Looking to use linux - Complete Beginner

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To be honest, thats both the pleasure and the pain of Linux. A lot of things just work and often considerably better than windows equivelents, but every now and again you need to get your hands dirty and delve into the guts of the thing.

Best advice I can give you is what you are already doing, ask on the forums :)

There used to be a chap called Mpemba Effect who posted a lot on the OCUK linux forums who helped me a lot, and although I still only really play with Linux, I can do most of what I need to do now and have a home linux server that file serves, torrents, is a teamspeak server, and ftp server and hopefully soon will be come a TV tuner farm using Myth TV (thats my next project).

All I can say is stick with it, theres many a time when I got frustrated and didn't want to play anymore, but I'm glad I did.

I've always used fedora, and must say there are certain things about Ubuntu which I find a bit non-linux like. Yes its an easy distro to start with, but I'd suggest you look at Fedora also.

E-I
 
Soldato
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I'm getting better! :D

I currently have no windows OS on my system. Removed Vista and was planning on putting XP on it inorder to help a friend with a problem via remote access.

But Sudo rdesktop IpAddress came to the rescue

I've also learnt a **** load of stuff by installing the Music Player Daemon, completely by Terminal.

Had to learn how to stop services and create a music database, also learnt to extract and edit config files.

I wouldnt say I was a beginner anymore. I would say I was a novice :D

Yay
 
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Soldato
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Aye, i think my linux learning curve can be explained perfectly through my experience with Arch:

First time: What, no Live CD? **** this... but it does have pacman ;)
Second time: Blindly follow instructions on wiki, wipe entire hard drive, end up with a very messy, but workable, XFCE desktop. Gave up and went back to mint.
Third time: Installed fine, understood everything and avoided all the usual desktop environments in favor of a tilling wm.

Oh yeah :cool:
 
Soldato
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That's why I always recommend Arch as the Distro to choose for people who want to 'learn' Linux, it's not exactly a hand-holder, and just setting it up teaches you more about the OS than most other Distro's do.
 
Soldato
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This thread made me install Arch in a VM on my MBP. Now I notice it's almost 1am - way to go guys. :\ LOL :p I've not used Arch for a few years; it's ironic after what I said in my last post about looking back in 12 months, that even I (after years of using *nix) actually found Arch a breeze this time.

Last time I installed it, it took me four days. :o :D
 
Soldato
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For now I'm going to stick with the Ubuntu version of Mint, Dont want to try too much at once, Debian version and Arch sound interesting, but 1 thing at a time.

Only thing is I noticed updates are stopping now for the Ubuntu version, So I may have to upgrade sooner than I expected

Music Player Daemon really has had me learning a lot of new crap. It took some real work to get working, I had to remove it, use purge commands and alsorts once the previous install crapped out(For no reason I may add, decided mpd hadnt access writes to my music folder all of a sudden) Anyways its working like a dream now, next step is using my home computer as a central server, running MPD and streaming MP3s to anything for testing purposes. But long term I'd like to see if i can get my Blackberry to pick them up.... We'll see :p
 
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Soldato
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Just a query here, do you use ALSA+Pulseaudio or OSSv4? It's probably the former since you're in Mint but i went for OSSv4 when installing Arch simply because i can't see the logic in having two things to do the job of one, and there are sources that say it's slightly better anyway.
 
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Ok, So I've been sitting on the fence for quite a while, reading bits and pieces allong the way and I'm finally thinking I'm ready to take the plunge into the world of Linux...
So heres the age old question: What distro to choose, basically I was thinking Ubuntu but having read a bit on the latest release I'm not so sure it sounds great, of course there is still the previous release available. But I think I want something a bit different. Is this wise? I do not know a lot about software or tinkering with it but am keen to learn the dark art of Linux!

Should I just follow the crouds a pick Ubuntu (10.10?) or do I carve my own path and be a bit different? I which case what to chose??
 
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Funily enough I was looking at Mint this lunch time and thinking that could be the one to try!

I might make a live CD of it for now then and wait until the latest release later in the month for the install...exciting times (for me at least!)
 
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