So... yah, I want to play around with Linux so I started by grabbing the easiest distro I could find (apparently according to some installing Linux site): Red Hat 9. I installed it over 3 CD's and it seemed to boot fine. The installer kept quitting out until I did the text-only install (which was a pain in the ass cause I'm all about GUI's). It installed away (and took a couple hours I might add) however wouldn't boot into the operating environment. I swapped my FX 5200 Ultra for my Radeon 7000 and it worked. I chalk that up to Red Hat 9 being old and replaced by Fedora core (apparently). So, it boots and it looks pretty. I get lost pretty quickly in the non-friendly, non-bloaty, non-Windows design however. Suddenly I feel like such a noob again. I try something that is usually easy, installing drivers for my onboard ethernet. Luckily theres a Linux driver on the motherboard driver CD... score. Uh.... .tar.gz? WTF? I read the instructions and apparently I must "compile the kernel"......... huh?

Ok... Red Hat 9 has not seen use since then. I need something more Windows-user friendly. I guess I wasted 3 CD's on that project. So now I've got a DVD iso of Fedora Core 4. I'm going to burn it... but this time I don't have instructions to make sure I do it right. I'm just going to assume I burn it as an ISO using Nero and use the boot.ini in the images folder (it said something like this in the readme). Please correct me or confirm that I'm right on this process... I don't have many DVD's to go through on this.

Anyway, before I go ahead and possibly waste a DVD on Fedora Core... would you guys say it might be a little more friendly to a Windows user than Red Hat 9 was? If not, what should I try out? I know someones going to say "if you don't know what the hell you're doing, stay in Windows nub"... if thats the case, someone should probably make a more user friendly distro. How can people convert to Linux if its hard to use?

This shall hopefully be continued with my experiences with Linux

First off, I'm not going to tell you to stay with windows, but be aware no matter what "easy" distro you find they are all going to be harder to use than windows. Unix GUIs have come a long way but they still are not all there.

The main thing is finding a distro that supports all your hardware. As you mentioned, your onboard NIC was not detected by Red Hat 9. Fedora has a better chance as it has more drivers built in, but if it doesn't support it you may as well find another NIC or stop there. While it is certainly possible to use a third party driver, installing it is not going to be easy at your current skill level.

You might consider giving a live CD distro like knoppix (http://www.knoppix.org/) a try first. A live CD is a distro that runs entirely from the CD, no install needed. It will let you play around and see what works without any commitment other than a blank.

Ive used Mandrake, i dont know how that compares to other linux distros, but i found it easy and worked fine with my 9700 pro when i had it. The only thing i found hard was installing the stupid partition ultility didnt work so great, then the second time i didnt set a password and couldnt "log in" to the operating system.

If you want to LEARN, try using CRUX or Gentoo (I love both).

As part of the normal and very-well-documented step-by-step installation you'll work with various package formats, manually partition, learn to compile a kernel and set up networking, and everything else that are considered basic things.

If you want a does-everything-for-me idiot-box like Windows, or if you already know the basics and want a more polished system that won't teach you anything, use Ubuntu. It's cleanest, sexiest, and uses APT so installing almost any program is as simple as "apt-get install <program>" .

Fedora Core 4 is easy to install/work with. For installation, all you have to do is pop in the cd/DVD, pick "default" for everything, pick some passwords, pick your timezone, and your done. As for using it, the GUI available in Fedora is very much like Windows -if you can work with Windows, you shouldnt have any problems with "KDE" or "GNOME" GUI on Fedora.

If you want to know more about Linux and the commands you can use in the terminal, just pick up a Linux or a Unix book and start reading.

As for CRUX, it is good for learing, however its not something a Linux beginner would be able to install on a system without knowing anything about Linux.

Posted by HairyTheTaco As for CRUX, it is good for learing, however its not something a Linux beginner would be able to install on a system without knowing anything about Linux.

RTFM. That's why it's there; it's simple, step-by-step, and concise; and if you don't have the patience to uncomment an fstab here (if they didn't tell you how and give all examples so you just have to uncomment and imitate and not even have to write a single line...) or to type "make menuconfig" for a graphical kernel compile that the manual will guide you through, then you likely won't be learning linux either way, you'd just be clicking on "Magic Buttons" without knowing what they actually do.

If you don't even know what /dev/hda means, for example, then you should probably use a simple live CD until you understand the directory structure... That way you don't have to nuke a whole computer. Ubuntu, which I recommended before, comes with a fully bootable system which you can use to see some things like directory structure, but is too "polished" to really teach you most things.

http://crux.nu/doc/handbook.html

Thanks for the post and PM Taco, your help is greatly appreciated

If I were in your shoes, I'd try a live CD, such as Mepis. It's a Debian variant, so updating it is a snap with apt-get; the packages included are fairly recent (not to mention decent.)


http://www.mepis.org

EGV

Thought I would update this...

Typing from Fedora right now. Install went swell, no errors. Internet, sound, graphics, all that work without any updating... which is good. Doing a "yum update" now. apparently it will download 250mb of stuff.... whatever, update away. I'm pretty lost right now, but I'm trying to find my way around as best I can. I'm pretty motivated to learn this, I'm sick of being a GUI/Windows whore

I'll try and update whatever drivers I can... I tried updating Firefox but got lost in the install process. I extracted the tar.gz file but I didn't really know what to do/run from there. Heh I feel like such a noob.

Posted by Particle Man I'll try and update whatever drivers I can... I tried updating Firefox but got lost in the install process. I extracted the tar.gz file but I didn't really know what to do/run from there. Heh I feel like such a noob.

Read the README file, *everything* will come with README and INSTALL for all info you'll ever need.

# vi README
Basic vi means that you can view a file normally, but to EDIT a text file you press the INSERT key or "i" (and INSERT will display in the bottom left corner, then edit normally, when you're done press Esc to leave INSERT mode) - To save press ":w" (colon, double-u); to quit press ":q" (colon, queue) - To force a command, like to quit without saving after making changes press the command like normal but add "!" like ":q!".

or
# cat README | less
(Then use the arrow keys to scroll and the "q" key to quit, it's fairly obvious, but you can't edit anything or use any of the useful functions of vi, which is easy to learn and even comes with a simple tutorial)


If it's a program, all you likely have to do is compile it with:
# ./configure
# make
# make install (usually via sudo to root)