Help me Linux!

Aumni

Hi guys! I've been using Cygwin at work for a while now to psyche myself up for the transition. Basically I want to setup a partition with Linux to just putz around in. This is my first time setting up a machine to dual boot as well so any tips/programs for partitioning would also be welcome.

For Linux I was looking to try out Arch Linux, mainly because a coworker recommended it for learning since it doesn't really hold your hand.

So yes, any tips/advice/words of wisdom will be appreciated!

Thank you!

Zxerol

Bookmark Arch's wiki, which is not only extensive for Arch itself, but helpful as a general guide for Linux-land applications regardless of your distribution. The Beginner's Guide is must read (it seems to be much longer than the last time I looked at it, but you should go through a few times regardless to understand what's-up). Arch is basically a Lego form of Linux: you pick out what you like and build your own system instead of having a set of things pre-packaged, which makes it very flexible and satisfaction that the system is built exactly as your own, but it takes some elbow grease and time.

You may want to try to setup a virtual machine and practice from there first instead of using a live machine, especially if you don't have backup handy (or at least something to quickly lookup the Internet, because Arch starts up with a command-line, pretty much nothing else loaded, and that's about. Also saves you from multibooting headaches since editing GRUB totally isn't fun.

One thing about setting up pacman: when you do pacman-key --init, it will look like your computer locks up or is doing nothing. It's not telling you, but it's actually gathering entropy for key generation. Switch out to other terminals (alt-f2,3,4), list directories, ping stuff, and otherwise generate some IO and activity or else it'll take forever.

And uh... I dunno, that's all I can think of right now. The hardest part about Arch is just getting the system ready and running, but once you get to the part where pacman is good, the rest of it is basically waiting while it downloads your packages and installs them, and taking a glance at the wiki for notes on setting it up.

Puddlesworth

Arch is great, but as a first distro it might end up a bit like drinking from a fire hose. If that's your goal, then more power too you, but there's no shame in starting with something like ubuntu or linux mint that are easier to setup.

I second the suggestion of trying the setup in a VM first. I'd also try a live image (of whatever distro) to see how well your hardware will work out of the box (On various computer's I've had graphics card, wireless adapter, and trackpad issues).

BlazeFire

I started with Ubuntu. Sure, it holds your hand a bit, but you can always do things "the hard way" as you get more comfortable. Then maybe if you like it enough you can go to something like Arch.

Aumni

Ok thanks guys! I will definitely setup my first install on a VM. And maybe play around with Ubuntu or another easy distro before diving in the deep end. Thanks for the advice!

grouch993

Are you going to work on learning about unix/linux? Any specific projects?

Configuring/optimizing, building and installing a new kernel can be a fun project. Finding package dependencies and getting those installed and running can also be an adventure. A lot of reading is involved in most of these, so a little patience and search knowledge works really well.

L Ron Howard

I would third Ubuntu, because of the hand-holding. It comes with your choice of GUI so that you're not entirely stuck in console-land. And Ubuntu comes with enough generic drivers that it should work pretty much once you install it.
You can still use the console and use the commands. It also sort of protects itself from you. Other distros expect you to know what you're doing. Since this is your first time, I would not recommend those, as you can easily get into a lot of trouble.
Once you've 'man'd a ton, you can look at using any other distro. Then possibly compiling the distro yourself. And then editing the distro! Linux is crazy and awesome like that.
If you start feeling adventurous, you can change it so that you cease to load into the GUI at boot, and use the console entirely.

bowen

Yeah Ubuntu is the better choice. Cygwin isn't anything but a shell anyways. If you're going to do the full dip, get something easy.

I still use Ubuntu even for full commercial deployments because apt updates are pretty on top of it and it beats compiling from source. If I need to tune something usually someone else has already done it and saves me the trouble.

Aumni

Well work has been getting me involved with a little bit of everything - we're currently working on integrating VoIP and the book I'm reading mentions Asterix as a way of setting up a little VoIP environment. But I'd also like the general experience. Being able to use regular expressions to sort through the content of files is mega super helpful.

Bowen - Right, I was using Cygwin to get adjusted.
Thanks for the feedback guys.

For setting up a VM, and partitioning a drive, what kind of software would you guys recommend? Free versions definitely welcomed.

I always feel like a sham for saying I'm a computer guy when I've never done this stuff outside of work.

krush

BlazeFire wrote: »

I started with Ubuntu. Sure, it holds your hand a bit, but you can always do things "the hard way" as you get more comfortable. Then maybe if you like it enough you can go to something like Arch.

this was the same criticism leveled at Mandrake/Mandriva years ago. It's still my favorite distro to putz around in, but CentOS rules my installs and VMs.

krush

Aumni wrote: »

Well work has been getting me involved with a little bit of everything - we're currently working on integrating VoIP and the book I'm reading mentions Asterix as a way of setting up a little VoIP environment. But I'd also like the general experience. Being able to use regular expressions to sort through the content of files is mega super helpful.

Bowen - Right, I was using Cygwin to get adjusted.
Thanks for the feedback guys.

For setting up a VM, and partitioning a drive, what kind of software would you guys recommend? Free versions definitely welcomed.

I always feel like a sham for saying I'm a computer guy when I've never done this stuff outside of work.

Virtualbox is free and works really well. It's what I use for all of my VM's on my Win7 laptop and desktop.

bowen

Yeah Virtualbox.

No need to partition anything, it creates a file on your hard drive for the VM's hard drive. Let whatever distro you use use the LVM guided partitioning once you get in (way better that way honestly -- since you're not a linux expert yet).

Aumni

Thanks again guys