There may be an easier way to get into Linux for you. The Linux distribution that has the most momentum right now is Ubuntu. This is because Mark Shuttleworth, a gentleman that made his money in the internet boom, started a company to take Debian Linux and refine it and support it. It's still free, but you can buy support if you need it. This support is mostly for business, but the Ubuntu forums are quite active and you can find answers for issues relatively easily. Ubuntu releases every six months (unlike Debian) and stays much more up to date without running the bleeding edge version. A lot of effort is put to making the install process simple. Also, you can boot the install cd and try it out without installing it. Go to:
http://www.ubuntu.com/ and check it out. You'll probably want to start by downloading the image of the install cd here: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download You'll need to burn this to a cd, then boot from that cd to check it out and/or install it. I would start with a spare pc. That would let you run it until you get used to it. There's a learning curve with these things just everything. :-) I would suggest at least a one gigahertz machine with 512 MB of memory. It's possible to get along with less of a machine, but it will be more painful. I've run free operating systems for many years and Ubuntu for the last few. I'm still running some Windows, but eventually I expect to be mostly Ubuntu. Steve Faith Gagne wrote: > > Mike, thank you, thank you, thank you for your wonderful discourse on > Linux. It is both encouraging and discouraging. I've been both > interested in and afraid of Linux for years. I try, but like so many > other computer users, I am definitely not a techie. > > Just yesterday I enlisted the help of my isp to install Thunderbird. We > ran into a snag that even he couldn't deal with. I emailed the error > messages to him and I am still waiting to hear from him. He told me it > would take him awhile to get back to me, which is okay with me. I am > sure we'll get there. I am patient. > > I have dozens and dozens and dozens of security updates and Windows XP > hot fixes lodged in my control panel and there are more waiting to be > installed. I realize that many of the existing installations may be > outdated but it is beyond me to clean them out. One of the latest > updates has to do with time zone changes: "8/2008 cumulative time zone > updates for windows operating systems". Many updates have pages and > pages of instructions and references to pages and pages more of reading > and instructions. > > Who on earth has the time or the expertise to do this? > > You are instructed to "learn the situations in which you should > download and run the time zone data update tool". Huh? > > I think there are probably millions of us who would jump at the chance > to go with Linux if only we had the ghost of a chance of understanding > it enough to get by with it. I'd love it. I am going to print out your > message and start a Linux folder. > > Thanks again Mike. Faith G. -- The Silver List is a moderated forum for discussing Colloidal Silver. Instructions for unsubscribing are posted at: http://silverlist.org To post, address your message to: [email protected] Address Off-Topic messages to: [email protected] The Silver List and Off Topic List archives are currently down... List maintainer: Mike Devour <[email protected]>
