wow, who would have thought that linux would be so easy. well, i´ve only just scratched the surface but it sure does smell good. i have always had this vision of linux, a black screen with commands and nowhere to go unless you know how to get there. today i took the plunge and installed mandrake (yeah because i read it was the easiest one to learn on) and i´m really glad i did.

i was installing XP on another machine and it was so painful and time consuming after it crashed three times on me. i gave up and swapped the disk to a smaller one i had and installed it on that. all up it took me around 3 hours and nothing has been configured on it. no net, no printers, no lan, video, sound. you name it and it needs to be looked at.

on the other hand, i installed mandrake 10 on my machine and being my very first install it took me 30-40 min and here i am writing this pointless thread on my automatically configured cable connection along with everything else pretty much configured during the install. i mean, i ask you, is this legal? are we allowed to use an OS that is this user friendly? and if you want it to be complex it can be...

hmm, yeah, there isn´t a point to this thread really. i just felt like expressing some of my goodwill to the masses.

another satisfied*



*i reserve the right to be frustrated and hate linux when i stuff something up and don know how to fix it

Good to see things are going well for you. Don't forget to spread the word and before you get too frustrated don't forget to stop by LQ - I'm sure somebody will be about to lend a hand.

First and foremost: Congratulations and welcome to the community! It's great, as I'm sure everyone else will agree, to hear success stories, especially when there's so much negativity about linux in some of these forums.
As for that - just drop in and search then ask (In that order). I don't know how many times I've taken my system to the floor, only for it (the solution) to be available in a quick search that simply pointed to a mis-configured file. Bing-Bang-Boom problem solved. That's one thing that's great about Linux: Only you can screw it up. It doesn't automatically uninstall your drivers, reconfigure your desktop, or delete random things. Enjoy Mandrake, it's what I started with and what I'm currently running (though, I'm about to be a be reborn as a slacker as of tonight (cant wait)).
Cheers, Good Luck, and Welcome to LQ And Linux
--John

Yeah, Mandrake's hardware detection/auto-configuration is the best, IMHO, with Knoppix's coming in a close second.

Anyways, congrats and welcome.

thanks

I'm already getting my hands dirty and getting into Slack 10 for a machine I inherited just this weekend. I figure since that is on a seperate machine I can freely break it and fix it until my hearts content.

I also must say that I am extremely impressed at how helpful and nice the community is compared to others I have been a part of.

My disk just smells like a CDROM...am I missing something?

Yes because of the beauty of Linux a group has now insituted the Linux Scrat'n'sniff project. This distro is unique inthat the medium it is installed with is actually a scratch'n'sniff CD and depending on where you scratch you will get different smells. So far they have Grape, Strawberry, Cherry, Vanilla, and choclate. Soon to come is coffe and butterscotch.

Check it out at http://www.scratchnsnifflinux.org

Its really amazing what you can do with linux. They also have the source code order number for the scratch'n'sniff stickers so you can use them on your own linux too.

i bet that within the next two weeks, you will not be using mandrake anymore, but rather slackware or another distro.

I was all prepared to be awed........

lol Im sorry.

You're wrong, only took me a week

oh yeah, I was dissapointed with the http://www.scratchnsnifflinux.org as well. Why would you raise my hopes so...

what are you using?

I've got Mandrake 10 on my main machine, Slack 10 on an older machine and I'm playing around with Knoppix 3.6.