Hello everyone, I have a homenetwork of 5 PC's all currently on Windows systems, Win 98 through to Wn XP. To honest I am really cheesed off with the constant crashing and instability.

Two of the PC's are due for replacing (Win98 and Win Me) and the new ones will initially be Win XP.

Thats the history so far.

I want to take the old P4 machine, remove all traces of the Win op system and replace it with Linux.

So today I set about the task of finding out about the Free Linux system. I read its free and better than any Windows system. Problem is though you can't get any of it easily ?

RedHat seems to be MicroSoft the sequal, with a confusing website.
I can't get anything that looks meaningful from Mandrake
Debian seems to want to give a confusion of things for free, only if you pay £60 a year membership.

Google list hundreds of web sites, many of them verbose with broken links and misleading statements.
the download link on this site also shows page cannot be found

I understand that Linux is an open source and changeable system, isn't there anything anywhere that will get me started ?

Download files that provide basic installation files
Instruction booklet
How to's
etc etc - but all in one place - I am going dizzy jumping from site to site, read page after page and getting nothing

Am I really going to be condemned to using Windows and contributing to Gates billions forever.

I need an alternative - can anyone give me a steer

Thanks for listening and any advice or point in the direction would be appreciated -

Hi Macca1 and welcome to LinuxQuestions!

I think you have posted this in the wrong forum, I'll ask one of the administrators to move it to the "Newbie" section. That way, you will get more and better answers.

Here are a couple of links to keep you busy meanwhile:
http://distrowatch.com/
http://www.linuxiso.org/

Welcome to the world of Linux!
Martin

Moved: This thread is more suitable in Linux - Newbie and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

--jeremy

I have a home network of 6 desktop PC's (Plus one print/file server and a firewall box)

4 of those were for the kids, one is my wife. She has been converted to linux for some time now due to the windows crashing. She wanted reliability... The couple of win apps she needs run under crossover... The kids have (or had) dual boot PC's but the girls use linux exlusively now. The boys boot win for games but generally use linux. Ages range 11-17...

I went with a standard mandrake across the board quite some time back. Currently running mostly mdk10 with a 9.1 box and a 9.0 on the wifes machine. She is happy and has no real reason to upgrade.

I get all my linux in australia here from places like ELX as I can't download anything that big... There are plenty of places to get the install cd's...

You don't need to pay £60 a year membership to use debian. Where did you get this from??

hi

ive been using linux for approx ..1 day.

i,m using suse9.1.

all i did was download the file,burn it to disc and boot from it.
it partitioned the HD for me and install was easy.
it detected my soundblaster5.1,,gforce4,networkcard,and
everything else easy as pie.didnt ask me for drivers like xp does or anything,just got on and did it.

i would recommend it to anyone.the only thing that stopped me from changing ages ago was the idea of it being all code.with this i can have a user friendly interface and learn the code side of it together.

dirky

Hi Macca1,

I can't give you a steer, they don;t allow cows in my neighbourhood.

I can give you a short account of what I did to get started wit Linux, though:

Just like you, I read bunches of web pages about the different Linux distributions. I decided, that Debian would be the right system for me.

Debian's web page http://www.debian.org/ was all I needed to install it. Click on "Getting Debian" in the top toolbar on the site, which well get you here: http://www.debian.org/distrib/

There you can see different ways of obtaining Debian Linux. If you have a fast Internet connection I recommend the third option, the network installation.

If you're on dial-up, I'd recommend buying a set of pre-made installation CDs or get a friend to download it for you for free.

Network installation:
http://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst

I downloaded the stable Minimal CD iso and burned an installation CD in Windows. Next, I booted from the CD, and followed the installation instructions. After about an hour of copying, downloading answering all kinds of configuration questions, I ended up at the KDE login prompt. KDE is a window manager for X, which is in turn a graphical user interface for Linux.

That's pretty much it. Make sure that your hardware is supported and you should be up and running in a couple of hours, just like me.

for Hardware compatibility use the HCL on this site:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/

Good luck!

Guido.

Thanks to Martin and Jeremy for moving the thread without the usual rebuke that some forums managers give. My mistake, I normally check first but I had been hunting around the web form hours reading reams of words and my head hurt.

