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Could a 40 year old with only experience of Dos6.2/W3.1/95/98/XP get his head round Linux?
Been offered a old Dell Laptop from work (HD has been formatted).
Will only be used for accessing the web, work email, kids accessing cbeebies, that sort of thing.
I know my way round a PC, installed all the above OS without any problems in the past, self taught.
Just wondering will I end up going grey and bald trying to install/use Linux?
Don't really want to splash out on MS OS if I can get away with it?
Are there any linux virgins here, who have been successful, in swapping over?
Comments/advice?
Ta.
ubuntu will be easy - it's all point and click now. you'll get all the essentials with the basic installer cd - download the ISO image, burn it to cd (make sure you create a proper iso CD, DONT JUST COPY THE FILE TO CD, usually just clicking the iso file will open your cd burning software to do the appropriate thing).. stick CD in the computer you want to install linux on. start the machine... follow the on-screen instructions! Easy. if you need internet, make a note of how to connect to a wireless (it's self explanatory if you dont make a note - just click on the network icon like on windows) before you start. if you dont use wireless, or you can connect by cable, just stick the network cable into the back of the router, and bobs your uncle, away you go 🙂
Thanks Ian/cp
Will check it out...
yep stick with Ubuntu and you will be fine, its all pretty straight forward once you get used to it. Unless you have brand new hardware or trying to do something a bit different then it can be a right bastard
What's the spec of the laptop? If you're a bit short of RAM/resources, it is worth downloading the [url= http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/downloadmirrors#alternate ]alternative install[/url]. The standard installation needs about 0.5GbRam if I remember correctly. The alternative install worked a treat for me.
But yes, it's easy to install and use. My 3.5 year old plays cbeebies via ubuntu on my old Dell laptop.
As "a 40 year old with only experience of Dos6.2/W3.1/95/98/XP" I have done just that.
It's a bit painful, with things like the command line being case sensitive, and everything being so different. But, after a wee bit of perseverance I have started to scratch the surface. I have a Xandros EEEPC, which is based on Debian. The different distros and inter compatibilities (and lack of) can be a bit of a minefield.
Can't comment on the cBeebies thing (iPlayer?), but most complete desktop distros seem to come with all the web/email/news/office/games/etc built-in, so you shouldn't need to add too much on (if any).
I've also resurrected an old company laptop (IBM Thinkpad) with Ubuntu - seemed pretty straightforward and complete. Don't use it much yet though. You can install ubuntu onto a USB stick, and boot from that if you want a play.
[i]You can install ubuntu onto a USB stick, and boot from that if you want a play. [/i]
Neat, might just try that first.
[i]What's the spec of the laptop?[/i]
Its a Dell Latitude 3-4 years old, so, for me will be about 3-4 years newer than what I am used to using 😉
ski - ubunto runs on a LiveCD, you boot from CD and work from there, you just can't save stuff. BUT apparently you make it work with a USB stck, so you can save stuff there. Easy.
Check out [url= http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=o%27reilly+hacking+ubuntu&x=0&y=0 ]this book[/url] for loads of hacks, tweaks and mods. For normal people.
Ubuntu is a very good linux OS but...
You might want to consider giving Linux Mint a go. It's based on Ubuntu but includes a few things that Ubuntu doesn't have installed by default that you will need (i.e. saving you the trouble) – such as flash installation and the microsoft font pack (msttcorefonts) that you will need to view web pages correctly.
[url= http://www.linuxmint.com/about.php ]Linux Mint Linky[/url]
Have fun exploring...
check out [url= http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ ]pendrivelinux[/url] for step by step guides on installing to your USB stick.
xubuntu didnt work on mine - it installed, but refused to boot from the USb stick.
*sniff* It's not like the old days.
I remember when installing Linux involved a stack of Slackware floppies and overnight kernel compiles on my old 16 MHz 386 with 4MB RAM.
Ubuntu is the way to go for first time with Linux. The things that might be a problem with a laptop are wireless network cards if you plan to use it and power saving / suspend to ram support. Also look at support for how your connecting to the internet, cheap usb adsl modems like the speedtouch given out by ISPs won't work. Proper router with ethernet connection is the way to go.
Do some googling on your laptop model and ubuntu see what others have done.
Surfr - those were the days, when you had to leave stuff overnight to complete!
Surfr - those were the days, when you had to leave stuff overnight to complete!
- the days when running COBOL menat going and getting the COBOL tape and loading binto the computer
- coding meant writing the code on paper, loading the Hopper bin with paper cards, writing cards on line at a time
- taking the cards to the computer's Hopper bin, and running the execute
- taking the paper tape output and feeding it into the line printer
- counting the ards to find the one that had the error and retyping it
THEN being "promoted" to the level when someone else did all this so instead of running the code in the afternoon, it took about 3 days.
"good old days" my ar53
we did manage to write complete applications that used less memory than the gifs on an average web page though...
mind you Hopper bin, there's a name
Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, a woman who was an Admiral in the US NAvyAND devised one of the world's first universal computer languages - COBOL.
Mind you only a woman could come up with BCD, effectively losing 6 bits off every byte.
wwaswas - true. 1 *5.25" floppy - all your coursework for a year - easy
we had 8" floppy drives on the first computer I used!
my first commercial programming work was on a an 8bit assembler system. 32Kb max addressable memory. those were the days.
My Dad likes to tell me how easy I have it. Mind you in his day registers could be viewed on a bank of lamps!
Mind you only a woman could come up with BCD, effectively losing 6 bits off every byte.
LOL - massively sexist but very funny.
ok - off topic
A mate of mine's boss was at some big convention in the States. Lunch was provided, and boss was at the top table. Sitting next to him was Buzz Aldrin, the astronaut. Boss had some work to do, so during some of the speeches, he whipped out his laptop and started excel'ing or whatever it was.
Buzz Aldrin took an inteerest in the laptop and asked about it.
Boss showed off laptop with it's gigabytes of RAM and DVD rewriter and dual core processor and wireless network.
"Wow" said Buzz "That's impressive. Do you know that's more technology than it took to get me to the moon"
Surfr, the 1st minicomputers i worked on in the early 80's had the state of theregisters displayed on the front panel in led's. You could program the system from front panel switches. They were just phasing out the 4KB magnetic memory cards in favour of 16KB DRAM. Disk drives were the size of a cabinet, 5MB fixed & 5MB removable with 18" platters. Large drives were 50MB multi-platter affairs.
BTW, those of you wanting working wireless or suspend with Linux, you're better off looking at Fedora. The upstream code is maintained by Red Hat employees 🙂