Would like some help :)
 

Greetings to whom ever reads this. 1st of all I'm looking for some help/info, I have a spare computer and I want to start programming on a Linux system. So please keep in mind Ive been behind the MS blindfold for many years. I can build computers and install any windows OS, and Understand a few programming languages that windows uses. I also know HTML, DHTML, Javascript, etc. But these do not fill the void of programming that I think programming should do for me. So I have NO CLUE how Linux works or ANYTHING else about it, except that its a OS. Ok on to the questions.

1.) How would I turn a PC that has windows 98 on it into a PC that has a Linux OS?

2.) What things should I get before turning the PC into a Linux system?

3.) Are their "Drivers" for hardware like windows for video cards, mother boards, Sound cards, etc.??

4.) What programming languages are able to run under Linux other than Python, Java, Perl, C/C++??? what do you consider the easiest to use?

5.) What differences should I look for between different versions of Linux (Redhat vs Mandrake, etc)?

6.) What is the best "Internet Browser"?

7.) Is it possible to run "video games" created on windows platforms on Linux systems? (I have a Windows XP system for games and email, but still curious)

Any and all feed back is welcome. *prays for no flames, just help for a noob*

Thanks,

Tuul <-- :newbie:
Email - tuull@cox.net
Website - Coming Soon!

4.
awk, assembler, ada, bash, c/c++, fortran, haskell, java, lisp, lua, objective-c, ocaml, pike, perl, php, python, ruby, tcl, sed, etc...

It depends on what you want to do. I would start with shell scripts and advance to python/perl. Mastering c/c++ is not a bad thing either; that way you can get along with the internals better.

1) Burn an iso, set your bios to boot from cd and reboot.

2) Look at the hardware compatability list on tldp.org and look through some on distribution web sites.

3) The Linux kernel and X come with many drivers but see #2 above. And then some drivers like nvidia are available.

4) A bunch.

5) Some installers have different levels of hardware detection and some are built more for the gui only crowd and some are built for people who want to learn and configure the system themselves.

6) Mozilla Firefox is #1. I also like Konqueror and Epiphany but they just do it like Firefox.

7) Some games have been ported to Linux or you could try wine to run windows games under linux.

7. There is also cedega from transgaming (formely winex). It has quite a lot of games in it's compatibility database.

Thanks for info.
 

Thanks alot for the info. Now I have a starting place. Anything else a newbie should know once the OS is installed? Or if you have any other comments or info you think a newb could use, post it please :) Im a very open minded person about computers.

Thanks
Tuul

One thing that shouldn't be forgotten:
If the computer you are installing the new system has some important data you could miss in case you happen to destroy everything, take backups before starting the installation.

Re: Thanks for info.
 

Read documentation. http://jamesallen.dyndns.org:3000/bo...mentation.html

Read over the distro that you choose website.

Log in as a user and su to root only when you need to.

Be patient. Ask questions. Use Google Linux http://www.google.com/linux

check out the Rute User's Guide, an excellent place to start: http://www.icon.co.za/~psheer/book/index.html.gz (also available in print!)

as for which distro to use, if you just want to dip your toes and feel something different than windows, but you don't want a lot of hassle/learning experience, i'd recommend mandrake or suse, or red hat i suppose. if you want to learn, go slackware all the way: www.slackware.org

slackware kicks ass.

5. IMHO the main difference between the distros is the package manager.

Red Hat, SUSE and Mandrake all use rpm, which is easy to use, but neccessarily very good.

Debian and all variants thereof use deb. It is like rpm but substantially better, though debian is hell to install.

Gentoo uses portage, which unlike deb and rpm compiles from source as opposed to using precompiled. It is more customizable than either deb or rpm.

Slax and Gentoo will give comparable performance but gentoo is SOOOOO much more well documented.

Re: Would like some help :)
 

simple. download an ISO image of a distro you want to try out and install it. if you stick with the FC (Fedora Core, Mandrake, and SuSe line of distros they all have a rather intuitive GUI install that a windows guy should have very little if any problems installing.
just backup the data that you have on that old win98 box that you might want to keep. yes, but not like in win98 were you have to download and install every driver on the system to make it work. most hardware that is supported by linux will have drivers in the kernel so when you install the hardware should just work.all of them as far as i know, but im no coderjust the GUI mainly. linux is linux for the most part. there are some little differances like were this file is located in one distro vs an other, but for the most part they are all there.i like opera, but firebird, mozilla and plenty of others out there that are nice too.yes, but you will have to subscribe to the wineX project before you can run windows games in linux. most of them that run in wineX will run just about as fast as in windows, but with the more stable kernel of linux you dont have to worry about rebooting your box every time something goes wrong.welcome to LQ, and i hope that helped a tad.

