Need to move from M$ NOW!!!

[jsundquist]

Ok so I am trying to once again convince myself to move from windows to linux. I keep running into problems with my desktop windows PC and I finally want to move, but I have a few things within the box that I want to make sure I can still use with in linux.

The first thing I do the most on my box is burn dvds, yes they are legit dvds. So is there software out there to do that?

The next thing is listen to music which I know I can use xmmx(?) to do that so I should be set there.

Next I have an ATI all-in-wonder to watch tv, play my xbox, and record tv shows as well. Is there software that can help me handle those items?

I know for my word processing needs there is OpenOffice, along with plenty of programs out there for my web browsing and email needs so, again those are not a problem.

So I guess pretty much just the dvd burner and the ATI All-In-Wonder TV Tuner card what would ones suggestion be for a nice distro? I have in the past tried mdk and didn't like it all that much. I also used RH9 back in the day and again wasn't too impressed. I have tried once to get a freeBSD to install but was unsuccess full. So I guess with those three possibly out of the picture does anyone have any other suggestions. Or I guess how difficult is a slackware install?

Any advice would be great. I'm getting sick of windows locking up on me every hour or so.

[Hayl]

Everything you listed is doable under any modern distribution.

The ATI card I would check and see what chipset it uses for tv -tuner. If it uses a hauppage chipset then it will work for sure. There are multiple software projects for GUIs for TV tuner cards.

The install instructions for slackware are available on the slackware web site... have you been there and read them? I suggest reading the install docs and then you can judge for yourself whether or not you feel that you are capable of installing slackware.

[nephish]

Everything you listed is doable under any modern distribution.....
I suggest reading the install docs and then you can judge for yourself whether or not you feel that you are capable of installing slackware.

ditto to that. Slack is an awesome distro, but can be a bit intimidating for a beginner.
maybe go with something more user friendly like Ubuntu. Try out a few distros untill one you really like grabs you.

regards !

[soulestream]

If you decide to do a slack install, the most important thing is take your time, read what you are doing, and do a FULL install. That will help eliminate any packages you might have to search for later(provided you have the space). Later you can eliminate stuff or do a cleaner smaller install.


And yes I do everything you want to do on my slackware system, but I use a Hauppauge tuner card


soule

[stumbles]

CD/DVD burning is no problem with Linux. I don't know about the TV aspect of your ATI card. You might have to fiddle with some configurations to get that working. Like I said though, not sure.

As for a distro to try? I suggest PClinuxOS (http://www.pclinuxonline.com/pclos/index.html?PHPSESSID=22353214c8ba851b4eefa65b95b63 8b8) its a livecd to you can see if you like it without installing.

[je_fro]

http://jeffrey.homelinux.org/RRweb/files/mencoder1.txt

[Parcival]

jsundquist, you sound like a SuSE candidate to me. SuSE automatically configures your hardware, features plenty of software, and should also work with your tv card, it did nicely with mine. To check wether SuSE supports it you can have a look at their hardware database:

http://cdb.novell.com/?LANG=en_UK

To burn DVDs, I recommend K3B application in KDE which makes burning DVDs a breeze.

The sole disadvanatge behind my recommendations is that you need a fairly decent system to run SuSE smoothly as it's very ressource hungry.