What Now?

[peteza]

So, I have completely mastered windows 98 OS and I hate it, I heard about this "Linux" and I looked into it, sounds pretty spiffy, so I think I'll try it. I am considered by few to be a computer genious, but I was smart enough to teach myself a whole lot of C++ so I am definetely computer literate, but I don't have a clue about Linux. What do I do now? Can I have two OS's on one machine? Will my Machine work for Linux? Which one should I get? Where do I get other software for it? etc....
Someone Help! :eek:

[Keyser Soze]

Somebody else can handle the ego problem. I will take the software question. Yes you an have two OS's, or three, or four or..whatever, your imagination and drive(s) capacity is the only limit. With the linux bootloader , I have 4 os's running and several specialty packages(bootmaster?)can run infinite os's. Scale of 1 to 10 for level of difficulty...multi OS setups will usually hover around 2. hard ones happen, easy ones happen. Okay, I have to give a little jab on the first problem. Computer genius and winduhz98 do not go together very well. In windows there is very little modification you can do. Linux is configurable to the Nth degree. We won't even talk about NT and 2000.I was once considered a computer genius and had my huge swollen ego taken to task when I started in on Linux, it was a bit harder than it is now, but there is so much potential learning that you can't even grasp it yet. Have fun, use linux, well really that is the same thing for most of us. :eek: Forgot the other questions, next install linux, your hardware shouldn't be any problem at all, good support in linux(haven't had anything but winmodems that didn't work yet). Read the forums, install, reinstall after you figure out what you want it to look like. Then reinstall over and over again(you don't have too, linux is super stable, but it is fun to do. Maybe that old windoze geek in me is showing...multiple reinstalls and such
;)

[ 03 May 2001: Message edited by: Keyser Soze ]

[bdg1983]

Visit the website of whatever distro you are considering, check their hardware compatability list against your hardware, read their online documentation and browse through their knowledgebase to get any hints to known problems.

Next read read and do more reading. Lots of free online linux book available on the web. Informit and O'Reilly have quite a few. www.linuxdoc.org (http://www.linuxdoc.org) for How-To's and more and of course the forums here at LNO and the NHF's and FAQ's.

Good Luck

Linux should bring you down a couple of notches. Did to me.

[Derango]

I always point people who have questions about linux to www.linux.com/learn/ (http://www.linux.com/learn/)

There's some great FAQ's there that cover many of the questions a newbie has.

[ille_pugil42]

as per which distro to use, don't even ask it. You'll just start another flameware. About the only thing we cannot agree on here is Choice of Distro... and WM.... and... anways, check out this link to help you decide which distro to use:

Distro NHF (http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/intel/distros/distronhf.html)