jumping into linux have a few ??

[pitbullfan]

as the title says i am jumping into linux as soon as i figure out which distro i am going to use. a few questions though. will my games run on linux or will i have to get special linux compatible versions. also will i be able to network with my other computers that are running xp? thanks for reading this and hopefully enlightening me. also i would appreciate any tips or hints to make my conversion to microsoft less painful.
thanks
al

 

[pcgeek11]

You can pretty much forget the windows games, except for a few that have been ported to Linux by Loki... There are games for Linux and there are programs available for running windows apps on linux. Wine ...

Yes you can network windows and linux through Samba..

I recommend Open Suse 10.1 is the latest version (free) and the install is easy.

You need to try several to see which one you like... You are going to get 50 different recommendations etc... check it out for yourself and find what suits your needs.

pcgeek11

 

[daniel49]

Originally posted by: pitbullfan
as the title says i am jumping into linux as soon as i figure out which distro i am going to use. a few questions though. will my games run on linux or will i have to get special linux compatible versions. also will i be able to network with my other computers that are running xp? thanks for reading this and hopefully enlightening me. also i would appreciate any tips or hints to make my conversion to microsoft less painful.
thanks
al

if gaming is your big thing you probably will be happier with windows.
he mentioned wine which will work for some games and Cedega will give you more of them if you want to pay for itText

try pclinux os you will barely know you left xp

 

[pitbullfan]

thanks for the help. i was thinking of dual booting linux with xp so i could still play my games. i am addicted hardcore to soldier of fortune 2 deathmatch. i am downloading ubuntu 606 right now so i guess i will try it first and then suse.

 

[pitbullfan]

i'm not a Huge gamer mostly i surf the net and download lots of hmmmm stuff. also want to make sure i can "back up" my dvds and such

 

[Robor]

Dual boot for sure if you want to game and run Linux on the same system. I've got Ubuntu 6.06 and WinXP Pro on my Thinkpad. I have only used WinXP when I screwed up my Linux boot with a 'dist-upgrade' last week. Other than that I do everything (Email, web, chat, pics, etc) in Linux and it's perfectly fine. Oh, and no virus or malware threats either.

 

[pkme2]

My recommendation is that you use Ubuntu. It is user-friendly and can dual boot.
http://www.ubuntu.com/download
https://shipit.ubuntu.com/

 

[Brazen]

I also recoommend Ubuntu. It's the most popular desktop linux distro for good reason. And this is coming from a staunch Redhat supporter (since 1999).

 

[robphelan]

can you give some reasons to go with ubuntu vs. other distros?

 

[imported_LoKe]

Because Ubuntu has a cool name, that's all that matters.

 

[SleepWalkerX]

What's your hardware specs?

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: robphelan
can you give some reasons to go with ubuntu vs. other distros?

Ubuntu is fairly intuitive.

I run gentoo on my boxes and have gotten used to it and the way it works. I tried ubuntu for a while and didn't have any problems migrating over. Things were a little bit different, but I wasn't sitting there trying to figure out how to do things that I could do easily in gentoo. I tried setting up some things in SUSE for a friend on his laptop and spent a while looking up SUSE-specific commands and instructions for how to do things. I felt like I had to re-learn everything.

Now you'll be new to either distro and will have to learn no matter what, but if you learn on ubuntu you'll probably be in a better position to try a different distro down the line than if you went with something else.

 

[pitbullfan]

good advice. i got ubunto download and i'm getting ready to try it. it says i can try it out without messing up anything but doesn't it need to be on it's own partition and can it run on ntfs or do i need to convert back to fat 32?

 

[IamDavid]

Originally posted by: pitbullfan
good advice. i got ubunto download and i'm getting ready to try it. it says i can try it out without messing up anything but doesn't it need to be on it's own partition and can it run on ntfs or do i need to convert back to fat 32?

it'll run off the cd..

