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March with the Penguins

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  • 26-01-2013 4:33pm
    #1
    Overheal
    Registered Users Posts: 82,254 ✭✭✭✭


    OK, so as some people know, I have stupid amounts of free stuff from work, almost all of which are expertise incentives to be, you know, knowledgeable at my job. After getting a Yoga 13, I no longer have any true functional use for an HP Envy 14 Spectre, and was thinking about finally using it as a test bed to try out the world of unix.

    Good lord, where the hell do I start? I don't know anything about versions, installation, drivers, I don't even understand those xkcd comics that make reference to unix jokes - I'm doing pretty good just knowing they are unix jokes that I don't understand.

    Backing up the Laptop I will handle on my own, should I ever need to poop windows 7 back on it.


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    #2
    Khannie
    Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 37,485 Mod ✭✭✭✭Khannie


    I thought you were gonna give me free stuff. Pfft.

    I would recommend you give a virtual machine or live cd's a lash first. You can try out the various distros with ease that way. Ubuntu is very popular. I don't like the default window manager (think interface). My current favourite is lubuntu which is a lightweight version of ubuntu. I wouldn't recommend it starting out though.

    Fedora and Suse are both worth trying too.


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    #3
    GreenWolfe
    Registered Users Posts: 1,731 ✭✭✭GreenWolfe


    The first thing you should do before installing is to try out a few distributions on live discs/USB's. That way you can try out a few to get a feel for each one, and you'll be able to check if your hardware is compatible - without installing anything.

    Generally speaking, most hardware will work out of the box. But some hardware, like NVIDIA or AMD graphics will need graphics drivers.

    I'd suggest starting with Linux Mint, Ubuntu or Fedora, but you should have a look through this thread too.

    If you have a large capacity USB drive lying around, you can put multiple distributions on one liveUSB using YUMI from Windows. If you have lots of lower capacity drives (2GB or less) you can use UNetBootin to write one image to a single drive. Otherwise, just get some DVD's and start burning.


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