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SUSE is now out of the picture. I wanted to know a little more about what is underneath the hood, so I installed Gentoo all over the place. I haven't regretted for a second!
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Here I will try to write down some of the experiences I have made while "converting" from Windows to Linux. Perhaps someone out there will find something useful in here :o)
The first time I actually saw a linux box was back in 1999. It was at a LAN party me and my classmates set up for the geeks in town. Linux was not a usual OS to have installed back then, so everybody was running Windows. But then there was this one guy who said, "Hey I just got this linux CD from the internet, anyone wanna try to install?". Two or three guys joined him, and installed...Red Hat.
I have to say that my first impression was not very good. A lot of the stuff was done in a shell, and the graphix was not very good either. So I shrudded my shoulders, thinking "This linux crap is only for crackers and stuff", and went back to my Win box, and continued playing Need for Speed... :o)
Then in 2002, after reading a lot about Linux...and how fantastic it was...I gave it a try.
I started with Red Hat, as that was the largest distro. Still not impressed, too much reading. Reinstalled Windows.
A few months later, I decided to give it another try. This time I assembled a computer from my pile of hi(low)-tech junk, and dedicated it to Mandrake. It was a 400 MHz AMD with 128 MB RAM.
This time it went better, I spent some time reading, and actually learned some stuff. For example about the rpm system, and that everything doesn't have be done in a shell.
All in all I was pretty happy with MDK, so I assembled another computer. 1100 MHz AMD with 512 MB RAM, and installed MDK on that one. On the old 400 MHz box I installed Mandrake Multi Network Firewall, in a hope of using it as a firewall/proxy/router/dhcp server thingy. Without going in to details, I can say as much as it did not work out as planned.
While I was doing all this, my "main" computer was running Windows, and...well...one day I decided that if I was ever going to really learn how to use Linux, I had to throw out the good old Windows system, and install Linux on my maaain box. So I did....
SuSE was the name of the game this time, and the box was a 2.4 GHz P4 with 768 MB RAM.
I am still running SuSE as my main computer, and I'm very pleased. SuSE is giving me the freedom neither Windows nor other linux distros has until now. Lately I have installed/tested Gentoo, Debian, Slack and FreeBSD as well...trying to find a system to install on my secondary computer. For now I have decided on Gentoo, dualbooted with Windows XP.
Still learning.....