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: pitbullfan
good advice. i got ubunto download and i'm getting ready to try it. it says i can try it out without messing up anything but doesn't it need to be on it's own partition and can it run on ntfs or do i need to convert back to fat 32?

Ubuntu will read NTFS partitions but it can't write to them by default. If you want to have read/write access to your WinXP partition you'll want to use FAT32 to format it. The other option is to have you WinXP partition as NTFS, Ubuntu as ext3, and an additional FAT32 partiton that can be shared by XP and Ubuntu. That's what I did on my laptop because my XP partition was already NTFS and I didn't feel like reloading.

 

[SleepWalkerX]

You can use captive-ntfs to have full ntfs read/write capabilities from linux. It works perfectly in my Suse box right now and is pretty easy to setup.

 

[pitbullfan]

well i am up and running on ubuntu. its more pleasant and easy to use than i thought it would be. now if i could figure out how to find and install some of the apps i need i will be all set. i have a 19 inch widescreen lcd with a native resolution of 1440x900 but it will only let me go up to 1024x768. i am running a 9500 pro and i know it will do the native res on xp.

 

[DasFox]

Originally posted by: pcgeek11
You can pretty much forget the windows games, except for a few that have been ported to Linux by Loki... There are games for Linux and there are programs available for running windows apps on linux. Wine ...


WRONG, there is Transgamings, Cedega:

http://www.transgaming.com/

Yes you can network windows and linux through Samba..

I recommend Open Suse 10.1 is the latest version (free) and the install is easy.

You need to try several to see which one you like... You are going to get 50 different recommendations etc... check it out for yourself and find what suits your needs.

pcgeek11

Yes so when telling people about all the different distros and trying them out, PLEASE know this yourself.

It's called distrowatch ---------> http://www.distrowatch.com

Originally posted by: pkme2
My recommendation is that you use Ubuntu. It is user-friendly and can dual boot.
http://www.ubuntu.com/download
<a target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="https://shipit.ubuntu.com/"><a target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="https://shipit.ubuntu.com/">https://shipit.ubuntu.com/</a></a>

Not technically a correct answer, and confusing to the newbie, any distro can Dual Boot. This makes it sound like Ubuntu is special in this regard and it's not.

ALOHA

 

[DasFox]

pitbullfan for real help, forums are cool, but not in REAL TIME, when you need help quick and easy.

It's best to chat online IRC. irc.freenode.net #ubuntu

ALOHA

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Originally posted by: pitbullfan
well i am up and running on ubuntu. its more pleasant and easy to use than i thought it would be. now if i could figure out how to find and install some of the apps i need i will be all set. i have a 19 inch widescreen lcd with a native resolution of 1440x900 but it will only let me go up to 1024x768. i am running a 9500 pro and i know it will do the native res on xp.

You might need to install the proprietary ati drivers. There are different ways to do this, but the easiest might be to get EasyUbuntu and have it install the ati drivers for you.

 

[pitbullfan]

thanks all of you for the replies. all this is fascinating. i would love to hear more advice,tips,opinions...keep em coming

 

[SleepWalkerX]

It seems that you're a gamer. Well once you've installed proprietary ati drivers, play some cool free first person shooters available for linux and windows.

Tremulous
Alien Arena 2006
Warsow

But if you want to play some windows-specific games then you'll have to look at Cedega and/or Wine. This site focuses on gaming for linux and offers some tutorials for running certain games in linux.

 

[pitbullfan]

i am still having trouble with my ati driver. i tried what sleepwalkerx said and used easyubuntu to install the drivers but in the device manager it says ati instead of flqhr or whatever its supposed to say and i cant get my default moniter resolution still. so i went to the ati driver page and downloaded the linux drivers. but i feel like a real idiot because i cant figure out how to install them. i also downloaded tremulous and cant get it to install or run either. But i have made up my mind that i am not going to give up and go back to xp. just need your guys help. you have all been great so far.
al

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Hmm that's weird, well here are two guides that might help you:

https://wiki.ubuntulinux.org/BinaryDriverHowto/ATI
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=24557