Total Linux noob in need of help.

[Narween]

Hi

Soo, my boyfriend installed linux on my 2nd computer, the one I would start to use when my old one dies. Well my old one is now crawling towards the death bed and I desperately need to learn how to use linux!

If any one has a good noob manul for linux that would be greatly appreaciated and also could tell me how I can find out which system I'm running (yes it's that bad).


Narween

[WeAreGeek]

Welcome to Linux, my young Padwan!

Here's a few commands you can use to find out what distro you are running:

cat /etc/*-release
lsb_release -a
uname -a
cat /proc/version

^{(More info)}

You can run these commands in a terminal window (usually you can start it from the applications menu, or by pressing [Ctrl]+[Alt]+T

Please report back what's the output of those commands and I'll provide you with a good manual.

Btw: a good beginner's distribution would be Ubuntu or Linux Mint. It's pretty straightforward to install it yourself.

[Narween]

Thank you so much! I now know that I'm running Linux Mint
Lvl 1 completed! (or maybe lvl 0.1)

Now I only hope my old PC don't die on me before I have packed and uploaded all my stuff... Wish me luck

Narween

[WeAreGeek]

Haha! Good luck.

There are a few flavours in Linux Mint. They used to be based on Ubuntu (which in it's turn is based on Debian), so a lot of Ubuntu documentation applies on Mint as well. But they also have a version based directly on Debian.

Anyway, the official documentation can be found here: http://www.linuxmint.com/documentation.php
(scroll down for a link to older versions)

~Raoul

[musician3333]

Hello, I also am a nooby. I've got Linux Ubuntu on my laptop, but #1, it's not the most updated version, and #2, I want to try and get latest version to Mint on there, but for some reason, it won't let me load a Windows OS like Windows XP, and it won't let me upgrade to the lastest version of Linux Mint. Is there a sure fire website that I could go to that would allow me to download the lastest version of Linux Mint on my machine?

[WeAreGeek]

Is there a sure fire website that I could go to that would allow me to download the lastest version of Linux Mint on my machine?

What's a "sure fire website"?
Naturally, you can always download the latest version from the Linux Mint website

[musician3333]

Thats what I had done, but it still won't let me, I'm getting error messages. Keep in mind, I'm on a dinosaur, a dell C610 laptop....

[Bill]

If you are on a dinosaur, then you will likely need to run a lite version of Linux. I would recommend antiX. You can get it here http://antix.mepis.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

Burn it to a disk and set the burn speed to the lowest setting. Boot the computer to the disk and try out the OS before installing it. Make sure your wifi and all that works.