LINUX WRITTEN IN WINDOWS-SPEAK ?

[OLD JEFF]

Hello,
I've loaded PC Linux on my home built Athlon PC and I like it a lot. BUT, I don't understand the language it speaks ! It's not English or even PC speak as I know it. Twenty years of enforced Windows-speak has left me fluent in that dialect, but being of an advanced age, I don't want to have to learn yet another new dialect !

My other 4 PCs (internet, music, writing/photo-editing and log-keeping) all run W2K which does all I ever need, and I'm determined I won't be forced into upgrading Windows needlessly, but new hardware that will run W2K is becoming increasingly difficult to find. So can anyone tell me if there is a stable, lightweight distro (see, I've learned at least one new word, although your spellchecker doesn't recognise it !) which calls a drive a drive, a partition a partition a folder a folder, etc ?

JW

 

[Pyroflea]

Before I go making suggestions, I'm curious as to which distribution you have installed on said PC?

I find that most of the mainstream distributions are very easy to get used to. Such distributions include Ubuntu (and its variants), Fedora, Mandriva, openSUSE, PCLinuxOS, etc.

 

[randomizer]

I can think of one that might, but it costs money if you want to use it after 30 days, unlike the other 99% of distros. I doubt you will find what you are after too easily. Although out of the 3 terms you listed at the end, 2 are identical on both platforms. However, on Linux a folder is a directory There will be quite a lot of terminology differences, but that is largely because much of the terminology used in Linux is 30-40 years old.

If you want to fly a plane and you've only ever driven cars you'll need to learn how to use and understand the plane. If you want to use another operating system, you will have to learn that operating system. You may not need to know the inner workings, but the more you know the more you can bend it to do what you want. The most obvious example of this is the command line. You can avoid using it most of the time with many of the major distros, but you can't truly utilise the power of a Unix-like OS without using the command line (this is even true of Windows to a lesser extent). A task that may require several minutes of clicking through menus can often be done in seconds on the command line, but you first need to know how to use it before you can take advantage of it.

 

[mdd1963]

SUSE Linux 10.0 seemed very easy to install two years ago....

But good luck if you want to do a simple driver update for any sort of video card....; tried following ATI's directions, and , even with assistance, it simply would not work....

WIndows is much easier to use, update, add programs to, play games on, and work on...

But, yes, it is more expensive.

 

[randomizer]

Apart from playing games (and that assumes you mean AAA generic rubbish) I would generally disagree that Windows is any easier to do any of those things. Proprietary drivers will always be a problem simply because they are proprietary and the developer isn't interested in providing as much support for Linux as they do Windows. NVIDIA drivers are generally pretty good though.

 

[Ijack]

Don't try and treat Linux like Windows; there's no point in that. If you want Windows then use Windows.

When learning a foreign language, such as German, you can try to just translate everything word for word or you can try to understand the structure of the language and learn it holistically. Get a good introductory book about Linux and try to understand it rather than making it look like Windows; you'll get far more out of it that way.