he's like "i want to show that high school kids with relatively little computer experience (me and my friend) can make linux work on a computer, and make it do tasks such as print, connect to the internet, and such." So, he said that he would buy us both cheap laptops for us to try this with.

question is, any advice about anything to do with this undertaking?

the first thing i need is to get approval from my mom, so yeah, she's the one who does all the money stuff in the family. how do we convince her that its a good idea?

Tell her that using open source software gives you a first-hand understanding of the relationship between capitalism, intellect, and socialism. It's, like, educational, man.

It's a good idea to learn Linux to have a viable alternative to Windows now that Vista is out. It will be more and more restricted until you have to have a permit to run software in Windows, while Linux will remain both free (freedom) and free (no money).

The earlier you get on this train, the more sought-after you might become on the job market once Microsofts grip starts to slip.

what do you mean by permit... how is that different from license keys that are used now?

The introduction of license restrictions on retail buyers legally transferring their copy of Vista was criticized heavily and has since changed. Before, the licensing terms for Vista only allowed buyers of retail copies of Vista to transfer their software to a new machine one time.[39] If a user wanted to move their software a second time, he or she would have to contact Microsoft via phone, proving they hold a valid license, to get a code to allow the move. Since then, Microsoft has responded to the complaints and has modified the EULA to read: "You may uninstall the software and install it on another device for your use. You may not do so to share this license between devices."[40] As with Windows XP, separate rules will apply to OEM versions of Vista installed on new PCs; these are not legally transferrable.[41] The cost of Windows Vista has also been criticised by some for being too high. A majority of users in a poll said that the prices of various Windows Vista editions posted on the Microsoft Canada website in August 2006 make the product too expensive.[42]

Digital Rights Management: Another common criticism concerns the integration of new forms of Digital Rights Management into the operating system, specifically High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) and the Image Constraint Token, which reduces the quality of high-definition video content if the video card and monitor are not HDCP-enabled.[43] The criticism against HDCP may be misplaced, however, as it is still unclear as to whether all high definition media will be subject to HDCP protection.[43] Also there were discussed costs for PC users and computer industry as result of this integration like a disabling of functionality for video cards already sold as HDCP-ready, elimination of open-source hardware, risks of built-in device revocation, degraded system stability and performance.[44]

Wikipedia says so!

any advice on which distro to use? i've been looking at ubuntu as a possibility, or suse, but i dont think he's gonna let us use suse cause he's already got that on his laptop.

Ubuntu, Fedora Core, and Mandriva are all decent for new users (although Mandriva/Mandrake has become progressively more sucky in the last three years or so). If you'd like to impress him, use a real distro, like pure Debian. Or LFS. >:-)

Nah, use Fedora Core or Ubuntu.

mmm... of two minds on this one, mostly depending on your level of comfort with the idea of switching, and access to another computer in case something goes south

- for the cautious, fiddle with Knoppix a few days, then take the plunge and install Ubuntu.. you'll be able to hit the ground running, feel "safer", but a lot of the under-the-hood will be *very* different from what you're used to, and it'll take longer to achieve any level of "mastery" (it's up to you if that even matters at all)

- for the confident and/or suicidal (kidding!) I'd recommend jumping right in with either Slackware (more seat-of-the-pants) or Gentoo (more integrated/automated); Gentoo in particular has VERY robust online help, complete with a follow-the-yellow-brick-road step by step guide to getting up and running.. it'll take a bit longer to get to a usable system, but you'll have done everything yourself, with a much deeper understanding of what's-where-and-why... for the record, this is the path I myself took, so it can be done.. you just need patience, grasshopper :D


oh, and you'll want to look here:
http://www.skynet.ie/~caolan/Texts/stephenson.html

Of course, you might also want to look here:

http://www.simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf

For a new user - try Ubuntu first. It has been my advice for first distro for the last 2 years, and it has only not worked for someone 2-3 times. It is both easy to install, and easy to keep running. After installing you may want to go through

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RestrictedFormats

to get all the shineys working. You probably sill want to keep a friend who knows about Linux nearby to help you when you get stuck until you get confident.

use a real distro, like pure Debian. Or LFS. >:-)

Heh, when I started using Linux only 4 years ago, I was given Debian as the n00b distro. Your comment shows how much easier it became to install and use Linux.

That would have been more entertaining, Antz, if you'd said that you'd been given "LFS" as the n00b distro. :P

Although, seriously, Red Hat was always easier to install and set up than Debian. :P

Yes, but two years earlier I tried using Linux, and was given Red Hat. It installed fine, and ran OK for the first 20 hours or so. Then it froze up (I moved the mouse in KDE, was not doing anything unusual), and would not respond to the mouse or the keyboard. So, I powered it off, and back on. It came back up to a black terminal mode, gave me some odd looking prompt ending with a #, told me there was a corrupted root partition, and asked me to fix it. Now, after less than 24 hours with the OS I barely knew that I should be using "ls" and not "dir" to list files, so I tried typing "help" and things like that, but eventually just installed Windows again and left that horrible linux thing alone for a while.

EDIT: now that I think of it, I was probably running KDE as root, and using ext2 as the filesystem, so this is not too surprising.

Mandrake was also something that was considered, but a few days prior I saw a user using the cooker to fry his install (incompatible libc upgrade), and did not think very highly of it.

You don't have to pick a distro and stay with it until the end of time. Get both Ubuntu and Fedora, try one, then the other, then switch back if you liked the first better.

It's not a marriage.

The beauty about linux is that there are so many options. So one can put multiple OSes on their computer, much like MacBook pro users can use Windows and Mac OSX (And a linux distro too). Space is the only constraint.

Ubuntu is very user friendly. I wish my laptop would unbreak s I could install it :(

Your dad is buying your friend a laptop? Wow

well he's lived with us for the past year so hes sorta like my brother now

Heh. Let us know how it goes!

progress report: no progress, project probably wont happen, my mom insists that i get a laptop that will work in college, and im going to northeastern, and according to their website, they dont support linux on their network. they didn't say that, but there's no minimum specs listing for a linux system, and they have minimum specs for windows and mac so yeah

thats what im thinking, but i'd still like to try, so we'll see