Linux Nooob Q's..........

[Dooin' it]

Actually, not even an official "noob" just reeeeally curious as to a couple of things.........

#1.) I'm lookin' at "Mead's" desktops on the home page & drooling. Beeeeautiful!! Love the arrangement. Love the clock, calendar, bottom toolbar etc. I ass-u-me (as an ignoramous).....that this is Linux of some flavor or another?

#2.) What's the closest thing to a Windows "acting" o/s in Linux that one could use to play with. (Note: I would put this on a totally separate computer that I would only tinker with......obviously M$ Windust would stay on my regular machine).

I've got my flamesuit on so go ahead & bash the noob!!

(Scary seeing the CEO of RedHat saying to stick with Windows.........surely the future is grim without hope for a better o/s!!!)

[DanGrease]

Answer to your second question:
Well, I always say Lindows is the closest you can get in similarity with Windows in a Linux distro. Although its not free and charges for programs that are in the open source community. Another very close to act and feel like Windows is Lycoris which looks very alike Windows XP and its easy to manage.

dan

[Dooin' it]

And what am I looking at on "Mead's" desktop on the home page???

And who/what *exactly* (or actually, in laymen's terms) is RedHat?

[krohnjw]

I only saw one desktop for Mead, that was linux, running the KDE Desktop.

I would NOT reccomend lindows, it is barely functional. You could use lycoris, but I would reccomend Mandrake as, although it will appear slightly different, it is much more developed and has a wonderful control panel and tools. It allows you to use linux, and learn the environment / filesystem easily.

This post was longer but it wouldnt let me post and gave some error, and im not about to rewrite it all

[DanGrease]

Post the link of Mead's homepage to see for ourselfes. I agree Krohnjw about Lindows, but its the most likely to function like Windows.

dan

[Dooin' it]

Here's Mead's but actually there were a bunch of others, I just didn't realize I left Mead's list. See more below this one.....
http://www.techimo.com/photo/showphoto.php?photo=4685

http://www.techimo.com/photo/showphoto.php?photo=4684
http://www.techimo.com/photo/showpho...um&cat=2&page=
http://www.techimo.com/photo/showpho...um&cat=2&page=

[washe]

Well, 3 of them are shoots from Linux using KDE, distros used are Slackware and Mandrake, one is for windows XP using a program called windowblinds...

[Dooin' it]

Sooooooo does that mean the first one's Windowblinds?? (I've seen Windowblinds on cnet.com before & doesn't really interest me.) More interested in slam-dunking the typical Windows o/s to expand horizons & maybe contribute to the cause? har har!

[washe]

Your first posted picture is Slackware linux with a custom KDE...

[blubomber]

Dooin' it,

It really doesnt matter which distro of Linux you have, but more the desktop environment you use like KDE or Gnome to get the results you have seen.

Alot of people a quite happy with Mandrake 9.2 as a beginners distro of Linux. You can probably get it at your local computer superstore for around $20-$40, or you can download it for free from Mandrake's website. But, $40 is not alot of money for an OS and you would be contributing to the further developement of Linux.

Regarding your question about RedHat. RedHat is one of the companies that provides its own "vesion" of linux. See, different companies take the Linux Kernel and package it the way they want with software and other capabilities and then offer it as a free download or you can buy it and get tech support. RedHat is well known in the Linux community as being more geared towards the server environment. Big database severs and all, not for home use really.