hello everyone, i am new to linux even though ive used it for years!!! I keep switching bac to windows because i cant do the things i want...download from morpheus etc etc and i am a gamer i wanna play sof2,call of duty,moh AA,metal gear and lots more but ive recently getting sick and tired of my windows xp comp crashing contantly and slowing down! I hear that linux takes a WHOLE lot less resourses and memory!!! i have ubuntu 5.0.4 and suse 9.1 I want a version that is easy to navigate with a good UI (preferably KDE3) I want to learn and run WINE i want to learn to program (over time) im 15 and i want to do lots of things and i know lots about computers but linux is a whole new world and it complicates me so im thinking about getting mandrake 10.1 I have the following hardware: AMD Athlon 900Mhz (200Mhz FSB) 256MB DDR 400 Kingston (the good stuff!!!) 20GB Seagate Hard drive SIS 741GX-M Mainboard onboard graphics, networking,USB 2.0,sound and a cdrom and an old 4x/8x burner I know that my comp is crap and old to you guys but all i need is more mem and a semptron or athlon xp and ive got a good rig! Anyways will Mandrake 10.1 run adaquately or should i get 10 oir 9.2 and is all of my hardware supported??? Last but NOT least.....can someone aid me in either choosing a better distro(if any) than mandrake (i dont like RH!!!) and aid me to find books,web sites etc to hwelp me learn to stick with linux!!!! Im planning on upgrading my parts soon to get a better rig but for now this is all ive got PLZ herlp me guys I love you all for helping a poor kid in need Sorry bout the long post:) Thx in advance!!! Darin Luckie AMD Athlon 900 256MB DDR 400 20GB hdd Windows xp professional

If you really want to learn Linux I recommend you start in a non-gui environment. Learn the shell first. I also recommend you use XFCE or window maker as a window manager other than using KDE. KDE takes up too many resources. As for books, there are a lot of free books and guides on Linux on this site http://www.tldp.org/guides.html (I recommend the "introduction to Linux" from this site) Currently am using Slackware Linux on an AMD 475 MHz with 128mb of ram (laptop) runs smoothly even when am in graphical mode. Only problem I had in the beginning was having to manually configure some of my hardware and learning how to install from source code rather than using RPMs. As for gaming, am not a gamer my self so I don’t know if Slackware Linux is going to best for gaming.

Hey, hey, hey, chill out. Don't worry man. We've got you covered here. :D What you want is to be able to use both systems, and that can be done VERY easily. Don't worry about it. It's called dual-boot, it's where you have one partition for using windows (one primary partition, though that doesn't mean it's more important than linux, just the name of that kind of partition) and a set of partitions for linux (three logical partitions which work together, logical is also just a name for a kind of partition). That way, when you want to play a specific windows game, you can boot your computer in Windows and play that game. And when you want to generally use your computer? Just boot into linux. And if you don't feel like using linux at the moment? Eh, that's fine too, use windows for now, you can always go back to linux next time you boot up. Something like that, where you don't have to make any commitments to always using one or the other, would work out great for someone like you. MAKING A DUAL-BOOT LINUX/WINDOWS SYSTEM. ------------------------ Here's essentially the bare bones of what you need to do: 1)Get the distro you want. I'll talk about which one to get in a second. But burn all the CDs necessary to install it and take good care of those CDs. 2)Back up all the files which you have on your computer. All of the ones you want to keep. And make you have the CDs or make the CDs for all the games you want to keep. 3) Make sure your computer can boot from CD-rom and that you know how to boot from CD-rom (it's not that hard to find this out on your own) 4)Get a boot-disk program like Eraser (http://sourceforge.net/projects/eraser/) and use it to wipe your computer clean, or at least, to get rid of windows and its spyware. 5)Use the install disk to partition your computer so you have three logical drives for linux, but still leave about 10 gigs of free space for windows if you're planning to install a lot of big 3d games on there all at one time. If you think that you'll take up less or more space, adjust accordingly. MAKE SURE THE LINUX SYSTEM INSTALLS A BOOT LOADER, IF IT DOESN'T, GO INTO LINUX AND SET UP A BOOT LOADER YOURSELF IN SETTINGS. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT, BECAUSE OTHERWISE IT WILL BE VERY DIFFICULT TO LOAD UP LINUX AFTER. 6)After linux is done installing, get whatever restore disk came with your computer, or get whatever install disks you have for windows XP, and boot from them to install windows. DON'T HAVE IT FORMAT THE ENTIRE DISK, just have it install windows onto the free space on the computer. 7) Boot onto linux and set up the boot loader to load onto windows. Using linux, it should be relatively easy to find the name and location of the windows partition, and relatively easy to set up a bootloader to use it. There you go. 10 gb of space linux for general use, 10 gb of space for windows for games. Use whichever one whenever you want. I'll make a second post as to which distro you might want to use.

