Switching to... Linux!

[2_of_8]

Hey guys and gals,

I'm thinking of switching to Linux for my next comp install. I, however, have no experience with it. I'm a pretty tech-y person, but none of that knowledge is of Linux. So, this is why I've come to you people.

Here are the things I do on my computer now:
- essays/graphs/etc (OpenOffice is fine)
- music, lots of it - 100 gigs (WinAmp, and I'm not too keen on switching - is there a very similar alternative?)
- GTalk, MSN (Trillian, Jabber? Don't know. I only use these 2 networks, nothing else)
- photo editing (currently using Ulead PhotoImpact, but don't mind using anything else)
- BitTorrent (I love uTorrent, but apparently it's windows-only, so I'm looking for a good alternative)

That's pretty much all I need. So, guys, help me pick a distro, and tell me if I should go ahead with this or not. Thank yous

[Isamil]

Music- I use Winamp myself so I don't have any firsthand experience with this, but http://www.xmms.org/about.php is modeled after Winamp.  It looks kind of old though.

IM-GAIM http://gaim.sourceforge.net/downloads.php seems to be the standard.  I use it whenever I need an IM program, which is almost never.

Photo editing- GIMP http://gimp.org/ Good program

BT-Don't know, plenty out there though.

Distro-I've always wanted to install Gentoo(never got around to it).  It has a good manual and a new GUI installer, but it's still kind of complicated to use.  

I've heard good things about Slackware.  Still not amazingly user-friendly.

Ubuntu is easy to install/use.  


I've never seriously used Linux before(how will I run WoW?!(of course, I've half-quit the game)), but it should be fine for the things you listed.  I might switch sometime if I can find out how to run Steam.  Try Gentoo and see if you like it.

[rad4Christ]

Ubuntu, plain and simple. It's magical :p

[devicenull]

I prefer debian, but that's just me..  I'll be moving over to linux when I get a new HD (It's too annoying to repartition NTFS stuff, and I think I'll still need windows)

Anyway, XMMS is your best bet for music.  GAIM is pretty good for IM stuff.. although I haven't actually used it in awhile.  I can't really help with photo editing.. I suck horribly at it, so I stopped trying.

[lolfighter]

Gentoo will get you labeled as a ricer I hear.

[That Annoying Kid]

knopix FTW

[2_of_8]

Oy. Did the install today (Ubuntu), and.. get hit in the face with a brick.

It doesn't support NTFS. I'm reading lots and lots of manuals as to how I can do it - drivers, etc. But, I can't figure any of it out.

Can someone give me a (very detailed) guide as to how I can access files on my other partition(s), with NTFS? I really need this.

[Black Mage]

easy way: give up. use windows.
hard way: spend several hours working on enabling ntfs support to find out that you a) can only mount read-only or b) can't modify more than ten files before you risk corrupting the partition. give up. use windows.
cheat: use partition magic to convert ntfs to something that's not ntfs. pray that it doesn't make the partition explode. win.

the 'easiest' way to have all your data accessable would probably be:
shrink ntfs partition to make room for a [favourire *nix filesystem] partition, mount as read only, copy. do whatever with the ntfs partition (formatting comes to mind)

tl;dr: ntfs support under *nix blows.

[2_of_8]

Oy. I really didn't want to hear that.

Why did Lunix decide not to support NTFS? If it's such a dominant filesystem for Windows, why not just base Linux on it?

[Isamil]

From what I understand, Microsoft never released any specifications on how NTFS worked, making it rather difficult to base their OS on it.  The linux-ntfs guys clarify that a little with

3.8 How was the Linux NTFS Driver written?

Microsoft haven’t released any documention about the internals of NTFS, so we had to reverse engineer the filesystem from scratch. The method was roughly:

   1.
      Look at the volume with a hex editor
   2.
      Perform some operation, e.g. create a file
   3.
      Use the hex editor to look for changes
   4.
      Classify and document the changes
   5.
      Repeat steps 1-4 forever

If this sounds like a lot of work, then you probably understand how hard the task has been. We now understand pretty much everything about NTFS and we have documented it for the benefit of others: http://www.linux-ntfs.org/content/view/103/42

Actually writing the driver was far simpler than gathering the information.

[2_of_8]

****ing Microsoft :angry:


Would it be possible to, say, burn all my files to DVDs (like, 20 of them :mellow:), and then re-format to ex3 (or whichever format Lunix likes), and then put the files back?

[devicenull]

You could try http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.p...4&forum_id=2697 but it beta software...

[2_of_8]

Oy. "Please make a backup of your NTFS volume..."

Yes, because I have ~100 GB just lying around!

Grr. This pisses me off.. I don't want to go back to windows. I love everything about Linux - except this NTFS thing. I wouldn't want to switch because of just one thing.

[Black Mage]

****ing Microsoft :angry:


Would it be possible to, say, burn all my files to DVDs (like, 20 of them :mellow:), and then re-format to ex3 (or whichever format Lunix likes), and then put the files back?

[snapback]56095[/snapback]

just don't get any of them scratched

[That Annoying Kid]

lunix is fun and cool etc etc

but it's a pain

[2_of_8]

****ing Microsoft :angry:


Would it be possible to, say, burn all my files to DVDs (like, 20 of them :mellow:), and then re-format to ex3 (or whichever format Lunix likes), and then put the files back?

[snapback]56095[/snapback]

just don't get any of them scratched

[snapback]56098[/snapback]

Would it work, however?

[Dirty Harry Potter]

wouldn't a super easy, but more expensive way be to get a new HDD :X?

[2_of_8]

Well, what do you know. The helpful peoples at ubuntuforums.org helped me out, and now I can access the hard drives. Now I just need an mp3 codec, and my mission will be complete.

I can't wait