Gonna install linux on my computer

[Sterling]

I'm wanting to do a complete linux overhaul for my Lappy. I'm also looking at dual booting it with XP.

What I'm currently looking at is OPENsuse. My specs are:

1.73 GHz Intel CPU
2 Gb of RAM
148 Gb of disk space
1 Shitty Stock Graphics Card

My current OS is Widows 7. It's running sluggishly, but it's bearable.

Anyone have a Distro they think will be best for me?

 

[Rydian]

Which Intel one? There's a fuckton of difference between a 1.73 GHz P4 and 1.73Ghz i3.

Anyways, this.
http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/

 

[Selim873]

Ubuntu or Puppy Linux. Both ran on my netbook without a sweat. I've also heard OPENsuse is good, but I've never used it. I'm a Windows XP user right now because that's what my school uses and I could hardly get used to linux while still using XP everyday... My cousin's school strictly uses Ubuntu though. I'm jealous.

 

[Sterling]

Which Intel one? There's a fuckton of difference between a 1.73 GHz P4 and 1.73Ghz i3.

Anyways, this.
http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/

System Diagnostics tells me it's a t2082. I don't know if it's overclocked or whatever.

Damn, according to that test, OPENsuse is perfect. lol

 

[Rydian]

Ah, looks to be an Athlon XP. It's what my previous computer was, and that ran Xubuntu just fine.

 

[FireEmblemGuy]

openSUSE is a decent distro for beginners; usually I'd recommend that or Ubuntu, but given that Ubuntu is days away from a major release and still has some show-stopping bugs in its new desktop environment, I'd give it a pass for now and do either openSUSE or Linux Mint. Look hard into a few choices before making a decision if you want to use Linux as your main OS.

 

[Frederica Bernkastel]

Linux is a kernel; not an Operating System.
As far as distros go, I can only really restate what has already been said, that is OpenSUSE or Mint (although, CrunchBang is pretty nice).
Personally I'd go for Arch or Debian every time, but I would not recommend either of them for absolute beginners.

 

[Nimbus]

If you're willing to do some extra steps and whatnot in acutally getting a GUI up and going, then Arch GNU/Linux would be perfect.

Instead of force-feeding you a ton of packages for a particular metapackage (say KDE for example), Arch allows you to just install the desktop for KDE, and nothing else, no plasma widgets, etc. Now if you want to install them then yes you can do that, also Pacman and Yaourt are gods gift to Linux users in terms of package management.

Arch wiki is also very through, steps for everything.

I'm an EX-Ubuntu user converted to an Archer. Love it!

In terms of what you want though, here are some categories of users, and suggested distros

DIY Expert : Arch or Gentoo
DIY Intermediate (doesnt want to have to fret about gettting a GUI up and going): ArchBang or Sabayon
New User/One who wants a quick setup: Mint or Mint Debian (Rolling Release)
Stable User: Debian
Intermediate: Opensuse or Fedora
Expert: Slackware

Btw, Xfce, LXDE, and OpenBox would probably run like they were on Crack on your laptop.

 

[Sterling]

Alright, I got OPENsuse installed. I like it. Soo much more than WIN7.

 

[twiztidsinz]

Btw, Xfce, LXDE, and OpenBox would probably run like they were on Crack on your laptop.

So... they wouldn't be able to hold a steady job and they'd always be disappearing or in the bathroom?

 

[Rydian]

Xubuntu (*buntu with XCFE) didn't run like crack on my desktop, which was more powerful (not by that much though). It was certainly usable.

 

[Sterling]

Just so everyone knows, I have successfully been using OPENSuse on my laptop. Been a pain in the ass to get it to where I could even install stuff on it, but it's working out nicely now. I do have a few question about setting up WINE though. It seems it just keeps throwing me an error that it cant find the c drive.

 

[FAST6191]

As you have probably seen linux/unix does not use the drive model of windows but windows programs are hardcoded to use it- part of what wine does it to handle these requests so as to suit all parties concerned. This means you need to tell it where it might find the folders/tree it can call the c drive (or indeed various ones for various purposes).

There are various wine configuration tools aimed at various things (there were a couple of nice ones for games a couple of years back) but winecfg (run it from the command line if an icon does not exist somewhere) should spare you the hassle of fiddling with a text editor.

http://www.winehq.org/docs/wineusr-guide/config-wine-main has some on the basics.

I am not well versed in suse (although I plan to correct that) but assuming it came from the official repos/official builds I am surprised it did not come with a basic configuration.

 

[Sterling]

@FAST: I already ran the cfgwine command. It's supposed to create a `/.wine/ directory, but it's seen as a hidden directory by default. So, I'm not sure if it's able to access it.

 

[FireEmblemGuy]

Wine should have no problem seeing it; a lot of programs utilize 'hidden' folders. The biggest difference that you're really going to notice with a hidden folder is that it's really not hidden so much as it is ignored. Most file browsers just don't bother showing folders or files that start with a period at the beginning of their file name unless the user tells it to do otherwise.

What is it you're trying to do that's giving you an error?

 

[Sterling]

Wine should have no problem seeing it; a lot of programs utilize 'hidden' folders. The biggest difference that you're really going to notice with a hidden folder is that it's really not hidden so much as it is ignored. Most file browsers just don't bother showing folders or files that start with a period at the beginning of their file name unless the user tells it to do otherwise.

What is it you're trying to do that's giving you an error?

Use the browse C:// function. It says it can't find the `~/.wine/c_drive folder. I can't tell where the folder is because it's hidden by default. It was supposed to be created in the documents folder when I ran the configuration command.

 

[Nollog]

Wine should have no problem seeing it; a lot of programs utilize 'hidden' folders. The biggest difference that you're really going to notice with a hidden folder is that it's really not hidden so much as it is ignored. Most file browsers just don't bother showing folders or files that start with a period at the beginning of their file name unless the user tells it to do otherwise.

What is it you're trying to do that's giving you an error?

Use the browse C:// function. It says it can't find the `~/.wine/c_drive folder. I can't tell where the folder is because it's hidden by default. It was supposed to be created in the documents folder when I ran the configuration command.

press ctrl+h to view .files in nautilus(default filemanager in debian linux's).