Switching from Windows to Linux

I have heard good things about Ubuntu, however some don't like the new GUI.

Google "Ubuuntu"... there is a lightweight variant of that, which will be good for an older system, and it has a robust community of people that work on it. It's tremendously popular.


Related to Ubuuntu, but a little more "polished" in my opinion, is Linux Mint. Click this link, and look at the XFCE version. It is very lightweight on system resources, and you should see a notable improvement over XP.



I'm not a Linux geek, but I do play around with some of the distributions a little bit. If you have any technical questions, I'm afraid I can't be of much help, but I can tell you that Linux Mint is typically pretty straightforward and easy to work with.

I used to hang out in a yahoo chat room computers thing. Some of those guys were up on Linux, but you'd probly have to hang around awhile to know who to listen to, and what current Linux distro's work best
I have numerous older Linux versions, and installed them on some machines to tinker with, but never really used them much, or even took one online.
They're not too difficult, and most have a fairly easy to use GUI, it isn't Windows, but in most cases I found it wasn't any more difficult, just took some figuring to know where to click.
Installation of IRIX was the trickiest one I used, it required numerous command lines to get it installed
They also use different terminology such as "shells", "roots", and other terms I can't readily recall, instead of "files", "folders" etc.
You'll just have to find someone to ask about current distro's, to help in difficult situations, and google a lot.
Tinkering around with it a bit, you'll likely be up and running in no time

Originally Posted by billygoat

Edit:

Or pulling the hair out of my head.

haha! maybe some of that too ; )

Originally Posted by billygoat

Now theres 50,000 Linux OS systems out there.

That's the thing about Linux, it's open source, anyone(mostly colleges do this, I believe) can take one version, rewrite it or add too it(not sure exactly what all they do), and post it as another distro.

These are just my thoughts on how it "evolves". Maybe someone else can explain it better

Originally Posted by billygoat

I'm not very geeky, but on the recommendation of a friend of mine I am thinking about switching to Linux.

I have used Linux in the past and based on those comments I would say what ever version your friend has installed before and will help you with.
I would use another Harddrive to do the install on. This why you can just plug the old one back in if things do not work out.

Originally Posted by billygoat

Hmm... How about if I install it on a "scrap" hard drive plugged into the USB port?

You noticed I said another not a new hardrive. You need to see if your bios will let you boot off a USB for that to work.

Originally Posted by billygoat

Hmm... How about if I install it on a "scrap" hard drive plugged into the USB port?

Do you have trouble physically swapping out a HDD? Installing on an outside drive might be more difficult, but, I dunno

We've been using Ubuntu for the past 8 years, not to crazy about the new desktop but there are alternatives to Unity.

What you want is a BSD flavor of Linux which is more closer to Unix.

The BSD story is interesting in itself, Berkeley Software Distribution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'm just thinking it would be easier/more direct and simple, to avoid having to send it through the extra channels of using external peripherals etc

You can run Ubuntu live from a USB stick, to create the live stick I use unetbootin from XP UNetbootin - Homepage and Downloads after the live OS is installed into memory you can either us it as is or install.

While were waiting for the replacement SCSI drive to arrive this is how Pat is currently using her computer, no hard drive attached.