Linked by Robert Gering on Tue 17th Sep 2002 18:11 UTC
First, a little background. I am a Windows user who has been using Windows since 3.1. I am not a programmer or a developer, I am a user. I process photos, use the internet, e-mail, write letters, play the ever important games and even use it to develop my comic strips. I am not computer illiterate and I use my computer with confidence and skill. Now with that said. I hate Windows.
Permalink for comment
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
When I started out with Linux it was with Mandrake 8.0.
No automount, and it was slow on my computer.
I was scared away at that point. But after losing more important files to an un-expected virus auto-downloaded by IE while doing the Windows update, I decided to try Linux again. This time I decided to buy SuSE 7.3, having heard good thigns about it. I installed it on my machine(which had gotten more ram a few weeks before), and foud the install process to be a tad more involved than Mandrake, but all the defaults were fine except one, I only wanted a swap partition and a /, so I had to change that manually(I stayed with the defualt FS selection). After install I was pleased to see icons on the desktop to auto-mount my CD drives, my floppy drive and my FAT32 partition, as it turned out the HD was all mounted on boot up much to my pleasure(but the icon gave me quick access to it). I used this for awhile, and found it adequate except for a couple of games I like to play.
After a while of dual booting and casually updating Linux packages, Mandrake 8.2 came out. I debated with myself wether I should switch to it or not, I had tried Lycoris(great for beginners, but not what I was looking for, see I like gnome) on a seperate partition, so perhaps I should do the same with Mandrake 8.2. After reading some reveiws and doing the research, and having grown tired of SuSE's handling of TTF fonts, I decided to switch to Mandrake 8.2(even after 8.0 had been a bad experience for me).
OK I back up my data with Gcombust and go to installing Mandrake 8.2. Install was almost identical to 8.0's. When done(I simply formatted the partitions used for SuSE), I was pleased to find that this too included those handy CD icons, but I was dissapointed not to find the HD icon, so I made a link to the /mnt/win_c folder. I still use Mandrake today and ever since I found Transgaming's WineX I haven't needed to boot into Windows very often at all.
Anyhow, after my interesting experience(oh and the root password is a security feature), I would recomend that new users have at least 96 megs of ram(not much when some games require it), and try one of the following ditros:
Lycoris Desktop LX
Xandros(when it is out)
ELX Linux
Mandrake 8.2 or 9.0(when it's out)
Red Hat 8.0(null is looking good, so when it is out)
Use Mozilla or Opera as a web browser since Konqueror has some massive rendering issues. And I'd highly recomend that you install available Linux plugins and then buy Crossover Plugin and install the Windows plugins through that.