Sorry Mirradric, I also stand corrected it was the Mandrake site that kept pushing me towards membership of £5 a month on this link http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/club/ (please delete if URL's shouldn't be posted).

Amosf, I had been to the SUSE site and started downloading SUSE9.1, it seemed to be the exact thing I was looking for. However while reading the installation it said after downloading the image, burn to a CD. Then run the CD try out the Linux system, if happy register and purchase the full copy ?

You see my confusion ?

I should point out that I am not against making donations to support groups, but I do like to try them out first. I mean we wouldn't be expected to pay for a new car in order to test drive it ?

Let me try and explain what I think I want.

A mirror site that has a basic Linux operating system
Download it to a PC
Run it and build a PC that has the basics like
A file Manager
Access to the Internet
Device Manager
Printer/scanner/camera support
Some sort of Office application
Just the basic stuff really but then I can grow from there.

This site should be in keeping with what I believe to be the "Linux" effect - free open source software as an alternative to Windows.

Its been a long day just reading and trying to cram in the information, I am sure that it will all come together eventualy but aprt from the fact I am stubborn bugga I would have given up hours ago.

Thanks for your patience so far, I will go check the Suse site again as I could have got it wrong and get back here to see if anything new has been advised. Many thanks all.

Download ISOs (or buy them at disc cost off ebay) of whatever takes your fancy. SuSE download edition is popular with new users, as is Mandrake 10 (especially mandrake, in fact). Fedora (Red Hat's spinoff) is also decent for new users.

You can get the isos from here:

http://www.suse.com/us/private/downl...t_mirrors.html
http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/ftp.php3#iso
http://fedora.redhat.com/download/mirrors.html


These distros will all do the things you requested on a standard install

I understand that you have been trying this out with no success for a while and are getting tired.

Wanna get instant success? Go to the linuxiso site and download and burn the latest Knoppix iso. Knoppix is a live CD, so you can just pop it in your computer, boot from CD and try it out. It doesn't install anything to hard disk and is quite user friendly with a high Ahhh! Ohhh!-factor.

You'll be using Linux within the hour, man!

Martin

hehe... welcome to linux...

Heheheh gone from zero to three in last hour.

Downloaded the Dabien one Ta !

Also, because I like the sound of the Knoppix one I have started that off - don't know about an hour though are you using Microwaves ?

Reckon it will take 3 to 4 hours on my BB connection. By which time I will be well and truly full of the amber nectar as I am going down the pub - its Saturday Ye know !

Will just let the puter do its work and hope that Windows doesn't collapse on me hehehehehehe.

Let you know tomorrow what the outcome was.

Many thanks for the support so far, it was a much needed shove in the direction.

Oh sorry, I didn't realize that you have the slow version of Internet

Just kidding. OK, so I was a little over-optimistic about the time. Now, for the big question: Are you in to Linux yet? (Or are you still trying to cure a hangover? Egg yolks and Worcestershire sauce is the only thing that really works.)

Martin

Finally got the image Now doing the burning and stuff, may be a while yet !!!! :

Lessons learnt so far...

1. The answers to queries are all over the Internet
2. Its recognising them that is the problem
3. This site gives you the confidence try something you rejected hours before
4. When downloading be prepared to wait, it takes 4 hours on a broadband connection, max speed it reached was 33Kb/s
5. Turn off the piggin power saver when you leave it downloading all night
6. The power saver stops downloading
7. Never, repeat NEVER retry when nursing a hangover it makes you mad as hell
8. Swearing has a beneficial impact.

Well got lots more to do yet, will keep going and post later in the week on the outcome.

So far though it has been entertaining to say the least

Great help here though - Ta people

Blumming heck, it only works

Never doubted it really !!!!!

Using Linux now straight from the CD and it was really easy. Configured to my PC like it owned it

Internet access first time, found some MSWord documents on the hardrive and opened them in OpenOffice, no problems, looks just the same to me.

The icons and names on the desktop confuse but then I have been ingrained with MS stuff for over a decade.

One prob so far, a Visual Basic program I wrote doesn't execute Will look into that.

Now I need to install it as THE opsys on the harddrive, how do i do that ?

Am I still a hehehehehehehehehe