I am a long time Windows user. I know Windows inside and out but the simple fact is I continue to have to reinstall my OS every six months to a year due to a virus. I've spent over a year finding the very best in adware/malware/virus protection software and my router firewall is as good as they come. I simply cannot handle this scenario anymore and need to move on to something more secure. I have a few questions I'm hoping you fine folks could answer for me.

1. Will switching to Linux be very time consuming? I've been looking at a few books and am just not sure how I would go about learning Linux as intimately as I know Windows. Any suggestions on learning, any warnings you have, any links to articles or posts that might help me better understand how difficult switching to Linux might be, are there any books you would recommend for a newbie to linux, etc... would be most appreciated.

2. I do a lot of video encoding, graphical work, and PDF creation. Are there powerful, feature rich, tools available for Linux in these categories?

3. When new versions of Linux come out does upgrading require clean/fresh installs? I'm really hoping to be able to setup a Linux computer properly and then to not have to mess with any form of fresh installation for three years or longer. Is this possible?

4. I read in the sticky of this forum that there was a "how to choose a distro that is right for you" but I couldn't find such a thread. Does anybody know where I can find this or of any websites that cover the different disros in more detail? I have no idea how to pick one.

Any help on any of these questions would be most appreciated.

There are, but it depends on what you use and how picky you are about it.

As far as #1 and #3 are concerned, it seems as though Ubuntu is the popular choice for new adopters, and the security updating, long term support seems to work well for most people.

[Edit] for what it's worth the distro choosers listed below always appropriately match me with slackware

The best thing to do is to download some live CD's and try it out. You can run linux completely from the CD without having to install it or damaging your Windows partition. Get comfortable with it, then install it and use it by itself. It's powerful and flexible, but not for everyone - and that's fine. At work I use Windows because of some "must use" software. At home I use Debian and the wife and kids love it.

1. The actual install time can be less than an hour (typically 20 minutes or so) if you have fairly standard hardware that works. I've never stopped learning things about linux. Now a days, most people can pick up and find their way around relatively quickly. You'll be a bit hampered by your windows knowledge, but you can learn just as well. There's lots of good links out there. Google "Linux Newbie" and you'll find a lot. There's help sites like HowtoForge that will tell you how to setup particular things. Or the Linux Documentation Project has a good collection of tutorials and whatnot (I like RUTE). Some are a bit dated, but the basics are the same. Ubuntu has a good collection of community documents, as do Slackware and Gentoo. The ubuntu ones will be specific howto for Ubuntu and some Debian based distros.

2. There are, but it depends on what exactly you want to do. Some have interfaces that will take some getting used to. For whatever reason, it seems to me that the more powerful the software, the crappier the interface. For video editing encoding, there's professional grade stuff like Cinelerra to home use stuff like Kino or Kdenlive. And of course, they all are built on some commandline tools that can greatly speed up batch processing. For graphics, the GIMP is the most powerful (I assume you mean like photo editing graphics, not CAD software). Scribus is a good publishing tool for brochures and whatnot. And of course OpenOffice. Generally PDF creation is to just set up a PDF printer and print out to that. Pdfedit is a relatively new pdf editor. It was pretty raw the last time I tried it.

3. Depends on the distribution. Some allow a rolling release like Gentoo or Debian testing branch (or unstable branch) in which you get periodic updates and don't update the whole system at once. Others typically have better luck with clean installs (though you can keep your user information on a different partition). In the past, OpenSuse and Fedora have been two that I didn't have smooth upgrades with (they might be better now). I typically use Debian stable branch (currently 5.0 - Lenny) which releases every couple of years, but is very stable, and I haven't yet had to reinstall. I just upgrade when a new stable release comes out. The downside is it only does security updates, which means when the applications have a major update like Openoffice 2.4 to Openoffice 3.0, I don't get it. Though there are some repositories that allow for that, I don't like to mess with it.

4. There's some choosers out there (see my signature). Also checkout Distrowatch and Polishlinux for good comparisons.

Well, how long did it take you to learn windows well. On the upper right side of this page you have Linux HCL (hardware compatibility list), tutorials, distro reviews, book reviews. You could start there. The one major thing you need to keep in mind is that Linux is not windows.

I've been using Suse Linux 9.2 as my primary OS for over four years and have never had a virus and I don't use any anti-virus software, malware or adware detection programs. I've never had to re-install, this seems to be much more common for windows. I think your first paragraph gives you all the reasons to switch to Linux.

No, but learning it well probably will. Installing is pretty simple and you could download Linux Live CD's and try them out without installing to see if they detect your hardware and whether you like them.

Some distributions of Linux come out with upgrades every 6 months and other are a year and some even longer. Generally, upgrading does not require a new install. If you jump from version 6 to version 9 or 10, probably. As long as everything you need is working, why would you reinstall?

I googled "linux chooser" and there were a number of sites including this one:

http://www.tuxs.org/chooser/

On your question 2, I don't really know but you could probably use GIMP for the graphical although I'm not sure what you need.

welcome to.....oops, no--you've been here almost as long as I have....

Anyway:
could be...it took me YEARS, but I'm old... seriously, it depends on how much you try to tinker and optimize. Really no way to answer.

There is now a Linux app for just about everything. Don't expect, however, to find the perfect match to a favorite program.

All over the map---I am running Arch mostly these days--this is called a "rolling release" distro and--in principle--never has to be re-installed. In may case, I tweak things so much that it gets re-installed several times a year regardless. For a less neurotic user, install and forget for a year or two should be pretty easy.

for starters, anything in the top 10 on the "hit list" at http://distrowatch.com will be fine.


Finally, keep a Windows system (dual boot, 2 boxes, or other) until you are thoroughly up on the curve. It took me several years at home, where there has now been no Windows installed for over two years. The only reason I might need to install my Win2K is to update my GPS, but even that is not pressing.

Hi "Mulsiphix" Yep just like you I got sick of messing around with all the Windows b......t and decide to try Linux.It's only been 3 weeks now that I've installed Ubuntu 9.04 on this machine and I do a dual-boot with WinXP (that means I have the option of starting either OS) I'd heard about Linux from a few friends and read a couple of magazines before deciding to jump right in and I'm glad I did.
For good reading material I'd recommend "Linux Format" magazine from the UK,every month they give you a lot of details about different distros and usually include a disc with one or two distros on there and sometimes they devote a complete issue to one with an associated disc
As far as web-sites go this one is pretty good but there's also :
http://EasyLinuxCDs.com
http://distrowatch.com ( one of my favorites )
http://oreilly.com/linux/command-directory (Just for a look )
http://www.linuxconfig.org ( some good stuff here )
http://thecodingstudio.com/opensourc...ots/index.php?
( gives you examples of what the different distros look like )
http://linux.com ( Says it all doesn't it )
http://puppylinux.com ( good for notebooks I think )
http://linux.org ( haven't looked at this much but it's here )
http://ubuntuforums.org ( I spend a lot of time here lately )
http://www.ubuntu.com ( the home page of Ubuntu )
That's about all I can help you with matey As I said,a dual-boot is the way to go until you get really familiar with it,check out the forums because they help a lot and good luck to you Captain Merlot over and out.

It definitely looks like GIMP will more than suit my needs. There appear to be a few PDF readers that also look very nice. I do a lot of PDF editing for work so I may have to dual boot and keep windows around for that and a few things I can't live without (no clue what they are until I see what programs Linux has to offer me first hand).

I had some big questions about Linux and programming. In one of the books I was looking at buying it talks about learning Perl so that you can program your own scripts. Is Perl the programming language of choice for Linux as .NET is to Windows? Would it really be necessary to learn? If I learned Perl would I be able to make all sorts of stuff for Linux? The only reason I'm wondering is most of the programs I use in Windows are there to accomplish tasks that I feel should have been standard in Windows. I have over 100 programs in Windows and the vast majority are dedicated to manipulating or adding functionality to Widows. So Perl may be something I look into if it has real significance within Linux.

