Any point in giving Linux ago?
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Soldato
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Pair a decent desktop environment (Gnome, KDE, XFCE, Fluxbox, LXDE, Openbox...) with a decent window theme and use compiz:
Permabanned
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LinuxMint is aesthetically pleasing.
Soldato
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One last tip for a linux newbie: Don't fight the package manager.
Most of the software you will want to use can be obtained from a repository run by your distro provider and installed by your package manager (rpm in OpenSUSE). See the yum command.
The stuff that isn't in the repo. can probably downloaded from the developer in rpm form, so you can have rpm install it for you.
Only once all those have failed should you attempt to compile from source, or use a program to install the program (what windows does).
The package manager keeps track of all the software on the machine, keeps them all up to date too. If you start trying to not use it you will likely end up in a state where the package manager doesn't work any more.
Most of the software you will want to use can be obtained from a repository run by your distro provider and installed by your package manager (rpm in OpenSUSE). See the yum command.
The stuff that isn't in the repo. can probably downloaded from the developer in rpm form, so you can have rpm install it for you.
Only once all those have failed should you attempt to compile from source, or use a program to install the program (what windows does).
The package manager keeps track of all the software on the machine, keeps them all up to date too. If you start trying to not use it you will likely end up in a state where the package manager doesn't work any more.
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Most distros have their own package manager, you search for what you want to install, it finds it and installs it.
Soldato
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The distro will come with the package manager pre-installed.
If it's RedHat or SUSE based:
"rpm" installs/removes/manages packages.
"yum" will accept a the name of a package, work out the dependencies, download all the packages from the repo and have rpm install them.
"up2date" is like yum but is found in RHEL.
"YaST" on SUSE is like yum but it has a graphical interface.
If you use Fedora you will end up using PackageKit, which is very clever.
If you have a distro that's Debian based:
"apt" is the package manager.
"dpkg" does the installing and such.
"apt-get" is the command line thing to solve deps and download and install packages.
"Synaptic" is a GUI for installing packages like apt-get does.
You may also find yourself using PackageKit to a lesser extent if you have Ubuntu.
Compiling from source is a pain because:
-You have to manually make sure you have the dependencies.
-You have to have a compiler (probably gcc).
-You need to have all the necessary header files.
-Sometimes you need to alter/patch the source to get it to compile.
-There is almost never an un-installer, and things on linux aren't installed to a single folder somewhere.
You may want to look into "checkinstall", which will try to insert things you compile into the package manager. Normally you would compile by going:
Code:
./configure
make
# become root
make install
Code:
./configure
make
# become root
checkinstall make install
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Associate
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It's a feature of VMware which gives the appearance that applications installed in the VM are running directly on the host - all it really does is hide the guest OS's desktop, apart from a "start" button and expanding menu.
VirtualBox has something similar, called "seamless mode" IIRC.