sorry, no link inside - just a few advices you may discard as you please
it all aims at: Do not discourage yourself and keep the frustration level low!
That's why I suggest buying a good distribution. A good distribution (for starters) has at least two features:
- a descent manual - best if printed
- an installation routine that doesn't need this manual
One distribution I found quite pleasant regarding this is SuSE. This it not an advertisement, simply the dist. I bought first
I devide features of an OS (and its applications of course) mainly in three parts
- must have
- good if
- would be nice
This determines how much time I'm willing to spent under which circumstances.
What linux really is, the kernel, is an example of "must have". Over the years I learned how to tweak it to my needs (and maybe a bit more) but to be honest, it doesn't matter. If I want my computer running it must be there and running. No kernel, no system running and I'm pleased if the distribution took care of that. I'm not willing to spent much time learning how to activate the most basic features. There's plenty of time in the future to do so.
E.g. I recently tried the new knoppix linux-on-cd version and it failed to boot. The real-time-clock support as it is compiled for this "distribution" does not work with the asus board in this box. That's a really rare condition and knoppix can't be blamed for that but I don't want to imagine what effect this would have had if this was my first linux-attempt. Two minutes (without any user interaction) and nothing works, simply the boot screen with no errors but no progress ...probably for days.
The priorities are always in a state of flow. But esp. when you switch from windows to linux and even more esp. if you remove windows completely in favor of linux, you will have a lot of features in both categories, "must have" and "good if"; "must have xyz", "good if I know how xyz works"
e.g. my box is usually the router for the lan at home (there's no need for a another specialized router here). Neither windows nor linux can forward an irc-dcc by default. But my win32-routersoftware had such a feature. Now, with someone in my back, nagging at me '
see what you got from switching to linux?', I remember that simple '
click me; you will have no clue why but it works' checkbox and my sanity is at stake. After hours of searching I found there is a router module that can do what I want. But all I see right now is "unresolved symbol...$#@%!". I consider becoming insane not an option so "dcc forward" got promoted to "must have" although the sun still will rise in the east without it.
I doubt the installation/configuration routine of one of the more common distributions can handle this particular problem but now the descent, printed documentation comes in handy. At least I'm not stranded nowhere.
And that's where SuSE gets a ++ from me. Granted, there's a lot of "SuSE has, SuSE can" in there that takes me nowhere when switching to another distribution but frankly that's all I need when starting with linux. It also covers many of the "how does xyz work" topics. And best of all I can buy books that cover advanced topics ...from the same distributor, following the same scheme: with this distribution you can do it this way ...and it works this way....
At some point, sooner or later, I need a walkthrough I can trust and consider authorative, esp. when a topic of the category "haven't thought of"/"would be nice" suddenly becomes "must have".
There are many topics I'm willing to take the extra mile and learn all there is to know about (*cough*) but that's not true for everything and I appriciate it if someone takes me by the hand there. You can ask a friend, search the web and so on ...but for the first few steps (of each new topic) it is nice to know "chances to find at least a hint are good if I look at the documentation"
Again, this is not advertisement for a certain distribution and I don't want to say "you MUST buy a distribution" but you should consider wether it isn't worth the money when starting with linux and/or burning the bridges to your old OS behind you
p.s.: Just for the record: Some time ago I switched to another distribution and writing this I sit in front of a w2k box :]