To begin with, it's a good idea to learn the shell, but it is not necessary. Egarda is only saying this because he uses slackware, and slackware is notorious for making people learn to use linux the hard way: by learning a crapload about it before they can do ANYTHING with it. I get a feeling that's not the kind of thing you want. You want something you do essentials on easily (accessing the internet, reading your mail), so after you can ease yourself into learning more about linux. At some points you may run into some bumps in the road, and you will have to self-educate a bit about the shell or compiling, but until then, let's take things easy. What distro should you use? Mandrake 10.1 and 10.0 are excellent choices. It has these benefits, and I know because I've used it: -Computer settings are VERY easy to configure, it has a comprehensive, non-redundant area for configuring your computer's settings. I use Fedora Core 4 now, and I find myself occassionally missing the settings system of Mandrake/Mandriva because it is SO well designed. Especially the tool for making and assigning partitions, it is SO intuitive and easy-to-use, and at the same time, you learn about partitioning from it. -Very easy to use. (It's what you wanted, no) -VERY EASY TO USE. (I just had to repeat this for emphasis, every aspect of the system, with a few exceptions as noted below, is SO intuitive and SO easy to use. It's REALLY REALLY great for a newcomer like yourself who justs wants to have fun and use linux and not spend too much time fiddling around before they can actually do anything.) three problems though: I) Their kaffeine player sucks. But they have other music players, so this doesn't really count. II) It didn't work that well with SDL on my computer, but even if it doesn't work well with SDL on your comp either, I doubt you'll find yourself having a problem with that. It only causes a problem because some linux games use SDL. III) It is BAD with configuring wireless cards. I'll be straight with you, if you have a laptop, and you use an external wireless card, it may be very difficult to get it to work on your computer. However, I hear this was fixed or at least improved by the time they got to Mandriva 10.1 (I used 10.0), so if you use an external wireless card, definitely get 10.1, but still, don't hedge your bets that you'll be able to get it to work. So yeah, mandrake linux is definitely my suggestion. Mainstream and therefore supported, easy to use, simple, big development base, etc, and offers choices between installing KDE, gnome, and IceWM. Requires 3 install discs, which isn't so long to download as long as your connection isn't over a 56k phoneline or something equally slow.

Nate has some very good points there, but personaly I wouldn't recomend mandrake. It has all the benefits that have already been covered but performance wise in my experience it's barely a match for XP. I would recomend MEPIS, better hardware detection, better performance, still has user friendly setup / admin, boots as a live CD so you know what hardwares suppoted before you start to install, not rpm based, single CD, etc. Thats assuming you want to use Linux rather than learn it. If you want to learn how it works you really should start with the shell as egerda suggested. I'd recomend trying the LPIC tutorials on IBM's developerworks site. I also agree that a less bloated windowmanager is a good idea, I sometimes use fluxbox.

I would suggest performing Nate's step 6 (installing windoze) BEFORE installing GNU/Linux. If you install XP afterwards windoze will wipe the linux boot loader, if you install XP before it will be picked up by your linux installation and entries will be created in your boot loader to aloow you to boot either OS. TIP: Always create a boot floppy during installation (or as soon as possible after installation with the mkbootdisk command) as it may prove very helpful in the future. I use winex (cedega) to run some windoze games (gta3, black&white and a few more) on a PII450, but I do have 1Gb RAM and I would also suggest installing a better graphics card for improved 3D performance....get yourself an nvidia or ati, I normally go for nvidia myself, and download the latest linux drivers from their website. Better still try to get native linux clients...you can for some games like Quake3, SoF, MoH etc. As wine is still in beta you may be better off dual booting. Also you'll find that most OpenGL games will run fine under wine whereas DirectX ones run slower (because the calls have to be translated to opengl in software before being rendered).

PS, I don't know if it is still available but Mandrake used to make a gaming edition aimed at running windoze games under wine....I think it came with the sims too.