need some compy help

paul4990 · Post by **paul4990** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 3:48 pm

try typing startX

sam fisher · Post by **sam fisher** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 5:13 pm

I told him all he needed to know to boot a CD. To go into his bios. PC's do usually, unless you switch the option off in the bios

, have instructions on how to boot to bios.

Turbo Tax 1.0 · Post by **Turbo Tax 1.0** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 6:12 pm

thanks to everybody who gave me some help, i have a friend who gave me some help and suggested a more suitable distro (or whatever they are called), can someone close this now please

Turbo Tax 1.0 · Post by **Turbo Tax 1.0** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 7:51 pm

this really odd actually i got ubuntu running on my desktop within a minute i guess that notebook is just whacked up badly. can anybody tell me some of the main differences between linux and windows?

Post by **bicostp** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 8:03 pm

Well, Linux is completely different from Windows. Don't expect a lot of things beyond the basic user GUI to apply.

-Bash shell is completely different than the DOS prompt you're probably used to.
- You run as an unprivelaged user as default and only run as the root user ("administrator") when necessary. This is more secure because software cannot damage the entire directory structure, as Windows viruses do
- Linux only has a handful of viruses at best
- You have to compile most software yourself unless you use a distro that's derived from, say, Red Hat, SUSE or Debian. (I think Ubuntu is derived from Debian.)

This page is a bit old (2004), but it should give you an idea.
http://www.michaelhorowitz.com/Linux.vs.Windows.html

It's funny how open source developers made a lot more progress than Microsoft since XP was introduced, and now Microsoft is coming out with "innovative" features and wacky new Office formats because the open-source crew has figured out .doc, .ppt, .xls, .bmp, NTFS... Basically it seems like they're trying to catch up.