are fast on here. I will definitely check out that site and run the live CD first. I'm just tired of my laptop running slow because of Vista. My screen goes completely black for a few seconds quite often as well, and it happens at random time, especially when watching a movie or running multiple programs.

Again, thanks for the help, and I'll check out a live CD. Then I'm sure I'll be back with question.

Cheers!

You might also wish to consider purchasing a retail version of Vista and cold-installing that on this particular machine.

If you want to learn Linux, don't you have another machine, maybe slightly older, that you could dedicate to that task? And thereby leave the original "battle axe" machine alone (except maybe for a nicer version of 'the devil you know?'

"Just .. (koff! koff!) (hint.. hint..) .. a thought."

this link might help you choose which distro is most suited to you http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/index.php/

Try OpenSUSE 11 Gnome. On a dell inspiron1100 laptop (Nothing compared to your Acer(performance wise)) I had Compiz-fusion working absolutely beautifully (Compiz is like Vistas 3D flip but with so much more features) AND wait for it- Not one crash or hang yet all on 512mb of RAM with is stock for your laptop i think.Only bad thing is The screen goes blank on my install unless I type
"vga=9 12345" as a boot option. Very cool.But I still havent tried anything apart from OpenSUSE.
Hope your linux experience goes well!

I would, except this is the only thing I currently have, which is also why I am considering holding off. I feel better about reformatting and installing XP Pro on it than I do linux, though I do have several friends who run linux and are computer fanatics. I had an older laptop that was physically beat up, but my sister need something quick for school when her computer crashed.

I will keep up to date with this post and search all the websites that have been given to me, and take notes. Then, around then end of them month, I will purchase a cheap used laptop off ebay or somewhere to learn linux on.

Thanks. I was actually thinking a lot about that.

Hi guys I'm newbie here. I have computer here Name Intel pentium 4. It so great computer, and i loved to play a audition but i'm a kinda noob.. hehehe

I don't know about your 3680, but the one I have came pre-partitioned, 5gb recovery, 35gb Vista and 40gb data. I never touched the recovery or Vista partitions, they are still installed and functional, I just installed my distro of choice, Arch, within that 40gb data partition.

It works really well with Linux, as far as my standards go, I was already a very competent Linux user when I bought this, I'd also already had 3 other Linux laptops, your mileage may vary. I've never had anything but Arch on this, which is definitely not for newcomers, so I can't tell you how well Ubuntu or any of the others will work out of the box.

The only changes I have made to it are to swap the Atheros AR5007eg wireless card for an Intel 3945agb and upgraded to 2gb of RAM. Both are unnecessary for running Linux smoothly, the Intel card is better supported though, I got it free, otherwise I would have left in the Atheros card, it worked well too. The RAM upgrade was really just to see if I could get Vista to run well, it kinda helped, but I never use Vista.

Linux can play games too, you know - check out the Crystal Space homepage, and there's a Live DVD somewhere at linux-gamers.net I think, why should your games machine be XP?

I know there are games you can play on linux, but there are also a many that you can't. Plus, I'm new to linux, so I'm looking to put it on one computer to play with for a while. Also, I need a computer running MS for work, though I'm hoping to get a laptop through work. We'll see.

But, yeah, I know there are games for linux. I've been checking them out, but there are several I wish to play that won't work on it. So . . .

Anyway, do what you want, but dual booting is way cheaper. Or you can virtualize linux with qemu or vmware. If ou have a spare machine, use it, but no need to spend money when you already have a functionning computer.

Well, I have officially made the switch!

Thanks for all the advice. Since I have a work laptop that runs XP and am currently building a gaming PC to run XP, I have backed up vista and switched to Kubuntu! I really like it. It's been frustrating to a degree, but there is definite satisfaction when you get something working. Getting the wireless to work on my Aspire 3680 was a pain, it took half a day between me and my computer savvy friend, but I finally stumbled upon many different instructions that together, with the right combo, finally worked.

Well, again thanks for the advice. I'm sure I'll be back asking for more in the near future!

Cheers!