Should I Get Linux?

[dark heart]

macs are for media, useless for other things in my opinion. get a windows computer with "windows xp"
it's commonly used and efficient. don't get vista, because I've heard bad feedback on vista.
if you want you can get a computer with a dual hard drive, so you can use mac osx and windows xp.
then you can do media, and other things

[Cap'n 1time]

If your primary use for your computer is gaming, I'd still recommend windows, though a lot of games run very well via Cedega or Wine.

If you are wanting to do stuff such as school work, development, host web pages or ftp, graphic design with the GIMP, or just have a secure computer I highly recommend the ubuntu distro as it's very easy to configure and get what you want. The security is vastly superior to windows.

[ICE]

thanks for the advice guys. im now running ubuntu and loving it.

[AvengedSevenfold Fan]

I think you should get Kubuntu. it has all the power of ubuntu, without the $#@!ty look

[Bevvie]

thanks for the advice guys. im now running ubuntu and loving it.

Wow, that was quick... I guess it really is easier to set up than I thought.

Oh and Junixx - Phoenix Wright FTW!

[Cap'n 1time]

I think you should get Kubuntu. it has all the power of ubuntu, without the $#@!ty look

BAH! I'm just fine with gnome as it doesnt have the bloat KDE has. In fact, I'm just fine with iceWM as it doesnt have the bloat gnome has .

He can install the kde packages from inside ubuntu anyway by opening up a terminal and typing in

sudo apt-get install kde

Also, for some reason they dont put the g++ package in there repositories, but rather on the cd. once you installed ubuntu I recommend you pop the CD back in and type

sudo apt-get install g++

This way you can compile c++ stuff from source (which is pretty important if you are a developer, or just like compiling your software).

Also, if you havnt already you are going to want to get your video drivers. In 7.04 they made this very easy to do!

in gnome go to System > Administration > Restricted Drivers Manager.
If you get a request for some dependency simply open up the terminal and "sudo apt-get install" it.

If you have any questions feel free to pm me, but I HIGHLY recommend you check out ubuntu wiki as it is part of the reason why I like the distro. The documentation is very good and explained very well.

[ICE]

you're very helpful cap'n
thanks

[Junixx]

I think you should get Kubuntu. it has all the power of ubuntu, without the $#@!ty look

I think GNOME can look fine with some tweaks =]

[yaustar]

Switched completely from Windows to Ubuntu 7.10 about a month ago. Tried a couple of other Distros (Sabayon and Suse) but neither worked well with me or with the laptop. Whenever you switch OSs, you have to accept the fact that you will need to relearn some things that you already knew how in another OS.

To OP: download VMware Player and an Ubuntu image. Force yourself to run it for a day in fullscreen. without touching XP. By that point, you should have got a rough idea if a Linux based distro is for you.

At the moment I am sorely tempted to get a Mac and use parallels as my main PC.