Any information would be most appreciated. Thank you so very much for the replies thus far!

I know nothing about .NET (or anything else about programming on Windows).

With Linux, you have a huge range of options. First, the shell (BASH, most often) is a very powerful scripting environment. I have no real data, but I have the **impression** that it is much more comprehensive than the equivalent on Windows. If nothing else, it draws on the Unix heritage, which of course pre-dates Windows or MSDOS.

There is good support for the most common compiled languages.

Perl is a popular scripting language, but I'm not sure when it is favored (A PERL expert will perhaps chime in here.)

Python is another popular choice.

Because Linux tends to be more of a programmers OS, there actually may be more options than on Windows. It all depends on exactly what you want to do.


I submit that it is time for you to install Linux and start seeing for yourself.....

I certainly have sympathy for your position; just be aware that your windows knowledge will sometimes be a disadvantage when it comes to learning something different (even MacOs).

Possibly. You might be happy booting from a live CD, installing and not wanting to dig too much into the internals. Somehow, this doesn't seem like the most likely outcome.

Get somewhere between two and five live CDs of popular distributions and have a look; when you try something and like it, go with it for say six months and see where you want to go from there.

My top tip; use the package manager. My second best tip; use the package manager.

Getting new software is different from windows; the package manager does it for you. You may eventually need to add extra repositories (stores of software), but, to a first approximation, if the package manager has the software listed that you want, that's a good sign. When you want to get it, just tick the box and let it sort everything out for you (assuming the 'net bandwidth).

The Gimp (Graphics and Image Manipulation Program) and Open Office are good, and also available for windows. There are alternatives, of course (Krita, Koffice for example, but a search in your package manager for graphics will throw up more possibilities). OO does pdf creation.

To have the best chance of staying free from malware, you'll want a distro for which security patches are available. Most of the 'consumer' Linux distros have quite a short window in which they keep getting updates - say, 6 months to a year is common. There are exceptions and work-arounds ('rolling release' is a possibility, as are distros with longer release horizons, such as Debian, RedHat, SLES/SLED, but the latter two are paid for...and Centos, which is a reworked RedHat has fairly long update windows...there are also 'Long Term Support' versions of Ubuntu that can be considered), but you may be making more of this problem than is really appropriate.

Most distros have a 'tick the box for what you want' install process; having done that, in principle at least, it sets up all of the applications for you (may be more or less time consuming depending on distro and how much you select, but is essentially painless for the user).

Usually, the only difficulty comes if there is some difficulty with your hardware.

Apart from security concerns, people usually upgrade because there is a load of new, shiny stuff that they want, or maybe just to clear out a load of cruft that has built up over time and upgrading is just a simple way to get a nice new clean install.

A lot is a matter of personal taste, but you could try

http://polishlinux.org/choose/quiz/

Dual-boot,I'm still dual-booting with XP on my laptop but spending less and less time on Windows. Try a few distros 'til you find the one that you like best. Everybody will say their favourite distro is the best, but don't listen to them - unless they say Slackware.

Dual boot,and...

You would have the security of your Windows system and linux if you were to dual boot.

In addition, I might suggest that, if you have or can get an old computer, you also install linux there. It would be your practice machine, where you try everything, make all your big mistakes, and learn a great deal. linux has many advantages, including that it runs on almost anything; you can profit by that.

By time consuming do you mean consuming your time or the computers time?

With Windows, installation is a case of enter information, wait a couple more minutes, enter more information etc. Well, it was when I did it.

All the distros I have installed have got me to enter some basic information, and then I have been able to do my own stuff (not on the computer, obviously) for 15 - 20 minutes while it does it's stuff. So I would say it is far easier than windows to install.

I hope you decide to change to Linux, it's far better

~Callum

Callum;

Glad to see someone else say what I have believed for several years now:

Take a person with sufficient aptitude to install ANY OS, but with zero experience actually doing so. For the same functionality, Installing and configuring a computer with a modern Linux distro will be both faster and easier than with Windows. The part about UNlearning Windows to learn Linux is really true.

