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Today is a landmark day...

Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2003 11:05 am
by m3mn0n
I've decided to totally ditch Windows and make a cross over to the linux world.

Not the "oh i'll partition my drive and stick redhat within my XP box" type of cross over; the full out "to hell with gates and his proprietary virus-magnet BS!" :twisted:

I've never used a computer and not used windows that same day since, well, ever.

Wish me luck on the learning curve...hehe.

For your programmers that are interested in switching but a still hesitant for whatever reason, give me a shout on msn or icq. I can help you through the first few, and might I add crucial, steps. (a little pay it forward, thanks for the help Cruzado_Mainfrm) ;)

Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2003 3:29 pm
by Paddy
Sami, do you have any good tutorials you could recommend. I recently placed Debian on one of my machines. Although I know the basic stuff, etc. I am still a little lost. Any links to tutorials would be appreciated. I am wanting to ditch my windows machine too, but only when I know everything I need to do!

Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2003 6:25 pm
by m3mn0n
No sorry. I was sort of hoping one of those links would pop up in here. ;)

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2003 3:29 am
by volka
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 :]

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2003 3:37 pm
by m3mn0n
Thx for the advice, volka. =)

Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2003 9:03 am
by jason
Google has is my number one linux resource. And not just web searches but also the Groups search. Of course, you already know that.

The best advice I can give you is to not give up. There can be times that things don't work the same way as windows, but that's okay. It can be frustrating at first, but don't let it get to you. Remember, stick with Linux for a year, and then try and do an install of Windows, and you will be amazed at how difficult and a pain it really is. (Seriously, I just had to install Windows on a machine, and oh my god, it was evil!).

I agree with volka here, SuSE is a wonderful distribution. I use both Red Hat Fedora and SuSE. I love Gnome myself, and SuSE isn't exactly Gnome centric, but it works, and works well.

Some people recommend Debian and Gentoo, and that's all find and dandy, but picking up a copy of SuSE isn't expensive, and Fedora is just as good (though still a tad flaky, I use it on my work computer well enough). And SuSE's Yast has spoiled me.

Anyways, back on topic: Patience is the key. Linux is NOT Windows, and you shouldn't expect things to work exactly the same way. Remember the first time you used Windows? It wasn't like you knew everything. I remember deleting DLL's because I didn't need them (I never used them! =)). That wrecked havok on my computer. And linux is the same way. One day you will end up doing something stupid, and will kick yourself in the ass for days to come for doing it. But you learn, and you don't do it again.

The best part of Linux is the community (thought at times it can be the worst part as well, like anything). Consider the open nature of the software you use.

Now, here is the really good part. One day, you will find yourself using a piece of software you really like. And you will discover a bug. And rather than sit there and submit a bug report, you will be curious and you will dig around in the code, and eventually fix the problem. And then you will recompile the program, and viola! It's fixed.

This happend with me. I was using Fluxbox, and one of their earlier releases (not stable, but a dev release) had a problem with multihead monitor support. Basically, whenever you maximized a window, it would maximize across all the monitor. This is not supposed to be the way it works. It's supposed to maximize on the current monitor, and that's it. So I went into the Fluxbox code, and found where the problem occured, and changed a few things, and recompiled, and then it worked.

It was at this time that I had fully realized the power of open source. I submitted the change back to the developers. Whether they ever included it is unknown to me. But I had solved the problem for myself. I could never do this on Windows. And I think it was at this point that I basically said "This is just too powerful for me to give up."

Off topic again, by it's fun rehashing the early days of using linux. As you move on down the road of Linux, or BSD, or open source in general, you will discover things opening up for you, and not just the source.

Oh, and not worrying about viruses on email is especially nice. =)

Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2003 6:54 am
by m3mn0n
Wow thats for that also, jason. It's really inspiring. :) :wink: