Time for the swtich has come.

[Nicholas Comino]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kyle Lagonegro (Student-Lagone37)" <Lagone37 at cortland.edu>
To: <fedora-list at redhat.com>
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2005 2:06 PM
Subject: Time for the swtich has come.


>
> I'm finally fed up with Windows and Microsoft in general.  I just signed 
> up to this mailing list and am making the first steps to moving over to 
> Linux.  From what I have read Fedora is the way to go.  So now I must 
> download, but before I make the switch I have some questions:
>
> 1) Is it a good idea to do the dual particion so I keep WinXP for a while? 
> Because frankly I want it gone as fast as possible...
>
> 2) I'm hooked up to a LAN connection through my college, does Linux come 
> with a web browser like Windows does, because if so I should have no 
> problems with anything, I'm just worried about putting it on and not 
> having the ability to get on for help.
>
> 3) I have a bunch of drivers and such that came with the computer, will 
> they work for Linux, or are they only formatted for Windows?  The disks 
> don't say windows on them at all, but I'm not sure.
>
> That's it for now, but trust me when I say you will all be hearing from me 
> a lot...  Hehe.
>
> One question about this forum, is there a way to stop them from mailing 
> everything to me, I'll just go to the site to check responds and such...
>
>

As a newbie to linux myself. I built a computer specifically for learning 
the platform - it let me kill the software as often as I liked till I learnt 
it (still working on that). The main problem I had was that the LAN chipset 
wasn't recognised by the kernel. It was a relatively unusual ALi chipset, 
the core recognised everything on the m-board except the LAN (the wireless 
card also didn't boot). I had to download and install the driver separately 
(by downloading to my winxp laptop, burning a CD and moving it over that 
way).

Because the net is essential, you might want to try a live bootable CD first 
just to check that the kernel is more likely to recognise the LAN. I don't 
know if there's a live CD for Fedora, but you could try Ubuntu or Knoppix. 
That said, my chipset was probably just unusual enough not to have made the 
kernel, and most would probably get you online without any hassles. It's 
just that in my experience, if it doesn't happen to work "out of the box" 
you might be in for a fast learning curve learning all the silly and simple 
things regular uses think are normal part of everyday life (like the command 
for logging in as root (su) or rebooting into a terminal...).

Good luck.