Something to keep me busy

GarIT

School finished today and I'm off for the summer so I've decided to do something to do with my old laptop. I work in laptop repair so I think I should learn a bit more about Unix. I was thinking of just starting off by installing Ubuntu and seeing how things go from there. Does anyone else have any better suggestions?

The specs of the laptop aren't too bad, its an Inspiron 1720, Vista 32bit, 4GB Ram, 250GB HDD, Centrino Dual core 1.86ghz processor and a 256mb nVidia geforce 8600m gt graphics card.

GarIT

Ubuntu is installed now if that is of interest to anyone.

Dun

That's probably the best distro for someone new to it, though I prefer Linux Mint as most media works out of the box (it's Ubuntu based) - they're both more or less the same though, and any guide out there for Ubuntu usually works for Linux Mint with no changes. Sorry that bit of advice should've been given before you started the installation

I would recommend a google search on things to do after installing Ubuntu for some ideas on what to do next. And you can always come back here if you've any questions.

Naikon

Try a BSD. Gives you a nice "old school" Unix perspective. There are some linuxisms today that annoy me. The audio mess is one example. Overall though, Linux is great:D As is BSD.

Pygmalion

If you're just looking to learn "Linux" (as in modern Desktop Linux distros) Ubuntu is probably the best example, although the latest release tends to have annoyed a lot of people with the new interface, all other major distros tend to stick with a good more traditional one.
Worth noting that you can still choose to use a more sane desktop environment at the login screen.

If you want to understand a bit more about how it works, how services are set up (and which service/software provides which feature) etc., then Gentoo or Arch are great.
Both will give you a really basic, bare system (i.e. no "graphics", just a basic text-only shell, no audio) but have really good wiki's that will walk you through setting up a nice desktop system, explaining each step of the way.
Gentoo though takes a lot of time to install things (it compiles them all from source for the most part), and it tends to expect that you know a good deal about what features you do/don't want etc. (I'll elaborate on that if needed, but didn't want to fill the post with it :P).

BSDs are also pretty interesting to use.
I've only used FreeBSD and not intensively but I found it pretty insightful to use.
Coming from Linux it was pretty weird and entertaining to see how things can be done differently, no idea what it'd be like to someone with no Linux experience though, probably pretty unforgiving :P.

GarIT

Thanks for the help everyone, I think I'll stick to Ubuntu until I get familiar with the basics. I'm more looking to learn to be able to troubleshoot it for home users rather than actually build an OS from the base up like someone told me Arch would be like. Usually when I'm working on a laptop and say the hard drive goes and we replace the hard drive but there windows licence is gone (happens all the time, they fade away so easily if the laptop it slightly misused) and they aren't able to get it back I'd say to put Ubuntu onto it then hand it over to someone else. I'd like to be able to do it all myself.

I actually thought it was surprisingly nice that Ubuntu detected my country and laptop make and model without me doing anything. I quite like the new interface, it looks stolen from windows 7, but everything is stolen from something else now.

bnt

Note that you can also try the "old" interface straight, by selecting "Ubuntu Classic" from the drop-down box on the login screen. You do this after entering your user name, before typing your password.

It looks like you have a pretty fast machine, but for anyone who doesn't I can recommend installing and trying "Unity 2D": looks same as the new interface but without the hardware requirements.

Johnboy1951

Naikon wrote: »

Try a BSD. Gives you a nice "old school" Unix perspective. There are some linuxisms today that annoy me. The audio mess is one example. Overall though, Linux is great:D As is BSD.

Agree completely ....... and do not do yourself a disfavour by assuming that Ububtu equates to Linux ..... it doesn't.

There are many fine Linux distros out there some of which might be more ameniable to new Linux users coming from Windows, than Ubuntu. In such cases I recommend a KDE distro for comparison ...... maybe PCLinuxOS, or Mepis.

regards.

Dun

So how are you getting on OP?

GarIT

I've gotten a bit side tracked, I've only really used it for Skype and browsing the internet. I was trying to get prey to Install but I ran into a lot of trouble. I haven't done anything worth mentioning really.

Fysh

I'd suggest trying Fedora as well, as this will give you some experience of different update and package management tools to Ubuntu while still being pretty friendly for new users (though I have to say I dislike the new Gnome 3 interface and use the XFCE version instead). Try it out with a LiveCD to see which interface you want and how well it supports your hardware.

If you want to make your life miserable a challenge, you could try setting up Wine to run Windows-only games (if that's not what you were already doing when trying to install Prey).

GarIT

I meant prey the anti-theft software, not the game.

Khannie

Naikon wrote: »

Try a BSD.

Don't. It is awful.

/runs

D'Agger

Installed the latest version of Ubuntu on my laptop last week just to get into it a bit - work in Deskside support so no harm to know the in's and outs of Linux

Really like it so far I have to say!

Will keep an eye on this thread though and try out some of the suggestions

Dun

Prey installed okay for me using a "sudo apt-get install prey", but I don't know anything about using it. I know I'm on Linux Mint 11, but it's running off a Ubuntu 11.04 base, so it should be the same for Ubuntu.

humbert

Ubuntu is a great option for off the shelf usability but for learning about linux I'm not so sure. It detects near enough everything from the start and if something doesn't work your just going to be fumbling in the dark(i.e. blindly following instructions) trying to fix it.

Arch/Gentoo/BSD are not at all practical options for a usable desktop system and the learning curve will give you a headache but when you're done setting your system up you'll know about config files, the kernel, X org, bash and init scripts. Then I'd switch to ubuntu and start doing higher level stuff.

That's just my two pence but if you've got time and want to learn then why not.

Naikon

Khannie wrote: »

Don't. It is awful.

/runs

:eek: