A New Guy to Linux

Hi Folks,

I'm looking to install Linux on my laptop in conjunction with Windows XP Pro. Installing it won't be a problem: I have GParted Live and a separate partition for Linux already set up. I don't know which distribution of Linux would be good to get, however, as I've never used Linux before and am looking to learn.

I can't install Ubuntu, because my laptop has an ATI Radeon Mobility X1300 graphics card and the latest release of Ubuntu chokes when it encounters these cards. (Does an older version work with ATI?)

I have an install CD for Debian 4.0, and am downloading Freespire 1.0.13.

Also, if anyone could recommend me any good tutorial sites or books for Linux, it'd be greatly appreciated. The reason I want to learn Linux is more as an alternative OS to Windows rather than server administration or the like.

Thanks,

-'Mage

You could try Suse. I've ran that a few times on several hardware platforms (Old PPC G3, Athlon Thunderbird, Athlon 64, Intel Core2Duo). It is a friendly OS and has a decent amount of tutorials and information online for when you get stuck.

Hmm... cool.

I installed openSuse this morning and so far, so good; although 800x600 resolution doesn't look good...
Question, however: Is there any sort of workaround for ATI Mobility Radeon X**** cards (an ATI Radeon Mobility X1300 in my case) to get higher resolutions? I know from reading about other Linux versions that ATI hasn't released any open-source (or, for that matter, a closed-source Linux-compatible) driver...

I found ATI Linux drivers right here. (http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/linux/linux-radeon.html)

Try installing those and it should fix your resolution problems.

awesome, thanks!
Installed fine.

So you didn't have any errors or problems? Good, I saw you say that there were no ATI drivers and I almost moved on but I vaguely remembered finding them for someone else.


300th post!

Another Q (Pardon if I'm 2x posting but I can't find it anywhere else here):

To access files on a Windows NTFS partition, I need NTFS-3G (sp?) and FUSE. That much I get....

However, can I still access the partition with said program if it's a logical drive?
I have my Documents not on the same partition as my Windows XP OS. They're in an extended partition/logical drive.

-'Mage