hey guys i'm new to linux as you can tell from my being a new member. So, im getting tired of Windows XP going slow and using too much of its applications in background that things dont load fast enough for me.

So i am trying to make transition to Linux.

First of all, i am new to this and i would like to learn before installing.

I havent used the live cd yet, but i will do that later.

I want to get my questions solve first, so here we go:

1. What should i do with xp programs when installing Linux as a main OS?

2. What about my programs on xp such as microsoft office package, pictures, music, and other files, will those work in linux?

3. Do i have to do a backup on those files, pictures and other files on a data cds before installing linux?

4. I know how to install xp or OS but how do i uninstall them so i can install linux?

5. Will my bittorrent client (i assume you're familiar with it already) ,Utorrent, work in linux??

6. Do i have to re-install my wifi programs and printer programs and everything else once i have install linux??

please let me know thanx!!

1. Leave them on XP

2. If you really need a Windows application ... you can look into wine http://www.winehq.com

3. If they are not replaceable ... then it would be wise to do so.

4. If you want to remove Windows then you can just delete the partition.

5. There are Bit/U Torrent apps for Linux.

6. There will be different drivers for Linux.


These are brief answers ... and in most cases require a lot more discussion.

It is best that you run a LiveCD first.

No Window app will run under Linux directly. There are a few choices to get Windows to run under Linux. One is called Wine but does not work with many.
Run Vmware and a guest of Windows on it. But the guest is limited in what hardware is used. It uses virtual hardware like for video card and everything else. So if you need a high quality video card to run a game you will be disappointed here.

You can leave XP installed and do what is called dual boot. Allows two seperate OSes to be booted from a boot manager. Only one can run at one time.

There are a few bittorrent apps for linux. A windows bittorrent program will not run natively in Linux. Refer to first answer.

You will need to setup everything under the new Linux install. But none will use the Windows install cd unless there is a Linux install on them.

For wifi card itself may have a native linux module or use a thrid party depending on the chipset of the device. Some may use madwifi for Atheros based cards. Ndiswrapper will work with nearly any card. It is a module that uses the Windows inf driver file to interface with the nic.

For printer that is a maybe as well. Not all printers work under Linux. Check this site and look under the printer tab to search for your printer and see if it works, how much of it may work, what driver package it uses, or if it is a paper weight. http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/O...SDocumentation

The only real way to know is install a Linux distro. I would look into Suse, Mandriva, and Fedora Core.

Brian

hmm..ok whats is the benefits of having dual boot?


see i have two harddrive, one harddrive is 40 gigs for main os, and other harddrive is 240 gigs for movies, anime and games.

now what if i want only linux but not windows xp as main os? how do i go about that?

can i backup on pictures, and music and then reload them back once i have install linux?

i want to use kubunto..

how do i uninstall xp and install linux?


i have check the printer site..my printer works perfectly.

but i have this wireless router called Belkin..will it work?

correct me if i'm wrong (members, senior members, moderators, something) but you should be able to save pictures, microsoft-oriented documents and music on a thumbdrive and kubuntu should read it. microsoft documents can be opened by the linux equiv called openoffice.org-and you should have it on installation. the mplayer can play almost anything. and the pictures are pictures-linux supports most formats that i know of. the advantage of a dual boot is that:

1. you can still have the fun of watching windows freeze

2. you can switch to windows to play games that are designed for windows, ubuntu (note: kubuntu is formed from it) has a synaptic package manager and an add/remove programs thing that you can get almost any kind of games from. but wine does not play all games flawlessly.

3. check for the hardware kubuntu supports-you may want to stay with windows to be able to use it somehow (i.e. a lexmark printer)

kubuntu should give the option of clearing the HDD during installation-that will delete all partitions. be careful though-don't do that until you are used to linux. i still run xp and i have used linux for a couple years (and other people on here have used it for 10+ yrs and still run a windows os)

basicly a dual boot is where you have both windows and linux avalable and when you boot yoru computer you get a little menu asking you which one you want to load (kinda like the one you somtimes get in windows when its crashed where you can choose safe mode)
so if you select windows windows will boot normally, if you select linux, linux will boot.

if you want to get rid of windows totally tell teh linux installer to overwrite the entire hard disk (the 40G one)
if not you will have to repartition

answering otehr questions.

your router provided that it is conected with a network cable shoudl work without doing anything,

if you connect with wifi you may not be able to connect to it untill you get your wifi card working..

for instalation i woudl suggets conecting with a wire, tehn get teh card workin , then you can remove the wire


if your big hard drive is formatted as NFS (probbably)
you will be able to read form it in linux but not write to it.

hmm..i understand.

i am going to try the livecd and play with linux and see how it works.

in regards to other posts, i have an HP printer, i have visited the site, linux perfectly supports my printer.

in regard to wifi post, i dont have to worry about it because i am basically going to be using linux on my desktop but not on the laptop. my wireless router have network cable and dsl cable. so i am sure that it will not be affected by linux right?/

also, my big harddrive (240g) is NTFS format.

also, im not really into gaming anymore. so basically i am in only for my personal use like college work and internet and downloading movies, anime and whatnots. so kubuntu is good for that right?

for now, i will play livecd and get use to linux. will my programs or anything else i have on xp will work thru livecd linux?

thanx for all the suggestions!!

can you tell me how i can check the hardware that kubuntu supports? thanx!

btw , what about the sound card or video card or anything? i havent upgrade anything on my dell. so pretty much those internal stuff wont be affected right?

