new to linux

General Discussion
1

Hi guys and girls

I wanted to say hello and get a little advice I’m looking at moving over to Linux from Windows 7 because I’ve heard Linux has come a long way but I find the Linux world a huge learning curve I will still keep Windows 7 because I like my games and I’ve heard Linux is no where near to becoming a gaming OS. I’ve downloaded 4 different Linux’s unbuntu, mint, opensuse, and pclinuxos I want to try a few to see what I want can any think of any other Linux’s that is good for windows converts and yes the console is very scary to me I’ve fell in to the lazy easy OS life. I want to use Linux for my everyday needs and playing Minecraft( yes I’m a nerd lol ) and just use Windows for my hardcore games.

If it helps here’s my rig details

Intel Q6600 CPU socket 775
8Gb DDR3 RAM
Geforce gtx 480
1x 1Tb harddrive
1x 300gb harddrive
1x 250gb harddrive
Asus maximus extreme 2 Mobo
Supreme 2 fx sound card
Razor copperhead mouse
Steelseries Zboard keyboard

So I have a mix of new and old hardware

Thanks in advance
Chris

2

Welcome to the forum :slight_smile:

Personally I’d suggest Ubuntu and Mint (in that order), if for no other reason than you’ll find help easier to come by.

But if your system can boot from USB, there’s nothing stopping you from taking a load of distro’s for a “test drive” by loading them to a USB memory stick (LiveUSB)

see here:

I can’t see any issues with your hardware… well I’m unsure of the sound card, but there’s only one way to find out :wink:

When creating a LiveUSB, don’t forget to include persistence, or it will behave like a CDROM, ie. all changes will be lost after a reboot.

If you have any problems installing to LiveUSB, give us a shout and we’ll be happy to help.

3

Thank-you mark for the advice I will give it a go after I get off my holiday I have just got Linux format and it had a review of natty it looks impressive but I guess its each to there own I’m sure people love it and others hate it but can you really complain when its free lol

4

The new Unity interface in Natty takes a little getting used to if you’re used to GNOME 2.xx, but it’s worth it in the end… and if you’re coming from Windows, you’ve got a bit of a learning curve coming anyway so you’d probably be better off learning Unity or GNOME 3 (which is similar) anyway, as GNOME 2.xx is “end of life”.

I hated Unity with a passion at first, but it’s grown on me and I now prefer it (most of the time) :wink:

But at least with 11.04, if you really hate Unity, you get the choice to boot to the “classic” (GNOME 2.xx) desktop at the login screen.

Of course you can ;), how else would the developers know what people want (on the whole, project devs actively ask for constructive criticism)… that’s one of the strengths of Open Source… if enough people don’t like things, they get changed, either by the project devs or by the freely available source code getting forked into a parallel project.

It’s the proprietary world where you can’t complain… well you can, but they’re less likely to listen. :wink:

5

i guess you right about complaining about software. i have just got back from my holiday and i have loaded 2 Distros Ubuntu 11.04 and Kubuntu 11.04 i really like the KDE desktop i know you say to start on ubuntu or mint but how is Kubuntu for newbies

6

Kubuntu should be fine… nearly all ubuntu help will apply to Kubuntu too, unless (obviously) it’s related to the desktop.

Each to their own… I can’t stand the KDE4 desktop, but that’s mainly down to me first tryng it early after its release, when it was full of bugs… now I’m just too used to Gnome.

7

Try Virtual Box ( Downloads – Oracle VM VirtualBox )
This allows you to create a virtual machine within your Windows operating system, and then you can install an OS of your choice on it and boot it up within that virtual machine when ever you like, within windows. This will give you the full experience of installing Linux, allowing you to play around with the different interfaces and customise them to your heart’s content.

