A fresh start, moving from windows to linux
 

Hi there,

I am only 15 and trying to learn about linux so please if you answer my questions try to dumb things down for me :D lol, but any way,

I have a Amd Athlon 64 3200+
1GB ddr400 RAM
and ATI All-in-wonder 9200 256mb

I have tried every single windows there is, 2000ME xp home,pro,x64 and MCE and found them all to be quite shocking to put it lightly.
My uncle tried to introduce me to mandrake linux 10 beta a year ago but it didnt really grab my attention due to all the extra work i had to do to get it working.
But now i am sick of my computer crashing and slowing down i want to give linux a proper run through, but i really dont know which one i should try out, and i still want to play my pc games but i don't know if this is posible on linux. the games id use would be games like; football manager, command and conquer, halfelife 2, counterstrike and other rts games, would these run on linux? and if so which 'type' of linux would i be most suited to considering i have never (properly) used or installed linux?

thanks very much,
andy

hi andy,
Welcome to Linux world :-)
Dont worry about your games.........using "wine" like utilities you will be able to play your games on linux too.
And about the distro............this question has been asked several hundred times on this forum.....so just search a bit using the "search" option....u will get your answer.

regards

Welcome to Linux and to LQ!

What you refer to as a 'type' of Linux is usually called a distribution (distro for short) in the Linux community. Oh, and welcome.

I personally like and use Gentoo Linux, though it can be complex. It supports amd64 cpus. Likewise, Ubuntu supports the amd64 cpus, and it is considered much more user-friendly.

For your windows games, there are tools like Wine and Cedega that permit many of them to be run under Linux.

Hi Andy,
It's great to hear that your interest in Linux is rekindled... I was in the same boat as yourself a couple weeks ago: just getting plain ol' sick and tired of windows :)

Currently I am running SuSE 9.3 32-bit on my laptop and I'm lovin' it (please don't sue me McDonalds...) I can definitely recommend it as one of the most polished distros I've tried...

As for your question about games... most older games aren't native to linux so technically won't 'work' in linux (any distro) without some help... I have 3D acceleration enabled on my laptop and can run HL2 and Counter Strike: Source fairly well (I haven't really tweaked it much yet)... so to roughly answer your question, you can play your games in linux... However you will require a piece of software called Wine or Cedega (Cedega is the commercial counter part to Wine...) check out www.transgaming.com for a list of supported titles.. The only downside to Cedega is that it requires a $5/month membership... which really isn't that bad at all considering Steam breaks under linux practically every time Valve updates it, and a fix is usually only a day or two away...

As another suggestion, try out some Live CD/DVD distros... they are basically a bootable optical media that will run *entirely* from CD/DVD and won't touch the contents of your hard drive... It's a great way to try out a few different distros to 1) check hardware compatibility and 2) see how you like it :) (unfortunately it's not a very good judge of overall performance... seeing as though it's running entirely off an optical media! ;))

Hope that helps!
If you've got other questions, feel free to ask.

Thanks for your help guys but ive got another question sorry :-)
i have tried twice to install linux mandrake which i managed to work! (i was quite impressed)
then i tried gentoo and quit halfway through the installation i tried to print a manual how to install it and it was about 50 pages long i just agve up,
is there any other distros that install similarly to mandrake? does ubuntu?
thanks again

What do you mean by "similarly"? If you're specific about what aspects of the Mandrake install appeal to you, then we can be specific about recommending something with a similar installation.

sorry, i will try to be more specific,

i liked the way it installed itself basicly and then once installed once you got used to linux you could then start to play around with it, where as gentto you had to (i think, i wasnt sure what i was doing) i had to do everything durin the installation and i had no idea what i wasa trying to do when all the comand promps came up, so i would be idealy looking for a linux that was a simple installation for a novie but customizable for when i grow more confident, no any distros?
thanks

If that's your only criteria, I'd say just about any of the major distributions is your cup of tea, as long as it's not Debian, Slackware, Gentoo, or Linux from Scratch.

So, you could try SuSE, Mepis, Ubuntu, Xandros, Fedora, PCLinuxOS, Blag...

a whole host of distros have easy base installs you can tinker later.

For the lazy, who wants only click and play type of beginner, there is (drumroll): Linspire!
why? it's targetted at this group of user (no offence).
(www.linspire.com)

Not my idea of learning linux though.

If you want to use linux for real, you need to work a little too! :rolleyes:
This means, you need to get under tha hood a little.

Learning how to compile things, knowing how the system is structured and some handy commands etc etc etc. :study:

I mean, clicking of the mouse is easy (windows like).. but knowing :Pengy: what you just triggered with that mouseclick is more vital to understanding linux (and thus being able to troubleshoot it).

Don't be scared to use trial by error :(. Most of us did it that way, and became master on linux. :D

fair point and i think thats what i want to do, thanks,
sounds good what distro do you use teebones?

I know trial and error is the best type of learning (or for me it is) but where did u learn the very basics did u buy a book or sumthin? or did you go with trial and error from the very beggining?

i think i may try xandros thats sounds pretty cool, does it support amd64? i tried searching google for amd64 compatible linux but it gave me aload of crap. does anyone know which other linux's supports amd64?

thanks very much

Ubuntu does.

for now, it might be good to run in 32 bit emulation. Slackware is the one of the only ways to get to know Linux really well. Debian is good too. The big problem with Gentoo installation is that it is a from-source distro. There are way too many ways to install a gentoo system that it almost rivals LFS in install difficulty, without as many learning benefits. You really want to learn Linux and have the time to put in it, right? Oh yeah, Vector is a good stepping stone.

Well, i use(d) many (if not all) distro's.

The ones i liked most are these:

Gentoo, Slackware, Debian, Linux from scratch.

(i like knowing what's installed, how it's configured AND what's running and what not)

In other words, tweak in such way i like it. (no stuff on my systems, i don't want)

about my linux knowlegde...

well for 6 years, i've learned it by myself most part. Read many articles/howto's. like to be Experimenting allot too. About a year ago or so, i became certified for linux too.

until recently i was professionally involved on a Linux project.

Now, i'm workless (bad IT economy forced me to acknowlegde me being fired, to expensive i guess :D )

Thank you guys so much i am down to two distros,
i want to fiddle about with linux but want something reasonably user friendly to start.

I know ubuntu supports amd64 but does vector support it?
thanks again

Vector (wich is based on Slackware), does not support 64Bit code (currently).
There is however another slackware based project wich does support 64bit code:
http://www.slamd64.com/