Advantages of Linux OS over Windows, for a beginner?

Hessian

Hessian

Hessian

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Everyone always talks about Ubuntu particularly, and I was just wondering what the advantage of an OS such as this is over Windows? What gain is there? I have no experience what so ever with these types of OS so any information is good. I've requested a free CD of Ubuntu so Im assuming I could have dual boot, will I need to reformat my OS hard drive if I want to install Ubuntu as well as my current Windows OS?

Thanks in advance,
Hessian [Chris]
 
Hessian said:
Everyone always talks about Ubuntu particularly, and I was just wondering what the advantage of an OS such as this is over Windows? What gain is there? I have no experience what so ever with these types of OS so any information is good.
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It's free, it's easily customisable, it's infinitely customisable.

http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

Something like that will be some good reading. Search for "Linux v Windows" in Google if you want some biased and unbiased reviews...

Hessian said:
I've requested a free CD of Ubuntu so Im assuming I could have dual boot, will I need to reformat my OS hard drive if I want to install Ubuntu as well as my current Windows OS? [Chris]
Click to expand...

No, it can repartition your HD and place itself in the space it creates :)
 
Thanks for the link and the info


gumbald said:
No, it can repartition your HD and place itself in the space it creates :)
Click to expand...

Does it do this automatically, if I just download it will I need to burn to a disc and boot from disc or will it do everything for me automatically from Windows?
 
To be honest I am having a bit of dificulty installing ubuntu 7.04 fiesty thingy.

I partitioned in vista my HD and formated a nice 70GB for it. loaded up ubuntu and it sees the drive I click it and click forward but it says something about no root file system is defined. :confused:

All im trying to do is pick the 70gb and install it there. not as easy as it makes it out to be. gona have to install it overwriting the whole drive.

so bear that in mind if u have never used it a few things are still tricky
 
Oh k, thanks for the review, I'm not going to be rushing in to this any time soon, just thinking for the future maybe.
 
DAvE18 said:
I partitioned in vista my HD and formated a nice 70GB for it. loaded up ubuntu and it sees the drive I click it and click forward but it says something about no root file system is defined. :confused:
Click to expand...

Delete the partition you created and leave it as unpartitioned space, the installer will sort out the partitions itself. :)

To the OP, you will also need unpartitioned space on your HD, either Gparted (comes with the ubuntu live cd) or partition magic (for windows) can resize your windows drive, make sure you defrag your drive before attempting this. 10GB's should cater for anything you want to do.

Ubuntu is the best distro for trying linux out IMO :)
 
Right deleted that partition. gpart shows 70gb unalocated I now went to the installer and selected guided use the most free space and its stil given me crap :(
 
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Hessian said:
Does it do this automatically, if I just download it will I need to burn to a disc and boot from disc or will it do everything for me automatically from Windows?
Click to expand...
No, you boot the CD and it will load Ubuntu. From there you click the Install icon on the desktop and run through the installer. The installer needs a little help setting up your time zone, etc. just as Windows does. It will guide you through partitioning and in the end will install everything at once, rather than pestering you with questions every three minutes (I'm looking at you, Windows XP installer! :p). It will install automatically a bootloader and configure it to boot both Ubuntu and any other OSes you have, including Windows.

DAvE18, have you tried manually partitioning and formatting it? Boot the Ubuntu CD, open a terminal, and type sudo gparted. This will open a great formatter/partition editor. You'll have a load of unpartitioned space. Click on it and create a new partition. Define the size leaving about a gig leftover at the end. Format it ext3. Select the remaining ~1 GiB and format it swap. Close gparted and run the installer. When it comes time manually select the mount points with your large ext3 partition as / and the small swap partition as swap.
 
right that makes sense with the installer etc. I was using gparted but wasnt leaving a gig left over. and from what i can guess it was pulling a gig from another drives and this is where its getting the no root file error.

Seems to make sense will try it later. see if that works cheers.
 
Yeah, from the sounds of it you've fixed it now but to confirm what Billy said you need a minimum of 2 partitions for an installation of Linux - one called the 'root' partition (often just shown as /) and the so-called swap. Both gparted and Partition Magic can be used depending upon whichever you feel more comfortable using. For reference, I take whatever I've got going spare and creata a swap that's twice the amount of RAM and leave the rest for root.
 
There are no advantages to any operating system for a beginner. :p :)

Although you are likely to get on with Windows XP better as you've probably had more exposure to it.
 
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