Reccomend me an operating system

jonwhite

jonwhite

jonwhite

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Joined
28 Aug 2013
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382
hi,
im building a tower so excited, i have everything now but no operating system funds have really dried up i cant afford to buy a windows operating system.

wondering if there is a good free operating system which i could download then use on my new system blank hard drive.

or is there any other options? (im so skint i really am)

thank you
 
Hi,

new tower build huh, exciting isn't it? until you run out of money -.-

all i can recommend for free mate is Ubuntu (Linux) it is actually amazing. I dual boot it with windows and use Ubuntu frequently, its stylish, streamlined, very customisable and best of all its FREE! :D

Linux is very secure and used worldwide by more than 20 million people, you can download it right onto a USB or DVD drive mate.

I would recommend it mate!
 
I'm voting for Linux Mint as it is more windows like than Ububtu. If you do use it then either the cinnamon or the Mate version will be fine (they are different but similar window managers and either will do you).
 
You could also give the ever popular ElementaryOS a go which is based off of the Stable LTS Ubuntu 12.04 and has a OSXish theme with their own DE/Apps.

Otherwise - you could always use the evaluation copy of Windows 8 until you have more funds.
 
linux mint, i was reading about that last night, had some really good reviews think ill go for that,

cinnamon or the Mate version, what are these? anything to do with the linux mint?
 
I'd vote for Mint too. Ubuntu's interface (Unity) is all right, but Mint is just more easy to use. Since it's based on Ubuntu, you get all the benefits of Ubuntu too.

If you use Steam, that can be installed without a problem now too.

Go for Cinnamon. It's the most modern. Mate won't last very long, I think.
 
I would recommend Manjaro linux, it's slicker and faster than the Ubuntu derived distros out of the box, it's running on Arch Linux, so has a wealth of information and very well stocked software repositories behind it, however it's also much more user friendly and far faster and easier to setup and get stuck into than Arch it's self. It has a graphical package manager, although pacman is so good I'm not sure why you wouldn't just use that, which is of course included. There are a few flavoures available, I use the XFCE one, myself, which I think is probably the most popular.

Not sure what else to say really, I like it, it's great, don't worry if a lot of what I said didn't mean much to you, it's really not hard to get it setup and I think it's perhaps a better bet for getting a reasonbly user friendly distribution while still also having a good reason to learn to start using the CLI a bit, even if it's just for pacman ...which is the Arch package manager and is much, much better thna the GUI one Manjaro also has. Manjaro doesn't hold your hand as much as Ubuntu and it's spinoffs, but it does so far, far more than Arch does, however when/if you start to want to make more extensive changes to it, you can use Arch literature just as easily as Manjaro's own, and there is a LOT of stuff write about Arch.

if you fancy going for a bit more hand holding and want to go with a nice easy Ubuntu based distro, with massive repo based software support I would recommend Mint like everyone else.
 
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nineteenforty4 said:
Has mint got ubuntus spyware?
Click to expand...

No.

Mint is based on Ubuntu (which itself is based on the highly respected Debian). But it has the spyware removed, more codecs added by default (a good thing for new users) and replaces the ububtu Unity interface with either Mate or Cinnamon which are both more traditional in look and feel (I prefer Cinnamon).
 
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just one more thing, is there a special way this should be burnt to a dvd ? i keep seeing the word isofile really dont who what this means in the mint instructions is says burn isofile to DVD? do i just copy then paste it to a dvd?

thank you
 
Spyware is a bit harsh :) But yeah, the shopping 'feature' of Ubuntu is part of Unity, which Mint doesn't use at all.
 
jonwhite said:
just one more thing, is there a special way this should be burnt to a dvd ? i keep seeing the word isofile really dont who what this means in the mint instructions is says burn isofile to DVD? do i just copy then paste it to a dvd?

thank you
Click to expand...

Someone else above has already answered but if you really get stuck with no way to burn it then let me know and I'll burn one and put it in the post ( or if you happen to be in surrey then you can pop around and collect it).
 
That's very kind to offer that for him Hades.

There's also the USB stick option if burning is any problem. The Mint site should have a link to some software that can do that.
 
Indeed, I would go the USB method if I were you, you can download a small program called 'unetbootin' that will burn an ISO file to USB for you and make it bootable, nice fast way of doing it.

But in answer to your question, yet there is a special way of doing it as the cd or USB stick has to be made bootable. An ISO file is basically an exact copy, an image, of an optical disk. Now to get this to work with a USB drive does require a 3rd party program, Windows 7 can burn an ISO to cd/dvd and make it bootable and Windows XP will require something like ImgBurn to do it. I use ImgBurn anyway as I prefer it to Windows native capabilities. ImgBurn can't do USB sticks though, for this you will need the tool I already mentioned Unetbootin or something similar.
 
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