hello everyone, and thanks for the time you're about to spend helping me.

im an uber noob as far as linux goes, i never used it before, but have heard good things.

i got my laptop for free with a mobile-internet contract. Unfortunately however it came with winblow$ Vista home basic.

its not a bad laptop.

intel celeron CPU 570 @ 2.26ghz
1gb ram
2-bit operating system
graphics - SiS mirage 3 Graphics
256mb
(if u need any more info just ask)

basically, i use my laptop for gaming and facebook, not much else.

as im a noob, i dont really know where to start, im fed up with wondows.

with nothing but the system running, it uses over 700mb of my 1gb ram. its always using at least 1 3rd of the processor power, im not happy with this. i've tried getting this down as low as i can, but its just not right, im games im gettin between 1 and 5 fps (not good) and the networking is retarded!

please can anyone help me? i need to know which version is best for what i need? and what i need and where i can get it? any help is much appreciated! much thanks in advance!

You haven't said what you want it to be able to do. Are you hoping to continue playing winblows games on in it? Do you want it to be optimised for speed and lightness? Do you want it to have eye-candy and fx? Do you intend to completely replace vista or are you going to dual boot?

It all depends on what you want to do with it.

well, i want it specifically for counter strike hehe, i am an adict.

i also like to use facebook sometimes. but im really not fussed about eye-candy and fx, i'd rather it look less then standard, im after performance for games. i dont want vista atall on my system.

if i ever do i've got a cd and a cd key, so i know i cant damage it too bad lol. but a faster, more responsive computer would also be good.

but mainly gaming, i also use a tool for counterstrike called hammer, which i build maps with.

i guess i use it like any other gamer would, as long as i can listen to music, access the internet, play counterstrike (withy more then 5fps) and still build maps not much else matters.

thanks again for any and all help.

Well the good news is Counter Strike is playable under GNU/Linux, however as a newbie you might have trouble with installing it yourself. In any event, you can get assistance from LQ users when you get to that stage. For reference I'm posting the link to the instructions: Install Counter Strike.

As for which GNU/Linux to install, that's something you'll have to decide for yourself. I'll mention a few newbie friendly distro's here, but these are by no means all that are available. PCLinuxOS Linux Mint Ubuntu. Take a trip to DistroWatch where you can read about the various different distributions available.

Most commercial PC games are designed for Windows systems, so using Linux will not help a lot. You can run commercial games using the 'wine' Windows emulator, but it the end it will eat up your system resources (depending on the game in question).

I suggest you try out some Live CD-based Linux distribution to see what Linux can offer you, and then decide if you want to switch or rather stick to Windows.

linux

It's little surprise you are dissappointed with vista , are. Before you wipe it make sure your disk is the full version and not just a recovery as should you want to swap back it could be expensive and this includes XP.
The above advice I can only repeat but watch out for proprietary codecs that are not always catered for on a general release of linux.

Fred.

a) Vista isn't that bad...
b) you're new, one can see on that "Winblow$" :P (refer to --> http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...indoze-705645/)
c) with those system specs you are surprised that you only get 1-5 fps? That laptop isn't really made for gaming, especially not with an SiS Mirage gfx chip... if you want performance for games, you probably ought to get a new laptop, or fully decked out desktop box.
d) While CS:S uses dx9 (unless you play old CS, forgot what dx version that one uses...), if you want to play newer games with DX10, you will need Vista (or Win 7), but probably a better gfx too.
e) 1GB memory might be minimum required for Vista, but recommended is definitely more. Put more RAM into that thing.
f) and a 2-bit OS won't help much in any case (just kidding, assume you typoed 32 to 2 bit

Ever herd of Occam's razzor?
Never pee on those that what to learn: short memory, perhaps?

Answer me this one:

chmod 775 /home/mydir

is that hex or octal or even nonsense.

Fred.

Octal.

guess u gonna enjoy playing ur game under the linux (ubuntu,mandriva) environment , ,, just check it out there and tell us after

Don't know if it was deliberate, but thought it was quite a nice description of Vista

I certainly wouldn't pay more than 2 bits for it