when is it time to take the plunge?

[surrealchereal]

OK, I've been procrastinating for over a year now. I need a push. I want to instal LINUX on my computer. Which "flavor" do you think is the best for the challenged beginner? Do I need to hard drives or is a dual boot OK? Some tips to avoid too much downtime would be nice too... http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif
oh and best wishes on my new journey http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif
Thanks
Surreal

[pbharris]

i like redhat the best for newbies and mnay oldies. for debain based try libranet, debian is very sweet. opinions do very wildly

[t048]

I've found that Mandrake was the easiest to install. If you want to dual-boot with Windows, just install it first and then install Linux. If you already have Windows installed, defrag your disk before you resize the partition and install Linux or you may lose data.

[Chief]

Have to agree with both above. Have libranet 1.9.1 on one and Mandy 8 (standard edition) on a different box. Libranet is just a little more confusing to install than mandy 8 (which is almost like winders now), both distros detected all my cards (video, audio, lan) and set them up correctly. Neither is able to view my winders boxes yet. Mandy 8 has a easy install for samba although I am messing something up with it. My libranet box has my printer attached which leaves me without printing capabilities yet. Hope this info helps.

[Goldwingnut]

Mandrake.

Get it at www.linuxmall.com (http://www.linuxmall.com) for $2.95. Better than downloading it, since you get a CD you can use when the computer crashes and the Internet isn't available.

Get free software at www.rpmfind.net. (http://www.rpmfind.net.)

Mandrake is Red Hat. Try out the copy of Red Hat Linux Unleashed at www.informit.com (http://www.informit.com) for free. You will need this book or one almost as good.

Check out the blue line on this graph:
http://www.netcraft.com/survey/

And scroll halfway down the page to see why you want to go with Linux: Someone is getting paid to administer all those Apache servers on Linux.

[surrealchereal]

Thanks guys, in other words just do it!
One thing, I have an old IBM 4 gig hard drive, should I dig it up and slap it into use? Or just partition the one I have? (30 gig or 60 depending on the computer I end up with, one is going to my son. I'm thinking I'll keep the one I put the 60 gig in) http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[prttybean]

The Mandrake Deluxe Edition came with a partition Magic tool designed for a Windows/linux dual boot making it really easy to set up the partitions on the same drive. I used it and had no problems. Mandrake is a good flavor and so is Red Hat.