Hi there, this is my first post!
Anyway, I am very interested in trying out Linux for the first time.
The thing is I have heard that there are tons of different developers like knopixs and some other ones.
Which one is a good one to pick up?
(I also like to play games, I hear you have to have an extra program to do that. Whats it called? >>)

Thanks for anyone who responds (thats not flaming me!) ^^

-Gavner

Welcome!!
To start, go to Distrowatch.com and pick anything in the top 5-10 on their "hit list". This will get you started. Chances are very high that you will try several before settling down.
The Knoppix LiveCD is a VERY good thing to get--even if you never install it. (in fact, the recommend that you DO NOT install Knoppix---rather to install Debian.--I do NOT recommend Debian for a beginner.)

We are standing by just on the off chance that you have more questions after getting your first install running.

For games, sometimes yes, sometimes no... There are a bunch of cool linux games already, like Sauerbraten! Then there are some older windows games remade like transport tycoon... Also some games will run under Wine, DOSemu, or Freedos.

Okay umm, I had my teacher explain how to do this, but i kinda forgot to listen to some of it >>

Say i want to make a dual boot of XP and Gentoo. How do i go about to do that?

I have never used Gentoo but the way it works in Suse is to just start out with a default setup of XP (that being on the first primary partition or entire drive of your system bootable drive, called drive C

Now linux detects XP and is able to manipulate the partition in such a way that the size of C: becomes smaller and room is made for linux... Also the NT bootloader is replaced with grub bootloader and XP will become the secondary item in its boot menu!

if you want linux on a different drive, expect something similar but without the partition resizing step... (all steps should be easily handled by the linux setup anyway)

if later you would then delete the linux partition for some reason, you may find that grub will no longer work and you cannot boot XP! To fix this, you need a grub boot disk that can install grub for windows, or you need to install another version of linux, or you need to run fixboot from the windows xp recovery console! (using the xp cd)

Do you mean openSuse? are they the same thing?

um, I'd recomend using one of the linux distro choosers on the net to help you out a bit.

My personal recomendations:
for click and play no need to know anything about linux? ubuntu
for jumping into the deep end of the pool? Debian
for learning to swim with a flotation device? slackware and get the book

Hope it helps

Here is one distro chooser: http://polishlinux.org/choose/quiz/

And here is a Linux Distribution Comparison table: http://polishlinux.org/choose/comparison/ where you can interactively compare 2 GNU/Linux distros.

Should be helpful.

polishlinux.org seems to be offline ATM...

I did not have opensuse... The version of linux I download was from the usenet and it said something like "Suse Linux 10 Full Retail" and there were 6 cd iso's.

That's probably called the pirated version, or there warez version or something and chances are good that novel would not want you do download that but it was a heck of a lot easier then finding a fast mirror to download the open version!

I used it probably 4 months about... Until I had some error and my download folder on it just simply disappeared!!! I was using the usenet reader in SUsE to download yet more linux iso's from the same newsgroup!

Well, I got help on this forum and people taught me how to get the files back and that it was because reiserfs does things like that sometimes... (I didn't know, it was the default file system from the setup program so I used it) But it seems I had already over written some of the drive space because the 2 linux dvd iso's I recovered were corrupted so I just deleted the whole linux partition!

Suppose I should update the distro selection of my profile but I aint decided which version I want to try next!

oh, forgot to say one other thing... I seen posts that people were having multimedia proplems with the open suse version... Don't know if that is fixed in the new release but just incase, be prepared you may have to download and install extra multimedia software if you use this distro! (or download the full multimedia version from the usenet)

Thats too bad about SUSE,

I tried it and it kept crashing on me so I was like O.K time to move on. try this Distro chooser http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/

just a few recomendations

Kubuntu
http://www.kubuntu.org/

Uses KDE desktop, one CD install works both as a live and Install CD. Be wary it is a bit bloated.

Mandriva
http://frontal2.mandriva.com/en/downloads/mirrors

This is what PCLinuxOS is based on it is a BIG distrobution with all you will ever need


PCLinuxOS .92
http://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/metalab/dist...glish/preview/
ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/metalab/distr...glish/preview/

This is the distro I use and recommend, Why because it works right out of the box. No need to configure Everything, everything just works. It also comes as a 1 CD install that is a live CD that you can install later if you wish.

BeatrIX
http://www.watsky.net/download.html

This Distro is small fast and effective, the ultimite Workers CD

Blag
http://www.blagblagblag.org/download/

Mephis
http://www.mepis.org/

Hope this Helps,

Jake

thanks alot for all your help, im gonna download madriva when i get home and try it out, now i need to know how to create partitions and install windows onto one and linux onto the other. ><

IF you go with Mandriva, it will handle all the tough stuff for you. It will see the Windows OS sitting there, and will give you several options. The simplest thing is to just tell it to install at the end of the Windows partition. It will then resize the Windows partition, and create the necessary partitions for Linux in the newly-freed space.

Just be sure that you defrag your Windows drive before you begin the install. That will help the partition tool resize things with no problems.

go with ubuntu for starters....

Not to start a distro war, but Ubuntu is no better than Mandriva, or PCLinuxOS, or Suse, or ...

Wow! Thanks alot, you guys rock! Im reformating my drives just so i can get a fresh start on everything, so once i get XP working again, Im going to install mandriva ^^. You guys are the best, I think this is the most help I have ever gotten in any thread ever! (I hope mandriva works like you say it does! ^^ if it doesnt ill try ubuntu)