Solved: Newbie

[Simon71]

Hi All,
I am fed up with Microsoft and want to get into Linux. Total newbie! I can remember using DOS commands but that is about the limit of my experience. Could anyone point me in the right direction to answer these questions:

1. Which version should I use? Red Hat, Fedora Etc
2. Which books are the best?
3. What forums or chat rooms would be able to help me the most?

Thanks for your help.

Simon

 

[TerryNet]

I'll pretend that you did not ask questions that are impossible to answer and instead try to respond to "Please give me some suggestions to get started in Linux."

I found Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) to be a reasonable starting place. If you can find your way around Windows XP you can find your way around Ubuntu. The book "Ubuntu for Non-Geeks 3rd Edition," by Rickford Grant is a pretty good getting started book. The sub-title is accurate: "A Pain-free, Project-Based, Get-Things-Done Guidebook." I read several good library books and bought this one.

Two "sister" distributions are Kubuntu and Xubuntu; they use different GUIs. They can be installed as Windows applications using Wubi. That's not how you want to use them in the long run, but it's an easy way to get started as you don't have to do any partitioning.

You haven't given any computer specs so I don't know if I should be talking about smaller distributions. If so, I like Puppy Linux.

Since almost all distributions can be booted as a Live CD, you can try as many as you can download and burn to disk (CD-RW is OK too).

 

[arochester]

The ways to enlightenment are as numerous as the lives of men. Ergo you will get a lot of conflicting advice from people who support different distros...

1) Ubuntu
2) "Official Ubuntu Book" (3rd edition) http://www.amazon.com/Official-Ubuntu-Book-Benjamin-Mako/dp/0137136684
3) ubuntuforums http://ubuntuforums.org/index.php and irc.freenode.net #ubuntu

 

[JabberUK]

When you say booted from a live cd, can i boot from a cd on a pc running windows xp?

 

[TerryNet]

Another book you may find interesting is "Linux Bible 2007 Edition," Christopher Negus. Probably a 2008 edition by now. It discusses 15 or 20 different distributions and what they offer, and includes many of them on a CD and DVD.

JabberUK, No. You can only boot one system at a given time unless you are using virtualization. Live CD means you boot from CD and the OS will run from memory and CD leaving your hard drive undisturbed.