[PLUG] I have no experience with installing Linux, can anyone help?

[John Jason Jordan]

On Mon, 14 Sep 2015 13:32:29 -0700
Vedanta Teacher <orevedantateacher at gmail.com> dijo:

> I just picked up a New In Box ASUS laptop 15.6' , Pentium, 4 gigs ram,
>500 gig hd. I'd like to completely strip off the factory 8.1 O/S
>and install a clean copy of Linux O/S but I don't know how.
>
>I have been reading that I can download Ubuntu Linux and Ubuntu
>desktop for free and burn them to a CD but I'm not quite sure of which
>version or source.
>
> I already have an HP desk top, Lenovo laptop in 7.0 (?) and an old
>iBook G4 so its no tragedy to strip this HD clean. I'd later like to
>convert the iBook G4 too.
>
>I already use Open Office, Opera, Firefox (I deleted Google chrome)
>so any other suggestions would be helpful.
>
>Note: I am quite literally up at 03:00 hours for work so I cannot make
>the 7:00 pm meeting but I can make the meeting Sunday the 20th
>@ 1:00 PM  at Free Geek in S.E. Portland.

The Clinic this coming Sunday would be an excellent place to start, if
you can wait that long. 

In the meantime, the most popular Linux distros are available on live
DVDs, or live CDs if the distro is small enough to fit on a CD. If you
place the media in the drive you can boot to the distro to play with it
without installing it to your hard drive. This allows you to make a
more educated selection before going to the trouble of installing the
distro. Just bear in mind that optical drives are not very fast so it
will run kind of slow.

I can suggest that the most popular distros for beginners are Ubuntu
and Mint. Each comes with a variety of desktop environments. The
desktop environment (Gnome, Maté, Cinnamon, Xfce and lots more) is
the graphical interface that you see on the screen. The desktop
environment is the part that has to suit you, more than the other
differences among the various distributions.

You can download the ISO for any of them and burn the ISO to a DVD or
CD with your Windows computer. Or, if you wait until Sunday, I can burn
them for you, as I maintain all the popular distros on my computer,
which will also save you having to download them.

I might also suggest that you consider replacing the hard drive in the
ASUS with a new one, and then put the factory drive on the shelf in
case you ever need to return the computer for warranty purposes. 

Looking forward to seeing you Sunday!