Starting out....
 

I want to learn Linux, where is a good place to start? Xandros and Lindows, seem like a good place due to their "windo$e" like look, but are they?
In the past I tried Mandrake 7.0, dual boot with win98. Now I've got XP (home edition - if that matters?) and I want to dual boot with one of the above. I know it's all a matter of opinion, but are either of these a good learning distro?
I have a GeForce 4, and both the Suse, boot from cd test version and Mandrake work fine in the install, but crash at the desktop. I know this is related to the card, because I've done some searching around.
Anyway, are there any real good learning distros? Sorry for the rambling, I just want you guys/gals to know I can use the "Search" button, and that's where I'm heading now.

Thanks for reading and please reply.
:newbie:

All I can do here is suggest my favourite flavour, Slackware,
and wish you all the luck :}

Cheers,
Tink

Any distro is good for learning,linux is linux.You might wanna read up on package installing and basic commands.
Ultimate Linux Newbie Guide .

This is an understandable question, but the answer is based on personal taste. Mandrake is called "newbie friendly" but the main distros are all trying to make things easier......

The Newbie guide site is a bit dated in parts, but it will give you a pointer.

Dutch

Quick tip: don't use Slackware! It's for hard core OS enthusiasts.

I'd recommend RedHat 8 or SuSE. Redhat is very professional but is targetting towards the corporate desktop, you will need to install MP3 support and NTFS manually (so you can read your windows disks). SuSE is well respected and popular in Europe. People say Mandrake is the best for newbies but imho that's not true anymore, Mandy is overrated somewhat. But you might like it. Stay away from Debian.

if you've gotten the partitioning and install done, then you've gotten over the biggest hurdle for most newbies. the driver for the geforce4 could be the problem, but correctly configuring X11 would probably get things starting on the desktop.
you can go to nvidia.com to get the geforce drivers - and they've got a decent install how-to for newbies.

Does X start at all, or does it crash and give any error messages?

If you want to see what a different OS looks like and see how it acts and works, then for goodness sake, don't get a distro that looks like something that it's not :rolleyes: . That's my beef with Lindows and Xandros, they hang their respective hats - to some degree or other - on the M$ hat rack.

Get Mandrake, get RedHat, get Suse, get Debian, get Slack -- but don't get a Windows look-alike. It's self-defeating.

@isajera - I just drops me to the command line. I don't remember if it gave any error messages or not.

Hd is partitioned (partition magic) and I'm dl'ing gentoo and mandrake 9.0 as I type. I'd never heard of gentoo, but a co worker told me to give it a try!? Any thoughts on it?

I did a little research and you can't update the rpms on the suse live eval cd so it's a no go because of the video card.

Thanks for the replys.

Be prepared for quite a bit of work with Gentoo, but it will be worth it in the end... everything is compiled specifically for your machine, so it can take bloody ages, but then it will run smoothly. Mandrake, on the other hand, is (indirectly?) aimed at the newbie. It does do a lot of hand-holding, but if you don't want to use its programs, you can do stuff by hand and it won't complain.

gentoo is a distibution of linux that compiles itself specifically for your system. i've never tried it personally, but everything i've read about it has been very impressive, and it seems to be fairly newbie-friendly. the worse i've heard about it is what thymox mentioned - it can take a while for it to get itself compiled competely.

also - if your not getting any error messages when you log in to linux, you might not have it configured to go directly into X at start up. try typing 'startx' at the command line, and see if that will give you anything useful.

I started Gentoo last night but ran into problems, mainly my typing errors, before I had to go to bed. It was interesting and I'll continue to try and I will get it to work.

This morning I burnt the Mandrake cd and installed, had to use the text install, all others just gave me a blank screen and started my caps lock and scroll lock light flashing? Boot loader give me options - linux-enterprise; linux; nt; windows; floppy. Linux just blanks the screen and the caps and scroll lights start flashing again!?!
Linux-enterprise boots and give me a command prompt, I typed in "kde" and got a screen full of errors.

Just thought I'd let you know how things are going. I'm off to work, Thanks for the info and replys.

Ok, I'm getting there, but I hit a snag. I have to edit my etc/fstab and input /dev/hda yadda yadda and I know what goes it the fstab file but not how to edit/create it. Any ideas? Thanks....still a :newbie:

See ya...

Did you download the gentoo installation guide and print it out?
I guess not.Anyway fstab gets created without you doing anything.
Editing is done with nano -w /etc/fstab
When you get to compile your kernel be careful to include devfs under filesystems - I think - otherwise gentoo will not go anywhere.
If you want to install a desktop environment with kde watch out for trouble with xfree 4.2.1.That didn't compile with kde - don't know if that is fixed or not.If it isn't install xfree 4.2.0 with kde.
When you done get rid of gentoo and install something else - preferably debian.Gentoo is nice - got it on my box,too but as sole OS it is just too buggy at the moment depending on the hardware.

No, I used lynx to check the install guide. ;)

Anyway, I'm past that, now I'm having trouble with grub. I get the command lind and I can get to GENTOO YES IT WORKS....ah hem...um sorry, but it took six hours to start from scratch and get to here. All I have left it to get my desktop and Install and prob the drivers for the geforce4.

Can I install Lilo and use it with Gentoo? It seems much nicer.

Thats my where I'm at now, see you. :D

Go and get lilo by all means.It works without any trouble and is easier to configure.If you install kde do yourself a favour and do emerge kde-base not emerge kde.kde-base with dependencies takes already about 6 hrs on my 900 mhz duron if nothing goes wrong.Don't know about gnome but it seems like there are no issues with xfree there.Of course there are guys out there saying that gnome2 is already buggy as hell anyway.You might want to check out the gentoo forum first.