Looking for Rookie Resources

[Jim Maxwell]

Hola,

I have an old laptop running XP that is only used for bittorrent (utorrent).  I was thinking moving to a light linux flavor as a small project and to learn a bit at the same time.

I've been reading a bit about LiveCD and USB distributions, but am curious about the best way to go; dual boot seems kinda silly, I'd rather just take the plunge and ditch windows altogether.  If I somehow bricked my computer it would really not be much of a loss. 

Any resources that anyone would like to share would be welcome. 

thanks in advance

jim

Farmington

[Tristan Rhodes]

Moving from XP to Linux is a great idea, even more now that XP is not getting any security updates!

Once you start playing with modern Linux distros you will find that they are not harder to learn than Windows.  

I don't like the dual-boot concept, it takes too much time to jump back and forth between operating systems.  Just install a single OS and then remote to another computer if you need a certain feature of the other OS.  (You could also use Virtualbox and run them both at the same time, but I don't recommend this on old hardware.)

How much memory does your laptop have?  What do you mean by "old"?

Tristan

Tristan

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[Jonathan Karras]

The nice thing about full PCs is you can't really brick them like a phone. Its always recoverable.

Jump in have fun just don't forget to backup any data you may want to transfer first.

I agree with Tristan though if there is still need for Windows some where run it in a VirtualBox (or other Hypervisor) VM or RDP to a windows box. 

Personally I run Linux at home on my desktop then I have a Windows 7 VM I keep for using the couple of windows programs I need for programming my radios. I also use it as my VPN machine for connecting to work. Has the nice side benefit of not knocking my SSH sessions offline when I need to VPN in.

Jonathan

[micah child]

I've enjoyed running linux mint on my machines. It seems like a nice way to ease yourself into the Linux world.

What are the hardware specs on the laptop?

[tportz]

Jim, how to geek has posted an article here http://www.howtogeek.com/142044/how-to-turn-a-raspberry-pi-into-an-always-on-bittorrent-box/ about having an always on torrent box. It utilizes raspbian which is a specialty distro of Linux for the raspberry pi. The article has some good advice about torrent traffic and should give you a good idea of what you need. I plan on doing something similar to this after I setup a NAS so I can direct files to a dedicated storage box. Raspberry pi is also a good way to start learning Linux and scripting languages like Python since it is such a lost cost at only $35 for the board and another $5 for a PSU. If you have any questions let me know and I would be happy to answer any you have.

Tom

[micah child]

I recently set up my pi to bit torrent over a vpn and store it's files on a nas on my lan. It was a fun little exercise :)

On Jan 7, 2015 8:38 AM, "tportz" <thoma...@gmail.com> wrote:

Jim, how to geek has posted an article here http://www.howtogeek.com/142044/how-to-turn-a-raspberry-pi-into-an-always-on-bittorrent-box/ about having an always on torrent box.  It utilizes raspbian which is a specialty distro of Linux for the raspberry pi. The article has some good advice about torrent traffic and should give you a good idea of what you need.  I plan on doing something similar to this after I setup a NAS so I can direct files to a dedicated storage box.  Raspberry pi is also a good way to start learning Linux and scripting languages like Python since it is such a lost cost at only $35 for the board and another $5 for a PSU.  If you have any questions let me know and I would be happy to answer any you have.

Tom

[Jason Wright]

I love Knoppix! It is a full-featured linux distro on CD or DVD. There is so much on the CD, that I'm not even sure what the fancy extra stuff is on the DVD. Also, it is super easy to put on a USB stick. Just boot the CD, then type "flash-knoppix" on a terminal, then follow the prompts to verify you want it installed on a USB drive. There are also some windows apps for creating knoppix on USB.

The only thing I've noticed about the USB version is that it sometimes doesn't boot on older computers. (CD version is better) I haven't tried to figure out why this is.

-Jason

[Joseph Barney]

There's also www.pendrivelinux.com where you can have a USB distribution with persistence, which basically means you can save info and updates that are still there after reboot. It should work with any flash drive and it's free!

Joe