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Well ok, so my next question would be, do the distros cost a lot of money? Like lets say i go out an buy a copy of <insert distro here>, will it be as much as windows, or is it hard to say because they all are diff with their pricing?
--Darkstar--
All your base are belong to us.
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well for one thing, almost all except for the comercial distros (SCO, Redhat enterprise, ect ect) can be downloaded free of charge, or you can buy burned cd's (if you dont have the bandwidth/or a cd burner) for about 15$ for the cds and the shipping, if you really want to buy a boxed version then thats great for supporting the vendors, most start around $30 for the most basic and run up to over a hundred to a couple hundred for advanced boxes and enterprise based server packages
really unless your running a business, just download whatever you want
www.linuxiso.org
www.distrowatch.org
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Ok well where can i download some distros, and i am guessing it's not illegal to download them.
How big are most linux distros to download? 400mb or so?
--Darkstar--
All your base are belong to us.
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Linux itself is free, and the Linux source code is always available (once you have installed Linux, you have access to its source code, so you can make any changes you like)
There is nothing illegal about downloading a distribution, so dont worry about that. Most companies allow you to download straight from them.
For your first distribution you might be best trying out Mandrake or RedHat. Iv used Mandrake a while, but its starting to feel too windosy, and almost too user oriented. I also run RedHat 9, which has been great for me
SuSE is another good bet
if you do have Unix experience, then your already ahead of the game i used to use emacs, but i always use vi now
a Linux distro is usually somewhere between 600MB ~ 700MB. Some are smaller though. Others you can download an iso of about 20mb, and then download the rest of the distribution whilst installing it. You can do this with SuSE i think and download it straight from the ftp. You could look into Gentoo, but the installation is hell, especially for someone new to Linux
The Difference being, Hackers build things, Crackers break them
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RH is three CDs, each CD is... 450 MB, I think....
I think a good way to get familiar with the command line (if Linux was a FPS, the command line would be an ultra Photon Laser Nuke Cannon of Ultimate Destruction) is to spend about a week without using the graphical interface. It works, I did it myself!
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the links i posted above are where to get them, and you can get them from each vendors website too, no its not illegal, its open source, you should probably go to linuxiso and read the howto's on how to download and burn iso images, all they are, are images of the boxed version of the distro, they are usually 650mb per image or more, never over 700 or they wouldnt fit on a cdr, alternatly you can do a net install of a few distros, SuSE, debian ect ect
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Originally posted by Darkstar250R
I just started learning UNIX a week ago. Unix is like DOS, no desktop, just a prompt and all you do is just search around typing stuff. It's that easy.
boy does it seem like you got a little catching upto to do (but we all did at one point so don't sweat it) DOS did have a desktop (i believe it was called GEM released by Digital Research) so can unix (plus i dont there is a OS called unix but rather a bunch of oses grouped together as Unix) just check out Solaris (i'm sure there are screenshots somewhere there). BTW a headless windows machine is still a windows machine. i think you should learn a little about computer architecture and the difference between a kernel a shell a desktop aterminal and so on.
That's about it. Another thing is games. Since most (i think all) games use Direct X, how does that work for Linux?
well you mean windows games, because the mac for example has managed fine w/o them (i believe) plus minesweeper is a game and does not require DirectX (i'm pretty sure) there are lots of java and flash games, but to answer your question more specifically about the games i assume you mean (ie. fps and rts etc.) the answer is WineX , to learn more about it check out Wine
Please use your spare cpu cycles to help a good cause (its free!!1)... http://folding.stanford.edu
BSD, Java, and Functional Programming fan.
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Thank you all so much for your support, i am currently looking at Slackware, is this a good one to start with. How is the install? Well by games i mean FPS, RTS, RPG, etc. games that require a lot of direct x. Stuff like that. What about how big those are to download. Lately i have been using emacs to program basic c programs (as i am learning c). And it's pretty simple.
--Darkstar--
All your base are belong to us.
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Slackware is a good distro, no doubt, but its not always best for starting out with. It doesnt spoil you with any type of gui configuators, you do it all by hand...If you're up for the learning curve, its probably the best distro for learning, but if you want to ease into it, i'd stay away from it
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Originally posted by Darkstar250R
Thank you all for your input!!!! i love it all!
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esp. helping a newb like me figure this all out
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You know, this site used to be called linuxnewbie.org. This site is meant for newbies to get situated. It's just some of the people still posting on this site are no longer newbies. I'm still a newbie after 4 years.
Daniel
Linux User# 315525
(K)ubuntu User# 9252
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i think thats one of the reasons for the name change, the community here is majority more advanced than newbie, but still adequatly caters to newbies, so rather than limit us to being newbs and helping newbs, now we "just" talk about "linux" hehe
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In response to the "desktop" conversation, yes, DOS did have GEM. Also, you can run X11 over UNIX just like in Linux and basically get all the same desktop features of linux. Ask anyone around here who runs BSD (a free {speech} UNIX).
As for first distro's, I reccomend RH, Mandrake or SuSE. Slackware is quite the transition, I'll warn you now. However, you'll learn a lot if you do start there. Just don't forget where this site is ;-)
As for games, there are actually a lot of Linux native games out there. www.happypenguin.org is a good place for the free (speech) ones.
For FPS, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and America's Army both run natively, as well as many others.
For RPG, Neverwinter Nights runs natively. Also, there's a multitude of free ones as well.
For RTS, I've gotta be honest. I've never found a really good one. However, some people have had a good experience running freecraft.
I don't claim to be an expert, please remember that the above is just my rambling, probably long-winded opinion.
P4 3.2Ghz w/512MB of RAM, 80GB HD, DVD, CD-RW, GeForce 4 64MB of RAM, built it myself.
Gentoo & (new!) FreeBSD
JL on IRC (It helps!) #justlinux on irc.freenode.org
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If you are a newibe the distro I would recomend is vectorlinux the whole distro is one tar file that untars on to a file system that is setup by the installer and if you know you hard ware well it's a breez to configure
it's based on slackware 9.0 so you can get a text mode linux up and running without knowing linux at all it also comes with X and two desktops setup and ready to go once you configure X and here is where to get it http://www.vectorlinux.com/
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Try out jollix if you want to get linux to run games, its gentoo based and is pretty much the same idea as knoppix/morphix. It can be run off a cd without installing anything to your HD. Hope that can help you get started.
trc
Last edited by trc; 07-14-2003 at 06:52 PM.
slacker
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Originally posted by Darkstar250R
Well ok, so my next question would be, do the distros cost a lot of money? Like lets say i go out an buy a copy of <insert distro here>, will it be as much as windows, or is it hard to say because they all are diff with their pricing?
I have yet to see a linux distro that diden't have lots and lots more than windows and I have yet to see a new windows computer with as much as any linux distro
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