No idea of the specs of your machine. Using a Live CD to boot up and play with linux will help you see what will and won't work with the Live CD you use without actually installing the Linux distro. That is what a Live CD is.

Once you have the Live Cd up there will be some tools that can tell you the hardware you have in the gui mode of the Live CD. In the cli command line use a command ' /sbin/lspci -v ' to list hardware on the PCI bus that it can see.

I would do a manual partition during the install. Only work on the 40 gig drive. If you want to be sure then disconnect the 240 gig drive for now. Install Linux and get up a n going shutdown and reconnect the 240 gig drive. Now if the 240gig is formatted as ntfs as mentioned above then you will need to more than likely need to install Fuse with Ntfs-3g filesystem to be able to read and write to the ntfs partition on the storage drive. It is said to be 100percent safe to read and write to ntfs according to the developers. If you ever have a problem then they want to know. That is their work.

Like I say try a Live CD and get used to it first. Once you feel comfortable to make the big switch then go for it.

What I would do is transfer the storage drive to a USB drive or a thrid harddrive and then format the partition with one of the linux filesystems from ext2, ext3, reiserfs, and a few others. ext3 is the common one. One thing I would stay away from is LVM partitioning. Just my 2 cents on LVM.

Brian

ok i'll see ..but im not that good on doing partitions and all but i'll get back to that point once im sure i want to make a big change to install an OS linux.

for now i'll play with the livecd. i just burnt it to disk so lets see how it works out. wish me luck!

thanx guys!

For partioning for a home user create one partition 100meg and mount it as /boot , a partition for swap, and then the rest can be a single partition for the distro. The size of swap can vary. In the old days when ram cost more than drive space one would create a swap twice the size of current ram quanity. So if one had 32meg ram a swap or 64meg was created. Today where ram is cheap and if you have 512meg or more then a swap of 256 is usually enough for the average user. For me I have 1 gig on the notebook and seldom ever get below 400meg of free space with the many apps open and running that I have done. I did create a 512meg swap but to my knowledge I have never used a bit of it.

There are many post here on partition schemes. Most are
/
/boot
swap

Others can break the system down to more partitions like this for a server used by say an ISP. Mostly to do things like quota control.
/
/boot
/usr
/home
/var/spool/mail
/opt
swap
swap

Example of partitions and use of space on it.
Brian

to be honest brian, i have no clue about partition or how to do partition with harddrive. i'll do the livecd and get my uncle to do the linux distro installation when he comes in late march for a visit.

lol..um..im gonna try and find more info on this..but i just started linux from livecd...i spent around 10 mins or so getting used to the interface..but....i am on laptop since my desktop was acting wierd..so my wireless connection is not working...is it suppose to work?

the wireless button on my laptop isnt lit up. so...and also...how can i access some program from xp?...lol im so stupid..i know u cant use xp directly so how can i basically use livecd? or how can i find this cli command??

help me out..lol

cli command, that's your shell or command line interface(CLI).

something like this
"you@unknown:~$ "

It can be accessed under either Konsole or Terminal Session, lot of good stuff under the command line. Search around for a good book on linux at your local library or used book store. I've found some gems at used book stores and usually more than half off the price of a new book. There's also some good HOW-TOs and online man pages with the Linux Documentation Project, http://www.tldp.org/ .

But basically you can use the command line to view your files, move files around, make new directories, delete old files you no longer use. The 'ls' command lists the directory you're currently in, 'cd' to change to a different directory, 'mv' and 'cp' are your move and copy commands respectively. if you don't feel comfortable using these yet, KDE can do a lot of it through the GUI. When your at the command line or shell, you can also use 'man command'(i.e. 'man cd') to find out some options you can use.

Remember, everything in linux is a file. Your devices are listed as files, processes listed as files(don't worry about touching either of those, you won't need to and shouldn't).

Maybe someone can elaborate more than I can. Or explain things a little bit clearer. But I'd do the dual boot, you'll probably have to reinstall windows and then install linux.

I think ubuntu has a graphical partition tool(never used it), but you'll want to install windows first, then linux. Go with one, if you don't like it, choose another. To me that's the beauty behind linux, there's more than one flavor to choose from.

You can still use your xp programs on Linux, you have two options you can run wine which is a program that allows you to run windows programs in a linux but it's not 100% effective. You can also use vmware which is a program that emulates basically a computer, you can install and run any operating system just like with a normal computer. I use both together to run my xp programs because somethings work better in vmware. You can back up your music pics etc to dvd or cd's or whatever files you need. You usually don't uninstall operating system you just format your hard drive and re-partition, Linux will ask you to do that and there usually is an option that you can select that it will do it for you or you could do it on your own. It's actually easier to install than xp i think the interface looks so much nicer. For bittorrent i recomend Ktorrent it doesn't eat up your internet like u torrent or other windows bittorrent clients and runs better than azureus which i used for a long time until I linux. Linux should automatically install drivers for your printer and wifi you just gotta tell it to install them and what not.

Linux is sweet you will love it once you convert.