Looking for some pointers...
 

My computer specs are AMD Athlonx XP 1700+ 1.46Ghz, 256 DDR-RAM, nVidia GeForce 4 MX 420 64MB, LiteOn DVD/CD-RW Combo, Seagate 80GB 7200RPM and that's pretty much it. Integrated sound in the motherboard, though. Anyway, here's what I want to do: right Now I have Windows 2000 SP4 on my 80GB hard drive. I want to dual-boot with ANY Linux distro (I'm REALLY aiming for a very easy to install and easy to use one, making sure it runs quickly as an Operating System) by adding an old Western Digital 8.6GB 7200RPM to my rig and installing the Linux OS to that one.

Please Recommend: A good, easy, fast, and newbie friendly Linux distro that I can use. Simplicity is a must for I just love to work with GUIs rather than with a command prompt whenever it isn't necessary (I can use a command prompt though, if needed, but I know none of the Linux commands... so teach me those). An easy distro will do even if just to learn. I can change the distro later when I become more experienced, I'm just extremely interested in Linux and I'd like to make the switch, albeit rather sowly and using Wine sometimes... Also some good software to play my Windows games... maybe a Wine that supports DirectX or do the nVidia drivers do that already? :scratch: Anyway... that's pretty much what I want and I am willing to learn. I literally know nothing about Linux (the Operating System itself) so please help me out here. I'm fairly experienced with computers as a whole, I even built my rig so don't treat me as a TOTAL newbie... just a Linux newbie. ;)

Thank you for your help...
Appreciate it a lot. :)

p3ngu!n
:newbie:

Re: Looking for some pointers...
 

Welcome to LQ in the first place! :)

I'm afraid these are mutually exclusive requests.
If it's user-friendly it will be slow(er). RedPhat
and Mandreck will be easy, but they are slow
compared to Slackware or other minimalistic
distros.
Just an example: time from <choseOS><enter> in
Lilo to "actually can do things on desktop", all
taken on a PIV 1.6, 256 MB:
Win2000: 2:30 minutes
RH 7.2: 1:30 minutes
MDK 8.2: 1:25 minutes
Slackware 8.1: 0:45 minutes

That's like saying:"I want to learn spanish!" and chosing a menu
in a cantina ;) to learn the language, rather than a course-book.

As for your games ... some will work with wine,
some won't, you'll have to find that out per game :)

If you want to LEARN LINUX, avoid doing stuff
from the GUI. Most of the time things are faster
and easier from the prompt. GUI is OK for the
Web-Browser, OpenOffice and Gimp, but the
"real thing" is non-graphical.

Cheers,
Tink

Well... uh... fine... just give me a distro to get familiarized with the OS. I won't read a book without having a distro to work with and I dont want to work with a distro just to learn! I like to learn WHILE I use it... not just learn for the sake of it... Again, I wanna make the switch, although slowly. So give me something to start with so I can learn little by little. I don't have the time or the interest to read a Linux book without having something to work with. :P

And for the record... ya se hablar español. ;)

p3ngu!n
:newbie:

Slackware... not as hard as gentoo or LFS.
Not as easy as RH, MDK or Debian. It has a
steep learning-curve, but is very gratifying

It's FAST .... now the RH and MDK users
will jump up and down and yell:"But you can
make MDK(RH) faster, too!! All you need to
find out is what you don't need and can safely
turn off!" ;)

Basically you get most of the important
stuff on one CD (two since the latest release).

Cheers,
Tink

Link to download? I'll check the site. Any particular version you recommend? Does it use KDE and/or Gnome? Which is better? I would like to use one of them to ease the switch... Too many questions... Oh well, that's what n00bs do... Hopefully, I'll be answering questions like these years from now so I don't feel bad. :)

http://www.slackware.com/getslack/

I personally still use 8.1, with manually
updated 2.4.21 kernel and X 4.3.

9.0 doesn't look to bad (have that on
both kids machines, the reason why I
don't use it is gcc (3.xx instead of 2.95.3)
and Gnome 2 (which I can't stand, and
don't like the idea of having to have many
libraries installed for Gnome 1.x as well))
No wonder I can't stand Gnome ;)

9.2 comes with 2 CD's for the first time,
and has bleeding edge products (for the
first time, Slack used to stick with "old",
approvedly stable versions until now)

As for "which is better KDE/GNOME" ..
that's a metter of taste and opinion. :)
I use fluxbox ;) But I'd say that KDE's
resemblence to windohs is closer than
gnomes.

Cheers,
Tink

You have mutually disagreeable desires. I suggest that you prioritize your wants because you are not going to find any distro to fill all of them.

If you are patient & want to learn the nuts & bolts, go with a distro like Slackware, Debian, or Gentoo.

If you are like me, and rather impatient, go with Mandrake or Red Hat...they will help you get over the rough spots while you are learning.

I tried Red Hat but it is not quite as cutting edge as Mandrake...and after you learn a bit you can trim Mandrake down as much as you want...or even go to another distro.

One thing though...whatever you decide...stick with that distro till you have a handle on linux. After you are more confident then you can experiment.

Also...stay away from cooker programs.

...make sure that anything you install in the beginning does not require you to change/update the basic libraries in your OS...you WILL regret it. :tisk:

Good luck...and if you have a Dell computer, or anything with an LG CDROM Drive, you do not want Mandrake 9.2 just yet...LG did a bad...and it causes Mandrake 9.2 to break the CDROM.

I would have said that Mandrake stuffed up.
After all I haven't heard anything the like
from other distro's (specifically such that
use the stock kernel ;) rather than a home-
brew patch).

Cheers,
Tink

It's easy to point fingers when you don't know the facts.

http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/lgerrata.php3

I was always atracted to Mandrake. I even have the 9.0 CDs... I'll try installing it.

The n00bness got to me... ughs. I tried to set up my mouse as a wheel mouse and setting it up as a PS2 Wheel Mouse or whatever that was, I completely disabled it! What can I do to get it working again? Even better if I can set it up as a Wheel Mouse.

Damn tab keys, it's annoying to work with them like this...

Using GNOME btw... sorry about the double post.

Nevermind, I got it.... :)

Looking to install this GIMP I downloaded just now... What do these things mean?

1. You need to have installed GTK version 1.2.8 or better. Do not try
to use the unstable GTK+ versions 1.3.x, it will not work

And how do I install these things that I am missing? Are they on CD 2?

## ----------- ##
## Core tests. ##
## ----------- ##

configure:1524: checking for a BSD-compatible install
configure:1578: result: /usr/bin/install -c
configure:1589: checking whether build environment is sane
configure:1632: result: yes
configure:1647: checking whether make sets $(MAKE)
configure:1667: result: yes
configure:1690: checking for working aclocal-1.4
configure:1701: result: missing
configure:1705: checking for working autoconf
configure:1716: result: missing
configure:1720: checking for working automake-1.4
configure:1731: result: missing
configure:1735: checking for working autoheader
configure:1746: result: missing
configure:1750: checking for working makeinfo
configure:1757: result: found
configure:1819: checking for gcc
configure:1848: result: no
configure:1899: checking for cc
configure:1928: result: no
configure:1941: checking for cc
configure:1987: result: no
configure:2040: checking for cl
configure:2069: result: no
configure:2083: error: no acceptable C compiler found in $PATH
See `config.log' for more details.

That means that you should use
RPM's in Mandrake :)

And that most likely you only have
Gnome2 on the machine while Gimp
wants the old libraries.

Cheers,
Tink