I have fond memories of installing Windows, finding and installing drivers, downloading the latest service pacs---all punctuated with--what, maybe 10 re-boots?

Hi,

I beg to differ here. There are exceptions to the M$ to GNU/Linux transition problem(s). If someone is adept for M$ there are no logical reasons for them not being able to gain understanding or knowledge from the use of a GNU/Linux Distribution.

I've used various OS over the last 4 decades an find that my understanding(s) ever evolving. My transition to MS-DOS wasn't that much of a deal, in fact it was somewhat of a digression from my norm. Heck, I felt comfortable with CP/M rather than DOS on micros but UNIX was not really available at the time for a micro.
UNIX was to costly for a mini at the time, the University was the only way to get use without the $$. Sure the early uses in the industry were starting to become popular but that too was expensive.

Back to M$ vs GNU/Linux, I really think a individual that has some experience with M$ can migrate with some effort. A person that has the tendency to investigate, read for understanding or just down right curious will tend to do better with the opportunity using GNU/Linux. Sure there are going to be bumps along the way but everything cannot nor will be worth their weight if not earned.

The OP should look at the use of a LiveCD from 'The LiveCD List'. That way a test drive will insure the user some awareness as to his/her adaptability to the use of a GNU/Linux Distribution. Does the OP want to utilize a GUI or really learn the ins or outs of the use of GNU/Linux? CLI vs GUI?


The above links and others can be found at 'Slackware-Links'. More than just Slackware® links!

Most Linux distributions on most PCs are very easy to install. Once installed, they make web browsing and a bunch of other activities easy and obvious. So it is almost fair to say switching to Linux will be quick and easy.

That won't be quick or easy. You took a long time learning that much about Windows. Linux is only a little easier to learn and it is very different.

I prefer and use the Mepis distribution. I think it has a slightly easier transition for a Windows user than other distributions and is in general a bit more beginner friendly.

Mepis is a Debian based distribution. I think Debian based distributions are friendlier in general to beginners vs. non Debian based (Ubuntu is the most popular Debian based distribution. Debian itself may be the least beginner friendly of the Debian based distributions). I think Mepis is more beginner friendly than Ubuntu, but the differences are small.

Any Debian based distribution gives you a variety of choices for how you access "packages" (what would be add/remove software in Windows, but in Linux it is much more complete). The most friendly package management is a program called synaptic. You can use that in any Debian based distribution. Mepis makes the suggestion to use synaptic more obvious.

I also think KDE is a friendlier desktop than the Linux alternatives (even more so if you're used to Windows). Almost any Linux distribution lets you switch to KDE easily. Mepis makes KDE the default.

I did a little video encoding. I misunderstood the obvious (in hindsight) online instructions for enabling the extra repository to let me install that in synaptic, so I asked what to do in LQ, and I got a fast and clear answer plus follow up support. So for me, video encoding that I earlier failed to figure out in Windows was easy after a little help in Linux.

One of the things that makes Linux better than Windows is the quality and speed of the free support from LQ. I don't know anyplace to get that quality of help with Windows.

It did in Mepis. In many ways switching an existing Mepis install to the next rev was harder than starting with Mepis originally. That is definitely an important deficit of Mepis compared to Windows and so far as I understand compared to some other Linux distributions.

In balance, the reinstall situation for Mepis is better than for Windows. Mepis may need more reinstalls for upgrades (one every few years, I think) compared to Windows (I will keep XP as long as I can). But, as you noticed, Windows requires reinstalls when you lose control of your system to various malware. I haven't heard of that happening in Linux. When you do need a reinstall, that is much easier in Mepis than in Windows.

That is longer than I would expect. Maybe you can. Maybe even with Mepis. Probably you can if you compromise other aspects of your choice of distribution in favor of one that has rolling upgrades longer.

Mepis does have rolling upgrades within a major version for the kernel and almost everything else. Those upgrades are quicker, easier, and safer than Windows updates. I'm not sure at what point Mepis will next have a major version change that you can't cross with the rolling upgrades.