Linux, anyone?

[Master Blackhawke]

  I actually have a techie question; as part of my 'reward' for reaching a couple of my fitness goals I purchased (via eBay auction) a new-to-me Acer laptop. She isn't the newest, but she isn't the oldest either. Nice machine, some decent upgrades and 4GB memory with room to expand. I'm thinking of loading up Linux on her. Any of you have experience with it? Thoughts? Impressions? Which Linux should I try working with first?

 

 

 

 

[eltoasted]

try using Linux Debian, its awesome!

it will help u transition smoother from either windows/mac to linux.

 

also, check these sites if u want to learn more about linux:

 

start here http://linuxsurvival.com/wp/?page_id=5&id=0

 

then go here: https://www.debian.org/

 

then finally, check this out: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

[Lou186000]

  I actually have a techie question; as part of my 'reward' for reaching a couple of my fitness goals I purchased (via eBay auction) a new-to-me Acer laptop. She isn't the newest, but she isn't the oldest either. Nice machine, some decent upgrades and 4GB memory with room to expand. I'm thinking of loading up Linux on her. Any of you have experience with it? Thoughts? Impressions? Which Linux should I try working with first?

 

I'm a loooong time Linux user, a bit frightening to think how long I've been installing and using that system. Anyway, elftoasted is wise to suggest Debian, a very solid distro. Many recommend Ubuntu for new users. Ubuntu is based on Debian. When I need a linux desktop (vs a linux server that doesn't use a gui) I've been installing Linux Mint (which is based on Ubuntu). It has all the stuff one needs to get going straight away, and I can just load it and start doing what I need (which is usually a web test of some sort). While potentially overwhelming, you might be interested in visiting distrowatch which provides links to pretty much every viable Linux distribution that exists.

 

Good luck and have fun with the new laptop and the new OS!

[Master Blackhawke]

Linux Mint was one of the ones that came highly recommended... I'll look into it tonight. Thank-you for the input!

[jfreaksho]

Before you install it, maybe take some time to play around with a few different distros in a Virtual Machine or from a live usb.  I used Ubuntu all last semester in a VM and liked it, but then this summer I started playing with Kali and liked it even more.  That quickly became my distro of choice.

 

Mint was okay, but felt very much like Windows, even though everything just works.

 

My goal is to have Ubuntu or Debian and a Kali system both pointing to the same Documents and Downloads folders, so I can swap back and forth without having to move files around all the time, which is my biggest problem right now.  I'd like to get completely off Windows if I can, but don't have the money for a new Mac.

[Estrix]

I've used a few Linux distros over the years including Arch-Linux and currently working through Linux from Scratch (shamless nerd bragging lol).

 

Ubuntu is the normal suggestion for first timers. There's a large active community, loads of documentation and packages to get Ubuntu to do almost everything you need. Mint is another good option, as is Suse in my opinion.

 

I'm not sure about Kali, although I liked it. It used to be advertised as "hardened" Linux. It's really a suite for security and penetration testing.

 

But I agree with Jfreaksho, try out a few distros on VM or liveboot and go with one you like...and try not to fall down the Linux rabbit hole

[jfreaksho]

 

I'm not sure about Kali, although I liked it. It used to be advertised as "hardened" Linux. It's really a suite for security and penetration testing.

It's actually not a good distro for daily use, nor is it hardened.  It's for security and pen testing, yes, but it has all kinds of tools that need to run as root- the live USB distro just runs as root, so it's pretty easy to screw things up, and if anything bad happens, it happens as root.  It sounds ridiculous, but I really like the way the dock is set up, and I like the default colors.  I'm also studying cybersecurity, so I have to be comfortable or at least familiar with many of those tools.  I'm leaning towards Ubuntu for daily use, with a Kali install for schoolwork that needs it.

[Luds]

Did the same some time back and bought an older Laptop and checked into versions built with older hardware and ease of use in mind and installed Xubuntu --> http://xubuntu.org/

Works very well and comes bundled with most things you need or an easy way to get what you're missing.

 

Side note:

Before deciding have a quick check in Google re the exact model of your Laptop and the distro you want to try, just to be sure there are no (widely known) issues like missing drivers for a component or such.

 

Unless of course you like fiddling around a bit; best way to learn and there is SO much reference materials on the net and the system that trying to fix something turns into something similar to an 80s text adventure.

(i.e. you realize that you spent a whole evening just reading background info and following up on tangents and don't really mind, and you whoop and/or swear from time to time ;-) )