which LINUX...??

[kool]

Hi friends,
i've PC running win7 beta which going to expire on 1st march. I want to install LINUX but i'm confused which one is good for me, I'm 3rd year engineering student (CS branch).
My PC configuration: ASUS mo, 2GB ram, 500GB hdd, Nvidia 512MB graphics, and i've netgear wi-fi USB dongle, so also tell me, how can i use my NETGEAR in any linux OS, my hostel is in wi-fi campus.

saurav

[TheHumanBot]

if your are new to linux try Ubuntu
and if not install backtrack from feb10 digit dvd.
there are lots of linux distros out there so it depends on your activities.

[ico]

Linux Mint. www.linuxmint.com

Based on Ubuntu and it runs out of the box.

[Faun]

^^+1 ..............................

[latino_ansari]

^^+1.............

[Anorion]

+1 for Linux Mint... try the KDE edition

[kool]

what about NETGEAR wi-fi..??? how to configure this hardware in LINUX..?

[mannuforall]

I suggest to go for Linux mint 8, is based on Ubuntu and better easy and stable than Ubuntu. Also media codecs are preinstalled in Mint.
You can also use all app for Ubuntu in your Mint. I think you can got it in digit dvd of jan.
I'm not sure about your wi-fi dongle, but it capable to handle most of hardware.
I can access my bluetooth net without any problem.
Also you can find and download softwares for it via inbuilt app manager.

[hellknight]

Yup.. Go for Linux Mint.. and once you get experience of about 6 months.. then jump to advance distros like Fedora, OpenSUSE etc..

[colocated]

I think Linux mint is the best option

[kool]

Now next question:
I've 4 partition. I've already installed win7 on C partition. Now tell me, can i install on this drive or on any other partition??? Should i uninstall win7 ?

[ico]

Boot through the CD, run the installer and it will take your the Partitioner at one point.

There, resize the parition which comes at the end and create three new partitions out of the unpartitioned space you get.

For Linux you need 3 partitions, / for the OS files, /home home partition for documents and swap for virtual memory. If you are just trying Linux mint out, 10GB for /, 10GB for /home and 2GB for swap are more than enough.

[Cool G5]

^2GB for SWAP is a mere waste of space. Even 1 GB is waste. Still I recommend keeping it to 1GB irrespective of the amount of RAM you have.

[Liverpool_fan]

Originally Posted by Cool G5

^2GB for SWAP is a mere waste of space. Even 1 GB is waste. Still I recommend keeping it to 1GB irrespective of the amount of RAM you have.

Nope. You cant hibernate if you have SWAP lesser than your RAM. I always recommend RAM + 256MB as the SWAP size.

[ico]

Originally Posted by Cool G5

^2GB for SWAP is a mere waste of space. Even 1 GB is waste. Still I recommend keeping it to 1GB irrespective of the amount of RAM you have.

During hibernation, the image of RAM is written over Swap. If you have 1GB of Swap and your system is under good amount of load (RAM usage over 1GB) and you want to "hibernate", then you'll have to free some RAM before hibernating.

And kool has a 500GB Hard disk. He has plenty of space.

[Rahim]

As people have suggested Mint, my preference would be SimplyMepis, a distro with stability and ease of use. Its not that Mint is bad or anything. DIstros like Mint, PCLoS, SimplyMepis, Mnadriva etc are geared towards new adoptors of the beast that is Linux

As for partition, the naming of partitions is different in Linux. SInce you have 4 partitions and each paritions would be labelled as
c: /dev/sda1
d: /dev/sda2
e: /dev/sda3
f: /dev/sda4
I am assuming you have 4 Primary Partitions otherwise 1st Logical parition begin with /dev/sda5 and so on.

Creating a /home parition is not neccessary (the idea of creating one is that you can share this /home parition with other Linux distros without loosing your data).

When you come with a parition stage during installation, just choose "Manual/Custom" option.
Considering your last partition as empty, create a 10 GB ext3 partition which should be mounted as "/" (root partittion where your system data is stored. Create another 2 GB as Swap, to be mounted as "linux-swap" for virtual memory.

[aashish.joshi]

you can take this quiz to decide what type of linux is best for you:

http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/

make a separate /home only if you plan to change distros regurlarly, if you plan on sticking to one distro, just make a / partition, and a swap if you want..

i personally don't use swap, as i seldom hibernate my system, and the amount of RAM i have is enough for all the compiz effects to be enabled while i'm working!!

cheers

[celldweller1591]

Ubuntu 8.10/9.04/9.10/10.04(beta) is a good choice but openSUSE 11.1/11.2 is also a good option.Both of them are user friendly and easy to install and manage and both are quite versatile and have huge community so there is no lack of support if you encounter any issues.