After you've installed Linux...

[Techie2000]

Well after you've chosen (http://www.distrowatch.com),burnt your Linux ISOs (http://www.linuxiso.org) and got it installed you may start to wonder what do I do now?

The first thing many people like to do is get their hardware working well. Linux seems to be happiest with NVIDIA graphics cards. You can get the official Linux NVIDIA drivers off of NVIDIA's website (http://www.nvidia.com). Many people also tend to struggle to get their printer working. http://www.linuxprinting.org/ is an excellent resource for getting your printer working. Interested in some basic tutorials? http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ is your place to be. Ready to tackle the kernel for the first time? http://www.kernelnewbie.org/ has lots of information that will help you. For most other problems, usually the distro website will have some kind of support database or forums for you to go to. Next Google (http://www.google.com/linux) is a good resource, through both its regular search, and its Google Groups search. Lots of documentation can be found at The Linux Documentation Project (http://www.tldp.org), and finally IRC (irc://irc.freenode.net) is a great resource to get help, and usually people can help you faster on IRC than through other forms of communication. I'll also do my best to help here for the people who decide they want to give it a try...

[ethics]

Excellent guide, Techie!

Thanks!

[ditch]

Thanks Techie. I am still contemplating Mandrake 9 after you advised re the disc partioning software. Your post is a helpful one.

[Pyrion]

Oh, and if you ever find yourself wanting to go back to Windows, and you have Linux start through LILO, you're going to have to do fdisk /mbr to keep LILO from interfering with Windows' startup after you've dumped Linux.

I learned that the hard way after I got sick of not being able to do a whole lot of anything productive with Mandrake.

[Techie2000]

GRUB>LILO :D

[fritzmp]

Originally posted by PhyreFox
Oh, and if you ever find yourself wanting to go back to Windows, and you have Linux start through LILO, you're going to have to do fdisk /mbr to keep LILO from interfering with Windows' startup after you've dumped Linux.

I learned that the hard way after I got sick of not being able to do a whole lot of anything productive with Mandrake.

Linux is like a Hot Rod and you do have to tinker with it. Unlike other OS's, the hood is not welded shut. It will not hold your hand. When you do things as root you can screw it up. Anyone that is security minded will appreciate the division form user to root as not to be infested with viruses and worms. Are you sure you really want to do that, is not a common pop-up warning in Linux. It assumes you have read the README's and man (manual) pages.

If you don't like reading stick with Windows, or better yet get a Mac.

[ditch]

Originally posted by PhyreFox
Oh, and if you ever find yourself wanting to go back to Windows, and you have Linux start through LILO, you're going to have to do fdisk /mbr to keep LILO from interfering with Windows' startup after you've dumped Linux.

I learned that the hard way after I got sick of not being able to do a whole lot of anything productive with Mandrake.

So Mandrake not a good idea by the sound of that. I was thinking Partition Magic to do the dividing of the hard drive and then Mandrake 9.

[Aria]

I use Mandrake 8.0 and like it. I ended up putting it on a separate drive though because I couldn't get it and Win2k to coexist happily on one drive.

[fritzmp]

Originally posted by ditch
So Mandrake not a good idea by the sound of that. I was thinking Partition Magic to do the dividing of the hard drive and then Mandrake 9.


Chose "Partition Manually" during the install and use DiskDrake to resize and repartition the drive. Be carfull. Then for the remainder of the drive chose to have Mandrake figure the best install for a first time until you learn how the file structure is utilized.

[Techie2000]

Yeah what you can do is have Partition Magic partition the drive, and then have Mandrake format it for the install. As far as getting rid of it, its not that bad if you need to...

[ditch]

Thanks all. This is going to be an interesting experience.