Hi Guys,
For a long while I've been looking at Linux trying to decide whether or not to make the switch from Windows. Everything i have heard about it is Great but I'm not sure whether or not it would suit my needs. On my home PC I mostly just use it to stuff around, Play games maybe do some web work in my free time just basic stuff like that. What i am interested in is whether or not I would be Able to do these things:

A. Play Games (Such as World of Warcraft)
B. Watch Movies (DVD)
C. Run Macromedia Dreamweaver
D. Install Linux without having to wipe my Hard drive.

I'm thinking a Windows / Linux split drive would be the best answer for me but i am still a little unsure or how to do it and whether it is worth it. I mean if i install linux onto half of my hardrive and then find out that it cant do the main things i need to do with my computer I'm going to be using Windows the majority of the time which seems like a waste.

I would also like to test it on my home computer to see how i would go converting my workplace to linux as atm only our Servers are linux and not our Desktops.

Thanks,
Josh

Welcome to LQ. I would suggest dual booting until you become compfertable enough to get rid of windblows entirely. YOu can do anything on Linux that you can do in windows, but it will take a little extra effort.

A. My friend plays WOW on his Linux box with the wine emulator.
B. MPlayer is a great all purpose video player and support win32 codecs and DVD playback
C. I'm not sure what this is, but you can probably find a Linux equivalent or run it with wine (win32 emulator)
D. You will need to free up some disk space and resize your partition so you can create a new Linux partition. I would suggest at least 10 Gb for the Linux partition and however much space you think you need for a fat32 drive. The fat32 drive would be used to share files between Linux and windows.

If you need any help with any of this, this is the place to ask.

regards,
...drkstr

lol, i though you have problem with your "switch".
anyways.....

Games:
Linux has its own set of great games. Moreover using programs like 'wine', 'crossover' and 'cedega' you can run your windows applications (.exe) on linux too. But at times they won't work.
Personally i feel that for games at least, windows is best.

Movies:
Linux has support of many media player. You can surely watch any kind of movie on it.

Dreamweaver: no idea.

D: ya, you don't need to wipe out your drive. You just need a partion (better more than 5Gb) to have it along with windows.
And since you don't use linux, so better have it along with windows. Later on you can switch entirely to linux.

for dual booting search "dual boot" on this forum. It has been discussed many times.

regards

You can try out Linux without doing anything to your hard drive. Just use Knoppix. It runs entirely from a CD. Go to Knoppix.net for more info!

Hey again,
Thanks for the helpfull replies i think i'll try this out!

Can anyone suggest a good version of Linux to start out on? Something very graphical like windows that i can adapt to the easiest... I have a copy of something floating around here but ic atn remember the name of it i was told it was the Best Graphical version of Linux..

Anyway thx again

As Bob_H adviced, its good to start with knoppix if you don't want to install linux on your drive.
Just boot from the bootable cd of linux distro (knoppix), work on linux platform. After rebooting and removing the cd from cdrom you will be back to windows.
Its good start for newbies.
Rest if you would like to install, Mandrake, Fedora or SuSE would be good. They have nice graphics and easy to work.

regards

The above mentioned distros are pretty newbie friendly and might be a good starting point. You had mentioned something converting work place to Linux? If you really want to learn linux well, you might want to try something like Slackware, Gentoo, or Arch, Slackware being my #1 choice as you can see by my profile

regards,
...drkstr

Have a look at http://eedok.voidofmind.com/linux/chooser.html and http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/ for a suggestion at which distros to choose.

I'll also chip in that my experiences with debian have been quite positive, and that I've heard only good things about Ubuntu, the latter being the more user-friendly of the two. Have a look at www.debian.org and www.ubuntu.com. Also, Ubuntu will ship you CDs for free; see shipit.ubuntu.com.