In the past few weeks I've essentially bricked my laptop. XP won't boot any more and in an attempt to sort it i've stuffed the hard drive. I won't go into detail mainly cos i can't be bothered. Anyways, I'm away to go reformat the hard drive but I can't find my disk of xp anywhere so I'm going to have no OS. I'm not away to go buy myself another copy of XP (and of course getting a cracked version would be wrong lol), so I've started considering using linux as my OS (A - because its free, B - I like the idea of having control over my OS, C - XP annoys the hell out of me and D - it would please my inner-nerd). I've read up about linux a fair bit and i'm finding it more and more intriging. My only issues about it are im slightly concerned about using the command line etc (as i've NEVER actually used/seen a linux run machine) and the general difference's compared to XP or OS X in which i have a little experience. I'd like to think of myself as being better than the average XP user but not an expert by any means ie. when something goes wrong on any of my families computers i'm the one who always has to fix it, but i still get very concerned when im made to go into the regstry to do something. Do you think it would be a good idea for me to have a bash with linux and is there any particular distro you'd recommend?

Well you could get a Linux CD, when booting up insert the disc and you can try out Linux to see if you like it. And if you don't like it, when you shut-down, all of the info has gone leaving you back where you were.

you should definetley try linux. it depends on your hardware, but for new hard ware i'd use SLED 10, openSuse, ubuntu, kubuntu, mepis, dreamlinux, slackware, etc.

for older machines, try debain(one of the best), DSL, antix, slax, etc.

there are many distros to choose from, and you'll find that all of them are in ways the same, but have different software, manages, and settings.

like Srunson said, you could try live cd's, which let you expirience linux in a very limited way.

and for eye candy don't forget to use beryl and compiz.

Yes , look at Ubuntu (there is two, you want version 7.04 DESKTOP ). Its designed for beginners

Its a "live cd" which means that you can put it in and run it to check that your hardware is detected and that you like it, before installing. Its also only 1cd big and comes with most of the stuff you will need.

Generally (unless something goes wrong or you want to be a power user) you dont need to use the command line.

Here is scome screenshots and a link to Ubuntu (i believe you can order the cd from them too if you cant face downloading about 700mb and burining the image file to a cd (you will need software for this but its easy, just ask us)

http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/sl...e=790&slide=25

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

you can now buy dells with ubuntu pre-installed, by the way.

Bennet would like that

and you can buy dells at walmart too.

>Generally (unless something goes wrong or you want to be a power user) you dont need to use the command line.

Um to be a good linux user you _have_ to use the command line. You can try to avoid it but it is unavoidable. There will be some problem that you need to fix with the command line. Here is my desktop btw:

> Um to be a good linux user you _have_ to use the command line

not if you use ubuntu and you want to do every day tasks.

> There will be some problem that you need to fix with the command line.

that's what jbennet just said.
is your theme like some cheap vista theme?

Bennet changes his OS daily!
He had 2K that looked like XP, Vista the other day, and Linux randomly on and off!