Linux Distros

[Kruziik_Kel]

I've been hoping to give Linux a try for quite some time now, though my very poor knowledge of command line has put me off,

However I have decided to take the plundge and load a Linux distro onto an old HDD while continuing to use windows as my main OS main issues is choosing the distro.

Ideally I want an easier to use one until I develop my command line knowledge so I had intialy decided on Mint is this the best option? are there others that would suit me better?

[EChondo]

Personally, I would just switch out drives and not do a dual boot with Windows and Linux.

The easier distros are Linux Mint and Ubuntu, so you did choose the right one for a starter. Just word of advice, don't get stressed about it, if you come into a problem, just Google it! Linux isn't all that scary(except when you use one of the more harder distros :P) so just have fun with it.

Again, keep them on separate drives and don't have the drives plugged in at the same time so Windows and Linux don't fight each other when booting up. If you want to get rid of Linux on the second hard drive, you can boot into Windows with your 1st hard drive and and then connect the second drive and use this: http://mt-naka.com/hotswap/index_enu.htm

HotSwap will scan for any and all hardware changes so if you plug in a drive while Windows is running, Windows will not detect that drive until you restart the system, but if you use this program you can just tell it to scan for changes by force and should be able to format the drive and do whatever. HotSwap appears in the bottom right by the clock, just right click it to scan for hardware changes.

Best of luck!

[azeotrope]

If you really want to learn linux, then you need to learn by doing. "user friendly" distros are not going to teach you much and will steer you away from using the shell as much as they can, that is one of their goals. They want to make sure that anyone can use their system. By far the fastest and most efficient way of learning is to set up an install like gentoo, arch or debian netinst from scratch. Yes, there is a significant learning curve and yes you need to read a lot if you don't know much, but if you take some time it will pay off in spades later on. I recommend any windows "power user" that is considering switching to linux to read this. Don't let it put you off, It's just meant to give you an idea of what you're getting into.

If you take this time, youll come to learn that user friendly is a bad thing and most interfaces with a learning curve (eg the shell, vi) will allow you to be much more productive than a GUI interface will. Ask any linux sysadmin that spends a large amount of time using the shell and they will tell you how much faster and more efficient it is compared to any GUI tool, given that you learn to use it properly.

keep them on separate drives and don't have the drives plugged in at the same time so Windows and Linux don't fight each other

If you want to run multiple OSes, setting up a bootloader is far more convenient than using seperate drives. It's what most people do and there is no risk of windows and linux "fighting".

[tito]

I think that your should start using Ubuntu or Mint, learn how to do all of your tasks, get confident, learn how to use the shell, learn some scripting, basically learn to do every single task you are now doing on windows, but on Linux. After that I think you should be more curious about it, so thats the moment to get Gentoo or Arch, in my opinion if you start with any of them you will definitivly have a bad time, you will have to have some basic linux knowledge, a lot of free time, and reading a lot hahaha.

You can easily dual boot between Linux and Windows, actually I have Ubuntu and Win7 dual booting from a single drive, but if you use two separate drives it will be much easier, just let the HDD with Linux to boot, it will recognise Windows and let you boot any OS you have. Then if for some reason you have to remove that drive, your current Win installation will remain working like nothing ever happened.

[Mauri]

Or linux doritos... you had me fooled with the title

[s0nrise]

Debian =D