different os

[cuog]

i have heard a lot of gossip about using other os's instead of windows such as linux and i was wondering wha needs to be done to swich and what i have to do to my programs to make them run and will it speed up or slow down my computer

whatever u know will help

[bailey]

you could dual boot your system with xp and linux, I would suggest doing this because if you have never run linux before, you will want to keep windows around till you learn linux as well as you know windows.
it does have a larger learning curve and I also would suggest a good book or at least print out the user manual for which ever distro you decide to go with.

I have red hat ver 7.1 and ver 9.0.

7.0 because that is what was used in class at school.
ver 9.0 because its the newest one out.

there are many other ones that can be downloaded free too.

[Dangermouse1]

I agrre with Bailey dual booting is how I started and it is nice to have windows as a backup system if anything goes wrong. If you only have one computer and you have internet connection problems having windows available to use to post here or elsewhere for help is very useful.
Here is where to go to download Linux distros for free, it also tell you how to burn them to disc as an iso image.

[cuog]

thanks for the site i have two computers 1 a 98 (mine soon to have linux) and my moms xp (my backup comp)

i also need to know if my games will run fine in linux and how to do dual boot

[Karnevil9]

You are not going to be able to run many games designed for windows system on Linux. It is not a good OS for a gamer. There is a program called WINE, that lets you run some things made for windows on Linux, but it doesn't work with everything. Most people keep windows on their systems because there are many more programs written for windows.

[Dswissmiss]

If you've never used linux before I'd suggest you try some live cd's first. These run off your cd drive after you've rebooted with the cd in the drive. It allows you to try out different linux programs and see whether you like it.

The ones I know of include knoppix, gnoppix, slax, suse live cd and ubuntu live cd.

[Karnevil9]

There is also Morphix, a version taken from Knoppix, and I believe Vector SOHO, which is based off either Slackware, or Gentoo, I forget which.

[cuog]

is the compatability issue for the linux / windows because of the lack of windows drivers on linux or because ther are language differences.


ps i also found the xp disc for my moms comp

[Karnevil9]

It is because their language (code) is different. Drivers become an issue too for some items, but usually there are fixes for those and some companies like Nvidia for Video cards, make a driver for it's products specifically for linux.

[dragonxx4]

Also another good Live CD distro is MEPIS Linux. I used many different live cd distros, and MEPIS seems to run faster than most, and has awesome hardware detection, even detected my wireless nic on my laptop.