Great!
 

All of you nice people are great, unlike alot of "help" boards for windows were alot of people flame noobs for not knowing... when my only responce is, were you not a noob at one point in time? so Im glad to see so many up scale kind patient people who take time out of thier daily stuff to help others on stuff they have no clue about. I just want to say "Thank You". Ive been doing alot of reading on what you guys are saying and ive got a better understanding of Linux than before, which is what i wanted. Ive got another question, it will be for someone who makes programs of all sorts...

1. Where can I find these programming languages and what do you think I should learn first and after im done learning which one should I do next? I understand there are alot of them, but I have ALOT of time and I like to learn.

Thanks again
Tuul

You don't really need to know any programming languages to get started with Linux, but it's a great platform to learn to program on. Compilaers/interpreters for just about any language you want can be installed with the distro you choose (the Mono project is even trying to make Linux compilers for the MS proprietaru languages such as C#). The GNU Compiler Collection (gcc) includes compilers for most compiled languages, including C, C++, Objective C, Fortran, and Ada. It even has a Java compiler, although I prefver Sun's own javac for what little Java programming I do these days. All of this will usually come bundled with your distro, and if it doesn't, you can download them.

If you want to do something useful right away, I'd suggest learning shell or Perl scripting right off the bat, since you can automate many tasks by writing scripts to do them. if you really want to get into hackingthe system, you're going to want to learn C (the Linux kernel is written in C + assembler for the system dependent parts).

Re: Would like some help :)
 

Originally posted by Tuul
Greetings to whom ever reads this. 1st of all I'm looking for some help/info, I have a spare computer and I want to start programming on a Linux system. So please keep in mind Ive been behind the MS blindfold for many years. I can build computers and install any windows OS, and Understand a few programming languages that windows uses. I also know HTML, DHTML, Javascript, etc. But these do not fill the void of programming that I think programming should do for me. So I have NO CLUE how Linux works or ANYTHING else about it, except that its a OS. Ok on to the questions.

1.) How would I turn a PC that has windows 98 on it into a PC that has a Linux OS?

wipe the drive of the windows partitions, create new linux partitions format and install. I suggest slackware, but it is your call what distro you try.

2.) What things should I get before turning the PC into a Linux system?

I would suggest 2 books.
1. a command reference like Linux desk reference by Oreily or Linux in a nutshell
2. a book that teaches about basic linux concepts like administering and configuring the system and applications, etc...

3.) Are their "Drivers" for hardware like windows for video cards, mother boards, Sound cards, etc.??

Yes, they call them modules, but yes there are drivers for various types of hardware, however, since you mentionted video cards, I will
say that ATI's drivers suck, much like they used to suck under windows back in teh rage 128 days. If they don't break something, then your damn lucky.

Also note in some cases the drivers can actually be embedded in the kernel in which cse they are not seperate files loaded when needed like drivers and modules are..

4.) What programming languages are able to run under Linux other than Python, Java, Perl, C/C++??? what do you consider the easiest to use?

I could not possilby list the number of compilers available for linux. so lets limit it to intro level High level languages to start with front ends to GCC that GNU actually lists.

SmallTalk, Modula-2, Pascal, Ada, the list goes on, you can probably find a BASIC front end if you look long enough. AS to which to learn, thats a loaded question, prepare for an all out war from various points of view ranging from you shoudl start with an OO langugae to C is the only language you ever need to learn. I'll stick my 2 cents in and say Ada. I really liked Ada for some reason when I was learning languages. Although the material availalbe for learning ada will be limited, so I suppose Pascal is a better choice, and the two have semi similar syntax, so. Both are a little wordy, but the wordyiness makes the code easier to understand until you get used to it. Then try C, which can be written very clearly but rarely ever is.

5.) What differences should I look for between different versions of Linux (Redhat vs Mandrake, etc)?

Package distrubution system, and packages they include, For instance mandarake has a disk drake program which is a lot nicer for
partitioning hard rives than the old fdisk stand by. But the actual functionality is minimal at best. All linux distros use the GCC compiler collection, Open Office is 10X better than any other office app out there, etc...

6.) What is the best "Internet Browser"?

Puts on asbestos suit for the impending flame war.
Firefox is my preferred browser.

7.) Is it possible to run "video games" created on windows platforms on Linux systems? (I have a Windows XP system for games and email, but still curious)

Yes, Wine can do SOME games, but I think you're better off to keep a real windows install personally.