[bjanga]

Lately I have been contemplating a move to Linux OS.

Installation and desktop GUIs are a necessity. I know what I am doing, but only to a certain extent.

I have a dell laptop, with intel p4 and nvidia FX5200go.

I want to:
type and print **** (openoffice)
browse (firefox)
edit images (GIMP)
watch dvd movies as well as .avi .mpeg .mov .wmv files (?)
listen to .mp3 files, as well as rip audio files from CDs (?)
burn CDs (?)

I am worried about driver and hardware compatibility, especially with my CD-write drive, my touchpad, my (integrated) wireless card, being able to adjust my screen brightness and view battery life, etc. Are these things typically difficult to deal with?

Some brief Wikipaedia research points me to Ubuntu or similar, although some other Red Hat derivative looked interesting (I fail to remember the name offhand, it was not Fedora though as that seems too advanced).

Any recommendations / cryptic prophecies? I am aware that Toshi fried a DVI video connection somehow, eep! Because I have a laptop with (I assume) proprietary goodies, should I just stay away from linux?

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

[binary visions]

Toshi's problem was not all that common... Was a specific problem with that particular monitor.

A distro like Ubuntu is your best bet if you don't have a good background in Linux already. I've heard good things about SuSE but haven't used it personally.

Be aware that you will need to do configuration/downloading out of the box for even basic things like playing MP3 files. Fortunately, Ubuntu has an excellent Wiki and a very friendly and responsive forum. And downloading/installing packages (like the ones needed to play MP3 files) is ridiculously easy through the package manager.

Important: READ before you post questions in the Ubuntu forum (or ANY linux forum). If you post a question that is covered in the Wiki or easily searchable, you will get a rude response and it may affect your ability to get answers in the future. It's not nice, but it's the way the open source community works. "RTFM" is probably the most common response to newbies on any open source board.

CD drive and touch pad shouldn't be problems, you may need to do some looking for the screen adjustments and battery life meter. I had to do some manual editing of config files to get full support for my NVIDIA card. Again, it's not hard, but you'll need some patience and willingness to work through the issues that you will encounter.

 

[Kihaji]

Any particular reason as to why you want to move to a Linux distro?

 

[skatetokil]

windows eats babies?

 

[NORTON]

I'd been trying for a while to get more into Linux, I installed half a dozen distros and given up before I tried Ubuntu. For me it was the best and easiest way to learn Linux, here's why-

-you can make a Live CD and run the whole OS from a CDR, to try it out without altering your PC at all. Good to check for hardware problems.

-hands down best noob support. Good wiki and excellent forums, so far I haven't even needed to post anything as all my questions are already answered.

-Synaptic package manager means you can install things easily without messing around with command line. You can avoid command line entirely if you want.

-a utility called Automatix (get it with Synaptic), you can use to install just about every mp3 player, codec, utility, driver, etc you need for a full-featured system in just a few clicks instead of hunting through Synaptic or apt-get.

After a few months of using Ubuntu, I feel more or less at home in any distro and Linux as a whole. Enough so that my home server runs Ubuntu permanently. It plays, rips, and burns DVD/CDs, plays Linux and Windows games, every audio filetype except DRMed files, basically everything my Windows box can do. With a program called WINE, you can run many Windows apps perfectly. I'm still surprised at how much it can do. It can take some coaxing and a kot of reading but IMHO it's worth it.

While I am not a pro at all, it's the best Linux distro I have tried, especially for beginners, and I recommend it to anybody.