On Jun 16, 1:50*pm, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:
Invisible Man wrote:
I have a laptop with no Windows license (apart from a PC with Windows 7
64 bit and a PC with XP SP3).

Thought I might try Linux. Is Ubuntu the easiest and most stable to
start with?

Bit less stable than say Debian Stable.

Whiuch distro you use is *almost* irrelevant.



Any advice on pitfalls etc.

Just try and see. Use the OS you have to download and burn a lot of
distros, and simply install away.

The pitfalls are not distro specific, and are generally hardware
related. Some support for some hardware is patchy, tricky, or nonexistent..

The distro represents a bunch of peoples favorite ways of selecting
collating and distributing what amounts to standard source packages
across nearly all platforms. EWhat they do is ensure that that code is
all mutually compatible, and precompiled, that's all.

One issue thats a bit of a current bugbear, is 64 bit flash plug-ins.
Simply not available for Linux in the new incarnation, and somewhat
flawed in the old.

Laptop has a 30 day install of XP on the c drive. Do I use another
partition for the linux software and the third for other files?

If its only 30 days, wipe it and start again.

I wouldn't bother partitioning - just back everything up on a USB stick
till you know what your final configuration will be.

Assuming you are committed to ending up with Linux.

TIA for any replies. I have been using MS Windows PCs since 3.1 and
anticipate a steep learning curve.

Its not too bad. Mostly stuff just works. It will be the odd case when
it doesn't that will floor you.

A stand alone hard drive that you can use on any platform will cost 40
to 50 quid brand new.

It doesn't take much input to install even Ubuntu from a disc. It can
take most of the weekend to install XP and you need 8 GB if you are
updating an original distro circa 2001.

And that's without office and etc.

So hang on to your Microsoft as it will be something your children or
grandchildren will not understand. Not that just showing them an old
fashioned OS will help them understand the disenfanchisement of a mass
market monopoly.

Smiths are offering a £5 voucher this week for use next week on any
purchases over 12 quid. They are selling a magazine style Linux
introduction booklet complete with 5 distinct OSs for about £15.

So next week you can get one for £10, if you go and buy a newspaper or
magazine there this week.

They also have copies of an older intro booklet with Ubuntiu 9 on it.
I wasn't very taken with that. It's more or less the same adive you'd
use for M$ as any other OS and just tells you the names of different
programmes, IIRC.

Another alternative is a Linux magazine that has half a dozen versions
of the Ubuntu kernel as its DVD.

For the life of me I can't understand why they just don't up their
prices and offer USBs instead of DVDs.

They are absolutely ideal for a Laptop as you can use a variety of
live versions on it and of course keep your favourites and anything
you downloaded on either the Laptop and/or the USB.

The small distros available these days will allow the battery to run a
lot longer than with a standard HDD install.

The other thing with a live distro is that you are more or less
invisible with them.