Hello, friends. I'm looking to move away from Window$$$ and have decided that when I assemble my next PC (very soon, I hope), I will be installing Linux instead (and maybe experiment with other free OSs later). Specifically, the Ubuntu distro due to the large amount of support and that I've already been using it comfortably alongside windows for while now (I'm using the lubuntu [sic] derivative this very moment :wavey. Since it will be my main OS going forward, I want to know how to actually use the thing, rather than having to keep depending on web searches to help me figure out command lines that I copy and paste but don't understand to accomplish every little thing. Anyway, can any of you among the multitudes of techies on this forum point me in the right direction? Can you recommend either a book or a free course online that does a good job of getting me from noob to intermediate? Yes, I know there are books and courses everywhere, but if you can save me the trouble of emptying the shelves of every library in the state in frustrating vain, I'd be very appreciative.
Good for you! My primary machine runs Mint (which is derived from Ubuntu), and my Chromebook has Xubuntu installed via Crouton. What madness is this?! Actually, in truth, Google is still my main source of just-in-time documentation. Even doing things that way you will in time learn how things work. Do any of these work for you?
Thanks. I have trouble reading e-books (somehow, I find them more eye-straining than webpages), but the Ubuntu manual should be a good basic reference and likely a good place to start in feeling my way around. Some of the beginner's books I can get from the library: Linux for Dummies Linux in a Nutshell Teach Yourself Linux in 24 Hours I'm leaning towards For Dummies, since I have had good experiences with their other books. There are a ton of other books at the library, too, but I'm not sure where to even begin trying to sift through them all.
There's a new version of Ubuntu every six months. It generally takes longer than that to write, publish, and distribute a printed book. So it's likely that any printed book that you get on Ubuntu will be out of date. For example, you mentioned "Linux for Dummies". The latest version of "Linux for Dummies" on sale at Amazon appears to be the 9th edition, which covers Ubuntu 9.04. That's literally years behind the latest Ubuntu releases. And there is no guarantee that your library will have the 9th edition of the book -- they might have an older edition, which would be even more out of date. So I would look for online documentation instead. Ubuntu 12.04 might be a good version to install for learning purposes. It is a "long-term support" (LTS) release, which became available in 2012 and which will continue to be supported until 2017. Since 12.04 has a 5-year support life, there should be plenty of good documentation for that version specifically. There are more recent versions of Ubuntu (12.10, 13.04, and 13.10), but they are short-term releases with a life expectancy of only 9 months, so the documentation may be more limited. Or wait for the next LTS release (14.04), which is due in April.
To consider an LTS release is a good suggestion. Also, recent versions of Ubuntu come with a desktop system called Unity which works differently from LXDE. Personally I can't stand it. But you can always stick with Lubuntu to avoid it.
Personally I think Unity is fine on 12.04 or later. I do think it is more Mac-like than Windows-like, so if you are coming from a Windows environment it may seem unfamiliar at first. But I would give it a try. If you don't like Unity, then Ubuntu (like Linux generally) is very customizable (for example, you could install Mint, which is more Windows-like). This is both a strength and a weakness. Some people like an operating system that can be tweaked exactly to their liking. On the other hand, other people find the lack of standardization to be confusing. Windows 7 is pretty much the same everywhere; Linux isn't.
If I may go on a slight tangent, I'd like to ask MC if he has found any good resources on assembling a PC for the first time. I am looking within the next 6-12 months to do the exact same thing as you are: build my own machine and install some variety of Ubuntu. I've tinkered on and off with a couple Linux distros and feel slightly more comfortable with that end of things, but hardware is a mystery. Any ideas on where to begin?
I don't know of any and will be looking (via our dear friend Mr.Google) for a guide that is geared toward linux compatibility. I'll share what I find. I can direct you to the sites tigerdirect.com and newegg.com, which are almost universally considered the best, least expensive places to buy parts. Their catalogs can help you find cpu/motherboard/power supply sets that are all compatible with one another. It's bad news if they aren't! Either the computer won't turn on, or your new equipment will go in the garbage the very day you unwrap them. I'm considering getting at least some parts used like the tower itself, hard drives and disc drives. I can't imagine it would make much of a difference if they were brand new or if they were used with care.
Good for you for wanting to be hands on, but I'm lazy, and tend to buy machines that I know are already compatible with Linux, or even that are from vendors like System76 where Linux comes installed on the machine. :smile:
I'm even lazier: I run Linux (and Windows) on Parallels virtual machines on a Mac. So I never even think about hardware or driver issues: the Parallels VM automatically installs a custom set of Linux or Windows drivers tailored to the hardware of your specific Mac model. The downsides to this approach are that (1) Macs and Parallels are relatively expensive, and (2) you get little to no flexibility in hardware choice. The upside is that it is insanely easy to install and run multiple operating systems on a Mac with Parallels. I have had OS X, Windows 7, Darwin Unix, Ubuntu Linux, and PC-BSD all running in multiple windows simultaneously (not for any practical reason, just for kicks).