If you are new to Linux you need to be careful not to be too easily swayed by the opinionated users who shout the loudest on forums. User1 might shout that Natty is rubbish, but this could just his lack of ability to adapt or understand something new and is a limitation of their brain. Also, many users are stuck in the mentality that if a new version is released, they have to upgrade to it. Linux is about choice, not about forcing everyone to the latest edition. If an older version runs perfectly fine, and you don’t like the idea of switching to Unity, then the user shouldn’t upgrade. A big reason why I feel rolling releases are better.

8

Thanks guys for the advice I have installed ubuntu because kunbutu doesn’t want to let my sound card work and there’s no Linux drivers for it but I’m fully up and running and loving it I’m not a fan of the unity thing but the rest is great just a learning curve now. I like that all my Windows programs have a Linux version that’s some times better like ventrilo on windows I’m using mangler that works very well and still have my chats with my minecraft buddies
I have no major problems yet apart from getting sun java to install but I’m using java from the software centre for now but its not running minecraft 100%

How do u install a .rpm.bin file I’ve looked at lots of sites and im still blank I even installed alien but it wont convert error says unknown file

oh that reminds me the console is very good I like that u can drag and drop in it I really worried that it would be like Dos what a pain in the arse lol

Chris

9

You don’t… if you can help it :wink: … .rpm’s are for Redhat, Fedora, etc. … See if it’s available in your package managers first, if not, look for a .deb version…

sun-java6-jre is available in the main natty repository.

Easiest way to install and activate… open a terminal and enter:

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin sun-java6-fonts

Be Aware - At some point in the installation, you will be asked to accept a licence… use the Tab key to highlight the “OK”, then press the Enter key.

Once they have finished installing, and you are back at a prompt… enter:

sudo update-alternatives --config java

You will be presented with something like this

Selection Path Priority Status ------------------------------------------------------------ * 0 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre/bin/java 1061 auto mode 1 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre/bin/java 1061 manual mode 2 [b]/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/bin/java[/b] 63 manual mode

Press enter to keep the current choice(*), or type selection number:

In the above example, you would just press 2 then Enter

When back at a prompt, enter this again:

sudo update-alternatives --config java

and check the asterisk is now next to the line that contains java-6-sun

Then you can visit here:
http://www.java.com/en/download/testjava.jsp
to test it’s working and see the vendor and version.

10

Thanks mark that’s done the trick well I’m starting to take to ubuntu and unity I started to understand why its done like it is its a real shame that you can’t play real games on Linux with out using wine or another emu

It’s already took over my Windows usage and I think I’m border line a converter lol

11

It’s not that Linux can’t run games… it’s just that the major title developers tend to ignore it at the moment.

2 things spring to mind…

  1. The more people that use Linux, the more the game devs will have to take Linux into consideration.

  2. Game devs are not ignoring Andriod… Android is based on Linux.

What I’m getting at is most of the major game houses now have a team with Linux expertise, even if it’s only used for Android game development at the moment.

So if enough people start moving to Linux on their desktop PC’s, it should be quite easy for the devs to do Linux ports of games.

There are more commercial games coming out for Linux all the time, such as:

and

and

and
http://www.truecombatelite.com/ <— Still in alpha
etc.
and this trend seems to be accelerating.

There are also quite a few good quality free games about:

There are plenty of Linux games sites about too:

http://www.gamingonlinux.com/index.php

http://happypenguin.org/

http://icculus.org/lgfaq/gamelist.php

http://www.linuxgames.com/

http://www.lgdb.org/

http://www.gameolith.com/

etc.

The people at the GamingOnLinux Forum, will be more than happy to answer any Linux gaming questions you may have… recently they did an interview with someone from Desura (Steam “like” games portal/client), who are developing a Linux client… there are even rumours of a Linux Steam client.

So Linux gaming is “on the rise”, but how long till the major titles is anyone’s guess… but there’s hope :wink:

12

I would just like to play the old fashioned Galaxians or Goal! :frowning:

13

I don’t know what Goal is… but try criticalmass (Galaxian alike):

sudo apt-get install criticalmass

Which reminds me… I wonder if one of the Amiga emulators will run R-Type :slight_smile: … damn I used to love that game :o