I would love to start out with something insightful and deep but I just don't have it in me. Right now I feel mostly lost and looking for answers.

I'm somewhat new to Linux. I've worked with some Unix and a lot of Windows, but I have always wanted to use Linux. I have some older machines that it would be great for and am looking to start there. I am just unsure about where I am to go thus I am here.

I thank all those that are willing and able to help my journey for lowly newbie to lowly not-so-newbie.

What is it you would like to do on Linux? Play games? Compose music? Look for broken things to hack on?

You sound like me a few years ago.

Download some live cds and play around with them. They are great because you just put them in the cd drive, boot, and they just work. They usually come with tons of usefull apps too.

puppy
http://www.puppylinux.org/
which is a 60mb or so cd(.iso) download

knoppix
http://www.knoppix.com/
has a 700mb cd and a 4gig dvd version

have fun

Hi and welcome to LQ

I thank you all for the warm welcome.

I also thank Kav for the heads up on the Live CDs.

Well, I'm looking to learn the O/S the way I learned DOS a little over a decade prior. Also, I'm looking to do the same thing on Linux that I do on the PC.

I mostly browse the web. I do a bit of accounting. I download music. And, I write. From everything I have read, this is easily (relatively) to accomplish.

At this current time I do not have the knowledge basis for doing so. Given some time, I hope to to be at least competent at it.

If you're doing serious writing may I recommend getting Latex and Kile

I havn't learnt it properly yet but it seems like a very effective way of writing

If you haven't picked a distro, I recommend you start with Kubuntu.

For web browsing: Firefox.

For accounting and writing: Koffice

For downloading music: Limewire, Azureus, and Nicotine are all good choices.

For playing music: I like amaroK; some people use BMP (Beep Media Player) for its Winamp-like interface.

Check this list of actively developed software once in a while if you are looking for new programs to try:

http://sourceforge.net/top/mostactive.php?type=week

I also recommend taking a look at http://distrowatch.com; specifically their Top 100 list. That website was a great resource for me when I first started using Linux (and still is really). Distrowatch will give you tons of information on basically any Linux distro you can think of.

Hope this helps.

Thanks again for the further suggestions.

I had not selected a distro yet. I am thinking about using SlackWare, but I am open to any and all suggestions.

The unit I would like to install Linux on does not posess a CD-ROM. It is a rather small laptop that only has a floppy drive and about 2GB worth of harddrive space.

This is going to be a challenge. You are probably not going meet RAM requirements for a mainstream distro like Kubuntu. Slackware would work but may not be the most newbie-friendly distro. Look into something especially for underpowered hardware, like Vector Linux (Slackware-based) or Damn Small Linux (Debian-based). You will almost certainly want to get some kind of network card going (PLIP if all else fails) rather than attempt to install everything from a stack of floppies.

The system has a PCMCIA slot, but it is a type I. I believe that the RAM is sufficient, it might be around 64MB.

I'm not too concerned about the status of "newbie" as I have worked with Unix enough to know at least a modicum of command lines. I don't know the ins and outs as in ways in which to adjust settings, but I would be able to manage.

I'll look into the distros suggested.