Recently received an older computer from a friend who no longer used it due to problems.. i've been interested in trying linux for sometime but never wanted to commit.. Well i've been looking into different ones.. i seem to be leaning towards ubuntu.. But as i said.. new to the world of linux.. Any recommendations?

New on Linux... huumm, sounds creepy..

1st: Ubuntu is great, mainly about all updates are eazily done.. apt-get update ... than apt-get upgrade ... you will always be "ok"...

2nd: Ubuntu come with some newby gaes, after that you will find Doom 2 as great add on..

After that, you will be really doomed, because needs to go out and earch for open gl games, there´s a lot, but you need to search.

I always used lunux as development station, no hardcore gamming.. so.. if you wanna go to hardcore gamming, try a dualboot with xp... :)

I was thinking of doing a dual boot with xp buuut i dont know if i want to keep it yet..

I dont plan on playing many pc games mainly because it doesnt seem like a very powerful computer..


its a celeron 2.53GHz CPU.. bout 480 mb ram..

i was thinkinh of upgraded the ram..

the cpu i havent decided yet as i dont know how much one thats compatible with my MB would cost..


do you believe karmic Kuala would run with much problems on this as is?

I recently installed Ubuntu for my dad, on an old laptop (his eyesight doesn't go well with new laptops with their resolutions, and LCD screens mostly look awful when not on native). It's a 1.6GHz P4, memory was upgraded to a gig though (256 was awful).

He had never used Linux before, and has been rather dismissive in the past, but he's liking it a lot now. He has called me a couple of times to go set up stuff, mostly initially for software recommendation, but overall he's finding his own way around the system.

Ubuntu runs just fine on the system, though I obviously left out stuff like compiz for desktop eyecandy, the laptop can't handle that.

It's fairly user friendly on the whole, since that computer isn't going to be your main, I don't see much of a reason to go with a XP dual boot. But if you do, install XP first.

Afraid I can't give much of an opinion on different distros, I started with Debian and as such Ubuntu was a breeze and likeable from the start, being based on Debian. I used some SUSE at college in Germany (I think that's the popular system there, or at least was), but liked Debian better at that time.

Ah compiz.. it does seem like a rather interesting program..

i just hope that it'll run smoothly but if not its fine.. i was planning on rebuilding this computer anyway..


before i start though.. Since i won't be doing a dual boot it should give me the option to format the drive right?


i was going to format it anyways seeing as how it wasn't mine to start with and has a cock load of useless files..

Yes, the install gives you the options to
- squeeze whatever is on the disk and make a partition to install on from the rest
- wipe whole disk and install there (probably going to have a choice if there is more than one disk)
- do a manual formatting (then you can pick partition sizes for system, /home and swap, and (although I haven't been through that option lately) should give you choice between ext2, ext3 and maybe ReiserFS file systems).

Unless you have something specific in mind you can just go with the wipe everything and install. Although when I first started fiddling with Linux I was fond of making a separate partition for the /home directory - since I messed up stuff badly enough a couple of times to just need to reinstall (and having personal files on another partition was a plus). That was on a main PC though, plus there wasn't so much help readily available on the net, and the whole Linux thing wasn't as user-friendly back then.

Ubuntu is a great disto, but is not very light weight. Either turn off the eye candy or go with a less demanding distro. Thats not to say it won't run well enough, but it won't be significantly faster than say Vista or Win7 sans Aero. Ubuntu is also a bit of a ram hog in its default config, with only 400mb to spare that could cause some major slowdown.

Linux? Is that an OS?

Yeah i am, and you don't have to have high end computers to run compiz, as long as you can run flash games on your current computer you are fine with Compiz (it takes the same if not less RAM)

and btw for Starters (and probably my favorite) you should go with Ubuntu. there is also "Linux Mint" which is REAALLLLLYYY lightweight that you can even have it on your Cell phone (its THAT light weight) and works fine.

Kubuntu is a great Ubuntu based lightweight distro. Fast as a mofo too. 

As with any first time Linux user I suggest you download at least 3 different live-cds from different distros and see what you prefer. I'm mostly a Debian and Ubuntu guy but Fedora and many others are quite viable as well.