Hi folks,

I'm a Windows raised noob lookin' to abandon my roots and elope with Linux. I'd like to try Ubuntu 7.10 (and later, Hardy Heron) and MAYBE Slackware on my HP notebook. Can i be assured that i wont rue this decision as far as web browsing and development are concerned? I'm an intermediate web. dev. and would like to spend MOST of my time developing good websites, not resolving platform issues...

Also, where can one get a good intro to linux tut in pdf, so as to learn regular sys admin as well as the plethora of command line switches?

Thankee for your time,

Lloyd Dube

Burn a ubuntu cd, put it in your cdrom drive and start the computer.
What will appear is what you will have once it is installed, only a little slower.
It does not make any change to your hard drive unil you click install.
If what you see is what you want, then install.
The man command tells you about command line switches. type man command to know how to use command.
for a start, man man will tell you more about man.

Just out of curiousity, how can you be developing good web sites on Windows? Does Window have web developement tools?

Notepad and MS Paint are two of the best tools ever created for advanced web development. Hahahaha!

Lol...thanks for your responses, guys. I use Dreamweaver to edit my HTML and then Ruby on Rails or Python code using ConTEXT and PyScripter. Heheh, be nice! There are some nice tools on Windows but im sick and tired of bugs.

For a start, you can keep using dreamweaver with wine. This is a well supported application under wine last I checked.

You don't have to abandone Windows entirely. The installer provides easy options to "dual boot" Windows/Linux. It can shrink the existing Windows partition and install Ubuntu in the remaining space on the hard drive. Then, whenever you boot up the computer you have the option of either running your existing Windows OS or the Ubuntu OS. That way, if you ever need to do something that you can only do in Windows (or only know how to do in Windows), then you're just a reboot away from it.

Hello Lloyd, and welcome to the wonderful world of Linux. Ubuntu is a great start -- it's the most polished distro of Linux for desktop use of which I'm aware. I won't lie to you and say that everything is guaranteed to work out of the box. However, that's true of Windows, too. I doubt if you installed Windows from scratch that you'd have accelerated video, your wireless would work without having to download and install a separate driver, and so forth.

However, one significant difference between the Windows world and the Linux world is that, at least from my observations, people who use Linux are more apt to document the steps they've taken to resolve problems. So, if you encounter problems setting up Ubuntu on your laptop, chances are someone else has encountered those same problems and has described how to fix them. Google "Ubuntu HP <insert model number here>" and you'll probably find solutions.

During installation of Ubuntu, when you get to the hard drive partitioning step, choose automatic. The installer will resize your Windows partition for you and automatically set up dual-booting. This way, if Ubuntu doesn't work out for you, you've still got Windows.

Once you get your Ubuntu system running, check out all the junk you can install from the apt repositories. Go to the System menu --> Administration --> Synaptic Package Manager. For web devel, Gimp will probably be a staple for you. There are probably a hundred syntax-highlighting HTML editors available. I'm partial to SciTE, although if you enjoy task-based development environments, you might prefer Bluefish. Anyway, my point is, not only is pretty much anything you need available for free, it's also available without having to scour Google for it, installation is mind numbingly simple, and updates are automatic.

Thanks so much folks, i got a vmware instance of Ubuntu 7.10 running on my notebook last night and i love it so far. I did have problems, because i prematurely removed the CD, but i just deleted all my VMs and succesfully reinstalled. Will now order Hardy Heron...

@@calraith, thanks for the detailed post...

Much respect,

"Triumph"