where can i get useful information to educate myself about debian?
 

hi guys,

im new here and new to linux, im currently running windows 8.1 but ive heard that linux is better than windows, and i want to drop windows forever, ive been using windows my entire life, it worked well enough but now windows 8.1 sucks and i want to use linux, its free and awesome.


im running debian wheezy 7.8 on a virtual machine i want to get to know it in the virtual machine and eventually move over to debian entirerly.

i was wondering if you guys knew some places where i could educate myself about debian and how it works?

i cant seems to play videos on debian, how can i into videos?

For Debian documentation, go to:
www.debian.org -> Documentation
This is another issue, and you should search this forum and other websites for the answer. If you can't find anything, create a topic here in Linux distributions -> Debian section/subforum.

How_To_Ask_a_Question

Perhaps a better way to migrate from Windows 8.1 to Debian would be to repartition your hard drive so that you can dual-boot between Windows 8.1 and Debian. That way you can get a feel with how Debian actually works (with GRUB, etc.) while still being able to boot into Windows.

On partitioning for dual booting
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/gparted.html

Debian has a lot of documentation
http://www.debian.org/doc/

The Gnome desktop has more
https://help.gnome.org/users/
and there's a help application look in the menu or press F1.

Look at the help for the applications. Many of them also have websites and LibreOffice offers free pdf books.

What is the problem with videos? Do you mean (1) youtube, (2) formats like flv/mp4, or (3) commercial DVDs? What are you trying to play them with, and what does it tell you when it fails?

You have to install flashplugin-nonfree
https://wiki.debian.org/FlashPlayer

will this not take away alot of recources of my machine? (im on a laptop). the reason why i experiment with debian on a virtual machine is so i cant mess up my computer.

Dual booting is like having 2 computers, totally separate of each other, unless/until you mount your other partition(s)/OS. You will see how fast it runs compared to your present OS.

Debian prides itself on using only free software, some of the stuff you will need for full usage pf your machine is in what Debian calls non-free, you will need to (download &) install libdvdcss2 to view commercial dvds.

The Debian wiki is also a source of good info
http://wiki.debian.org/

UEFI (which your win8 laptop will be using) complicates things a bit for dual boot and a lot of existing "guides" will be written assuming a BIOS boot setup - do some homework on that before leaping in ...

Yes 'descendent' is right, UEFI complicates matters. I suggest, but have not tried this (don't have windoze laptops), take the hard drive out and put a different one in. This will protect your current install. When rebooting, disable UEFI in the bios (enable legacy) and then treat the result as normal. To re-establish win8 put the old HDD back in and re-enable UEFI, by whatever name they call it, should be fairly obvious.

Fred.

can i also do this, but booting from a USB stick?

Do note I have not tried this but before you take out the HDD, enable legacy boot/bios and see if the boot order allows USB HDD's- not just USB floppys or cd's etc. If so I should see no reason why not.
what do you mean by this?

If you mean dvd's will not play on mplayer then that has no effect on installing Debian from dvd's, that will work as well as from USB. Playback from dvd's for films is complicated by patents but not unsolvable.

Fred.

it was about on the internet, im no expert but its with flashplayer or something?

totallinuxn00b,

Have a look at this thread from post #6 onwards:


http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...er-4175534372/