But for this page, I wanted to show why I made the switch and how I went about it. I have always enjoyed computers. When I was in my early teens my older brother purchased an IBM 486 66MHz with an outstanding 4meg of ram. He quickly jumped that up to 16. Everyone wanted to come see the latest rocket-ship of a computer. It was a beauty. Rocking Windows 3.1. Well the orders were that I was absolutely not to touch the computer. My listening ability then was about as good as it is now, and I went on it all the time, always trying something, and… typically breaking it. Obviously, that resulted in me having to fix it before my big bro came home and pummeled me. That fear of fury taught me how to work on computers. I have been tinkering with them ever since. At this point in my career I am a Windows administrator. So I know my way around the operating system and used all of the versions from 3.1 on. In fact I was quite the Windows fanboy.
A friend of mine, however, wasn't so short sighted, and wanted to learn more about the Linux community. He quickly liked what we saw, and tried for a long time to get me to try it. I really couldn't just do that. I had a home based employment that required me to use Windows. Once that passed, I really had no excuse but I continued to use Windows, until I got a new pc with one small problem… no operating system. I had no Windows license and no money to buy one with, and being a reformed pirate I decided not to go back to my old ways. So I tried Linux.
Some links that might help you if you make the switch!
http://www.linux.org/lessons/beginner/index.html
http://www.linuxlots.com/~jam/
http://linuxreviews.org/beginner/
The first distro I tried for my desktop was Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/). I liked it overall. It was very simple to use, and the coolest thing (as with any distro)--- tons of free awesome software. CD/DVD/Blueray burners, rippers, games, office suites… you name it, there is a free app for it. Instead of having to buy or pirate it, you can get it for free!
http://iso.linuxquestions.org/ (which distro is right for you?)
So that made me very interested. But I didn't like Gnome, so I tried Kubuntu. I liked it much better, I would highly recommend KDE. I like 3.5 and what they are doing in 4. The reasons I went with canonical (http://www.canonical.com/) is that like that their distos where based on Debian (http://www.debian.com/), which is a solid distro for anything, to high end serving, or a simple desktop. what I didn't like, as a power user, (see if this makes sense) it was so simple, that it made it harder to do more advanced things. I am struggling to find an example (I will try to remember one and put it here) but whenever I wanted to make any system changes (like how my hardware reacted to the software) different from what they gave me, it was always complex and quite a hassle. My friend who I mentioned earlier, was using Gentoo (http://www.gentoo.org/). I was considering going to pure Debian, but he talked me into Gentoo. Now Gentoo does rock, once you get a stable system off the ground. It is fast, powerful and very customizable, but it is a pain in the butt; in fact, there is a 12 chapter installation guide found here http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/index.xml that outlines how to build Gentoo. It's certainly the erector set distro of Linux. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but I do love it. I will admit my Gentoo Linux computer can be quite a pain, but it also trumps anything I have compared it to in the Linux, Microsoft or Mac Worlds. So I am stuck with an awesome stable system, that whenever I do have problems I can go to well documented forum, and IRC channels that have Gentoo developers in them.
The greatest thing I can say about Linux is, you get a more stable, more powerful, more customizable system than you have ever seen. The desktop environments found in Linux are amazing, and it only gets better. look at a brief list of various software options below.
Here is a list of the awesome free software found in Linux!
Applications
http://www.openoffice.org/ Awesome Office suite
http://www.virtualbox.org/ Have windows, mac or whatever virtually!
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/personal.html The best web browser!
http://amarok.kde.org/ Great music player
http://www.gimp.org/ Amazing image manipulation program
http://k3b.plainblack.com/ Great burner software
http://www.exit1.org/dvdrip/ I rip all of my dvd's and store them on my server so I can keep my dvd's like new.
For a list of games
http://www.whylinuxisbetter.net/items/free_games/index.php?lang=
A friend of mine, however, wasn't so short sighted, and wanted to learn more about the Linux community. He quickly liked what we saw, and tried for a long time to get me to try it. I really couldn't just do that. I had a home based employment that required me to use Windows. Once that passed, I really had no excuse but I continued to use Windows, until I got a new pc with one small problem… no operating system. I had no Windows license and no money to buy one with, and being a reformed pirate I decided not to go back to my old ways. So I tried Linux.
Some links that might help you if you make the switch!
http://www.linux.org/lessons/beginner/index.html
http://www.linuxlots.com/~jam/
http://linuxreviews.org/beginner/
The first distro I tried for my desktop was Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/). I liked it overall. It was very simple to use, and the coolest thing (as with any distro)--- tons of free awesome software. CD/DVD/Blueray burners, rippers, games, office suites… you name it, there is a free app for it. Instead of having to buy or pirate it, you can get it for free!
http://iso.linuxquestions.org/ (which distro is right for you?)
So that made me very interested. But I didn't like Gnome, so I tried Kubuntu. I liked it much better, I would highly recommend KDE. I like 3.5 and what they are doing in 4. The reasons I went with canonical (http://www.canonical.com/) is that like that their distos where based on Debian (http://www.debian.com/), which is a solid distro for anything, to high end serving, or a simple desktop. what I didn't like, as a power user, (see if this makes sense) it was so simple, that it made it harder to do more advanced things. I am struggling to find an example (I will try to remember one and put it here) but whenever I wanted to make any system changes (like how my hardware reacted to the software) different from what they gave me, it was always complex and quite a hassle. My friend who I mentioned earlier, was using Gentoo (http://www.gentoo.org/). I was considering going to pure Debian, but he talked me into Gentoo. Now Gentoo does rock, once you get a stable system off the ground. It is fast, powerful and very customizable, but it is a pain in the butt; in fact, there is a 12 chapter installation guide found here http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/index.xml that outlines how to build Gentoo. It's certainly the erector set distro of Linux. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but I do love it. I will admit my Gentoo Linux computer can be quite a pain, but it also trumps anything I have compared it to in the Linux, Microsoft or Mac Worlds. So I am stuck with an awesome stable system, that whenever I do have problems I can go to well documented forum, and IRC channels that have Gentoo developers in them.
The greatest thing I can say about Linux is, you get a more stable, more powerful, more customizable system than you have ever seen. The desktop environments found in Linux are amazing, and it only gets better. look at a brief list of various software options below.
Here is a list of the awesome free software found in Linux!
Applications
http://www.openoffice.org/ Awesome Office suite
http://www.virtualbox.org/ Have windows, mac or whatever virtually!
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/personal.html The best web browser!
http://amarok.kde.org/ Great music player
http://www.gimp.org/ Amazing image manipulation program
http://k3b.plainblack.com/ Great burner software
http://www.exit1.org/dvdrip/ I rip all of my dvd's and store them on my server so I can keep my dvd's like new.
For a list of games
http://www.whylinuxisbetter.net/items/free_games/index.php?lang=
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