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Recently I have seen a lot of people packing Linux in after only a few weeks. The Linux Format forums have been rife with it. I think it is such a shame that people do not seem to be sticking it out, and I thought I would document my experiences with Linux to show that the learning curve does get easier. I have been running linux since 1999 at first it was on and off, I quite regularly wiped it off and then put it back on a few days later. I remember making the decision to switch over to Linux only, however I left Windows on there for a while and eventually found myself booting back into that. Not so much because of any difficulties I had had with Linux more because I wanted to play games, or use MSN. It took quite a while for me to get confident at installing programs from source, however I gradually picked it up. The more I looked the more replacements I found for the programs I used on Windows, K3B for Nero, Rosegarden and Muse for Sonar and so on. The Main problem I remember encountering was hardware problems. My brand new webcam would not run on Linux as far as I could tell, it certainly required more than plugging it in and having it automatically detected. After some poking around on the net I managed to find a project that worked with the chipset I believed the camera used. Having discovered this the camera was soon detected, but then I discovered the compressed stream used a proprietary method so I then had to try and switch to the uncompressed stream. More on that in the Documentation page. After about a year or so of fiddling around with Linux I made the decision to remove my Windows partition, and did so. Whilst at sixth form I did have Windows on my computer briefly in order to do coursework but my main OS was still Mandrake. Now 7 years down the line I no longer have Windows on any of my computers, I do not feel the need to install it and there are very few problems that I cannot resolve myself. A large part of my learning experience was installing Gentoo about a year ago. That was back when Stage One installs were default, and way before the installer was made. However Gentoo is not for the faint of heart, and I would not recommend someone who has not use Linux before starts on Gentoo. Having said that I have not tried the version with the installer so it may be a lot easier than it used to be. For anyone new to Linux I would say this, do not give up, things may seem hard but you soon pick them up. Remember Linux is not a replacement for Windows it is an alternative, don't expect it to work in the same way as Windows or you will be dissapointed. The learning curve on Linux is quite steep, however things are not as hard as they seem. It is similar to learning a new language, you need to learn a new syntax. Shifty_ben 22:41 23/05/2006 |
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