OK, OK, I give up

[JinxM]

I tired linux YEARS ago and had such a hard time of it, it put me off for life. Well, maybe not life...

My PC mobo has developped a nasty buzz due to a hooky fan. I see this as the perfect excuse to upgrade :) But I'll be left with enough bits to maybe, perhaps, possibly build a linux box.

I know nothing about this and there is already a thread for installing for n00bs but I wondered about hardware. When I tried it years ago it didn't seem to support much but I think everything has changed since then. Also, what sort of spec do I need? I'm thinking perhaps a web server for my local network and a file server.

Basically, I know bugger all about linux and constantly slag it off after my expirence years and years ago. I figured I should probably try it again :)

CONVERT MEH!!!!!!

[moron]

Well hardware wise there's a fair amount of choice - my messing around machine at home got upgraded the middle of last year from a P200MMX with 64Mb to a P3 400 (I think) that runs in the corner and does stuff without a desktop. Or I have a few disks in my main machine with a p4/radeon that can play some games.

For actual hardware support you'll be best trying to use established hardware, things like intel or 3com NIC's, non-weird chipsets etc are all a good idea. If you decide you're going to use it with a GUI then most cards are fairly straightforward to get going with 2D but 3D acceleration can be a mare.. but for file serving, playing with sites etc you don't really need all that..

Your distro choice is fairly wide but I've only tried a few so others may know better... I like Debian as a simple server distro - it installs to a command prompt by default and is renowned for being hard to use - but for easy of management its apt-get system shines above everything else I've tried though Gentoos emerge system is close it just isn't as mature.

Another one that may be tricky is Gentoo, this can either be compiled from source or just downloaded - its pretty new but has people raving over it, the install can be daunting but on the other hand.. if you follow it word for word you'll have a system that installed ok and works - and you'll also have at least a basic understanding of filesystem commands, starting and stopping services, installing software and editing files. Maybe something to consider if you don't want to feel totally lost when you get it booted.

If you decide you can't face going for a console only install and want to install X Window to use a GUI then Gentoo is an option here if you can face it - then install docs go into that as well. The other options are something like Mandrake, SuSE or the brand new Fedora (Red Hat's new consumer Linux). IMO all of these are much the same - none have the app management systems that Debian and Gentoo have to avoid you getting into the Linux equivelant of dll hell.. SuSE has a fairly neat GUI admin app and Mandrake is meant to have loads of hardware support..

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[JinxM]

I would want a GUI being a windows boy. I don't think I could cope with command line only just yet :)

What I'm after is something that's easy to install and won't have a problem with my hardware (standard stuff tbh). I just want a crack at linux to see that it really can work.

From what I've read, Mandrake seems to be the best version for n00bs like me so I think I'll give that a go. No doubt I'll be posting back for help soon :)

[Brain_Murders]

Go here: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO/ to see if your hardware is supported.

If you cant find what you are looking for, post here as one of us may have trodden the path before you and have some usefull information.

[Jackal]

From what I've read, Mandrake seems to be the best version for n00bs like me so I think I'll give that a go. No doubt I'll be posting back for help soon

I tried mandrake a few months back and I'm a complete Liunx n00b, didnt have any problems with installing it at all