Who has tried Linux?

[redoxide]

Originally Posted by madrat

Thanks

There seams to be a lot of Linux versions. Is Ubuntu the latest?

Can I burn it to CD and then install it onto a hard drive?

Give Freespire a try you can run it from disc at first to see if you like it and it comes bundled with everything to get you going (drivers and software). when i installed it on my pc it worked straight out of the box.
And i think the CNR client that it comes with makes installing all the software available a real doddle. you can check it out and download it here _http://www.freespire.org/

[kerrywez]

It has averything that any other OS has. I never used it to go on the net, because as far as I could make out you need to have something to run your modem, silly but I can't remember what I needed.

It was also very difficult for me to download all the stuff you need to, because I got a snail of a dial up, 3.2 Kbps at best, I know that it should not be possible to have a speed that slow in this day and age, but I am in Ireland you got to remember.

The opposition put a motion to the government, last week, that there should be quality broadband for everyone in the country and that state money should be used to provide it, but it was defeated by the government, by 10 votes. We live in the stone age here.

Good luck with your linux, I am sure you will enjoy it, I liked the desktop that it had.

Very best regards Wez

[madrat]

I will give it a go. I hope I can get on line with it

[thedigger]

Originally Posted by madrat

Can it run printers and other things?

What about anti virus and fire walls?

Printers will work as long as you can find the drivers (there are at least generic drivers for almost every printer)

Anti Virus is unnecessary (there are NO known viruses on Linux ) and a firewall is built in to almost every distro. You can get an anti-virus if you're really paranoid though.

[thedigger]

Originally Posted by madrat

I will give it a go. I hope I can get on line with it

I've not used a version of Linux in the last 5 years that doesn't work online straight out of the box

[Jimdefruit]

I have three hard drives on my PC with triple boot option for Vista, XP and Ubuntu.

Ubuntu has a huge software library available and if you are on broadband it all checks and updates automatically. It is great if you want to play with systems and has all the productivity software you will need.

However, I spend most of my time on Vista which has borrowed a lot from linux in an attempt to become more secure.

[madrat]

Help

I downloaded and burn KUBUNTO onto disk. tried loading it onto a spare PC with no operating system loaded (telling it to boot from CD rom) nothing just keeps saying
"NTLDR is missing" "press ctrl, alt del to restart.

Tried it on main PC telling it to boot from CD, just went straight to windows. What am I doing wrong??

[thedigger]

NTLDR = NT Loader - Part of NT/W2K/XP/Vista etc

That just means the boot sector of your hard disk has failed. Have you actually installed Kubuntu or just run the live CD version? If it was installed, you should see GRUB or LILO instead of NTLDR.

If you want windows back, you'll need to boot from the wind0ze install CD, go to recovery console and "fixboot" and "fixmbr". If you want to wipe the hard disk & install Kubunto, "cfdisk" from the live CD is your friend

[madrat]

I have found out that the download and burn were not as they should be. I have requested a copy of Kubuntu and Ubuntu. so we shall see what happens in 6 - 8 weeks In the meantime I have installed windows 98 on the old PC to play with holy old operating system batman. Will update it to ME when I get hold of the update disc kindly sent to me by a PC adviser member

[pablo thirteen]

hi

i'm not a linux expert, but i have used different flavours of linux on and off for a few years starting with corel, then red hat, mandrake, and now ubuntu.

the support from the community is very good (as with this forum). ubuntu was v simple for me dual booting with XP using seperate hard drives.

However having read the thread above, i am now intrigued by DreamLinux (as one user went from Ubuntu to that), and possibly Freespire.

my experience with things like installing printers, etc has been non-problematic.

I think it's worth trying linux, and being familiar with it as a possible alternative if and when the world opts out of the Microsoft route.

cheers
pablo