Hello Everyone I Would like To Introduce Myself Before Posting My Questions. I Was Raised Using Windows 98,ME & XP. I Was Introduced To This Powerful Tool By My Grand Father. He Said That "Linux Is Not For The Faint Of Heart".
Being The Type Who Loves A Challenge And Computers I Said "Well I'll Give It A Try Anyways". So He Gave Me A Copy Of Red Hat 9.1.! I Then Decide To Take Some Time And Study By Trying It Out. I Tried To Do A Few Basics And Was Like HUH? So I Called Him And The Next Time He Came Up He Brought A Book Titled "RUNNING LINUX" Thursday June First I Will Start Reading The Book Nightly. I Then Decided To Look Around On The Net For Websites That Could Help Me. That's How I Came To This Wonderful Site I Also Would Like To state That I'm A To Linux. Any Help I Can Get Is Greatly Appreciated. Well That's My Story And Thank You

Hi and welcome to LQ Also check out the link for RUTE in my sig block - it's helped a huge number of people here.

A tip ... Lots of us here are old folks, and we find excessive flash, and no line feeds irritating.

To use Linux as well as you use Windows, you need to take the tasks you use on Windows, one or two at a time, and learn how to accomplish them using Linux. Yes, there is a major learning curve, but not an insurmountable one. A good, and sensible, first step is to commit to using only Linux for anything that involves the internet, browsing, email, p2p file sharing, ftp, etc.

You will probably want to replace RH 9.1 fairly soon, but get comfortable with it first. Unless you have begun to understand it's shortcomings, there is no sense in replacing it. Read through the 'Distros' sub-forum ... Asking us to choose a distro for you is almost as irritating as excessive flash, and no line feeds.

Welcome! I used to type every letter in capitals too
Until alot of people started calling me names like Capswriter

True story.

Anywaaay... Have fun learning and using linux!

Welcome to LQ.

I'll second Rickh's tip. Not only are we old, but we're professionals and don't have time to decipher cryptic sentences. I would recommend reading the link in my signature before you return to post a question. You'll have questions, I'm sure. We're happy to help, but your writing style will cause people to ignore you.

In any event, welcome again and have fun with Linux.

Welcome To LQ, Tux1986.

First of all, welcome! I'm a newbie to the forums too but, not to Linux. OK, I'm not an expert but, I am learning. I know how to do basic stuff like RPM, apt-get, yum, and YAST. I'm not such an expert that I'm able to compile a GEntoo Linux system.

So welcome!

Linux is not to hard.
Just learn to use the terminal first.

Thank you very much. I'm glad to see that their are quiet a few people here willing to help me. I would like to let you know that I wasn't asking you to pick a distro for me out of the huge pile of distros I just wanted to know which would be better for me out of the ones I have. I have downloaded quiet a few distros to try out like SUSE Linux Version 10.1, Backtrack Linux Version 1.0, Gentoo Linux, Peanut Linux, Slackware Linux Version 10.2, Damn Small Linux Version 0.9.3, Knoppix Version 4.0.2 Turbo Linux Workstation Version 7.0And Free BSD Linux Version 6.1. I would like to be able to use any if not a few of these along side a Windows partition and OS. Finally broke my bad habit of capitalizing the first letter of every word on message boards! Well tomorrow is time to hit the books and to learn from the professionals like you guys. Thank you! s

I would reccomend SUSE Linux 10.1 or Mandriva. Gentoo is a system that you have to build from scratch. I've tried it. It's very hard. Slackware is OK. It does not contain software like RPM managment software or apt-get. That is kind of a drawback. Just remember this is not like windows where you can't share the source code of a program. You can or can't. It's your decision. They both contain very good partitioning tools. ( Some say Disk-Drake is the best of all parting tools.)

Knoppix is one of the best live cd's
and SuSE 10.1 is very good, especially for beginners.
(Don't worry - Alot of professionals also use it ;])

Thank you everyone for your advice. As I've said before I appreciate any help I can get. I plan on starting on my book RUNNING LINUX By Matt Welsh & Learn Kaufman. If anyone knows of any other good books about Linux that I should read please feel free to tell me. I will be setting up an E-mail address for my message board buddies to E-mail me at. When it's up I'll post the address.

"Linux for Windows Administrators" by Mark Minasi helped ease my transition. Not sure if its been revised lately though.