WHAT ON EARTH IS LINUX??
How Do You Run Linux?
Is it pretty much the same as Windows? Like you have a desktop and can run things that way?
or is it simply text and commands like in DOS?
The distros i am wondering about are SuSE and Redhat.
Also, which one of those two is better for switching from windows to linux for........ for a person who has no linux experience at all?

Please, you do not have to shout at us. Could you change the colors, as these old eyes have a hard time reading your post

Hm... here are some links:

http://www.li.org/whatislinux.php
www.redhat.com
www.mandrakelinux.com
http://www.gnome.org/start/2.4/screenshots.html
http://www.kde.org/screenshots/

Yes, please don't use all caps, its rude.

But yeah, Linux isn't for you... its nothing but all command line...

It has a GUI interface.. actually has probably several dozen you can choose from for your liking..

If you want distro comparisons, check out our Distribution forum, plenty of threads there with tons of information.

i wasnt aware people took caps offensively..... just wanted to sound important

quote:
i wasnt aware people took caps offensively..... just wanted to sound important

lol, thats a good one with a name like terdmonkey18

"The distros i am wondering about are SuSE and Redhat.
Also, which one of those two is better for switching from windows to linux for........ for a person who has no linux experience at all?"

SuSE and Red Hat are very similar. Go to the store and buy whichever one is cheaper.

If you are downloading then flip a coin.

i encourage you to learn as much as you can about linux and open source software, it is a wonderful thing and a wonderful community, a VERY important thing is web ethics though, since there is so much communication on a very active board like this it is absolutely critical that people are concise and courteous the better you share information with people here the better they can help you, extravegant colors and all caps will not get you near as far as a simple black and white text message with all relevant information and a question(s)

some simple criteria for using linux if any of these apply then it is a definite possibility that it is for you

1.you are extremely interested in security be it necessity hobby or paranoia
2.you are running a production environment where stability is very important
3.you are extremely interested in computers in general and it is your hobby
4.you are running a high volume server and need something that will run smoothly and handle load well
5.you are interested in learning about the innards of computers and operating systems in general

in the end I repeat that i encourage you to learn as much as possible about linux and open source as they are not mutually exclusive and open source software is also widely available on windows and especially on mac if you have the desire to learn something like linux there is a wonderful community here that will get you on your feet quickly so follow the links read about linux download a distro and start playing also most questions have been asked several times here so in order for you to get answers in the quickest possible way use our wonderful search function

For many Linux distributions its quite GUI orientated these days - KDE and GNOME have come a long way and are easy to use and fairly intuitive - however - the Bash shell is very much alive and well and you'll probably need to use it form time to time - many people find that it provides a nice complement to point and click computing - To a certain degree I find it tends to enrich rather than detract from using computers - oh and my nod's for Mandrake.......

I think that it would be wise to try demo linux, a CD based distro

Such as Knoppix

Which is excellent.

In fact I think it's that good, I am seriously thinking of doing a hard disc install of it over the top of my current debian install.

regards

John

thanks
where can i get a demo linux?
check out the comp i am building!
ahanix platinum xp case with digital cpu thermometer
350 W power supply
Abit IS7-E i865PE 8x AGP, 8 USB 2.0
2.4 GHz P4 Overclocked to 3.0 GHz with Softmenu
800MHz FSB 512K cache
Ati Radeon 9200 Pro - 256 MB
1 GB DDR RAM
Maxtor 80GB HD
CD Burner 52x24x52
Dvd Drive 16x dvd playback 48x cdrom
Soundblaster Audigy X-Gamer
and then a whole bunch of custom lighting and stuff! it will b awesome once im done. its costing me $905.46 tho

guess what kind of computer it would be...... its sorta obvious

OMG MY DAD WONT LET ME USE LINUX UNTIL I GET WINDOWS ON IT FIRST!!! i dont wanna spend $150 on windows just to ignore it and use linux!!!

I turned 14 10 days ago....... if ne1 wanted to kno

parents are terrible...you will probably want to have windows on your computer to start with as you learn so that you can switch back to look up this site to get an answer, linux is not the best for gaming either...at least not until its fully setup which may take you a while since youll need to learn quite a bit, once its set up though you can run games throuhg wine, winex, win4lin, or vmware at native (or quite a bit better) speeds, there are lots of people who get much better gaming performance in linux especially in games which are linux native, quake and wolfenstein are the ones that come to mind but i also know nwn has or is coming out with a linux client, sounds like a sweet system, it looks like everything on there should work with linux though you might want to double check against http://www.linuxhardware.net/ for your modem and network card chipsets

this is the link for knoppix.

There's also one called "demolinux" though I don't know what that's like.

regards

John