hello everybody, i need help finding a linux os that is user friendy for computer noobs, i recently installed my third hardrive on my xp machine and microsoft somehow decided that my cd-key wasnt good anymore , after being placed on hold for an hour and a half the stupid microsoft employee actually had the nerve to offer me a dicount to reactivate my cd-key, i feel like i shouldnt have to pay twice for somthing i have already purchased, so now im looking at linux for the new os for my rig but the linux world is so different and complicated to me, i tried ubuntu and open suse 10.2 but it is so difficult to install programs even if they are written for linux, it took me 2 hours just to install yahoo messenger , and i still cant figure out how to install java or limewire for that matter, can somebody give me some expert advice to point me in the right direction thnx

Your cd key is good as long as you own the pc... That's bs...
activate over the automated voice at ms...

The 2 most important questions you need to answer are:
1. How many pc's are you using this on = 1
2. Have you upgraded hardware recently = yes

the only reason I think they may have nabbed you: are you using a hacked key, as in pirated, if so it's probably flagged... that's why you never want to let other people see your key if you post snapshots on the web...

If you really want to g linux: http://distrowatch.com

PCLinux is one of the easiest..
http://www.pclinuxos.com/

-------------------------
*Q6600@3330mhz 1.35v - True120 | Abit IP35pro | 2x2GB Gskil | 2 x EVGA GTS 250- shader 1890 | Corsair HX520 | OCZ Vertex 60GB/Seagate 7200.11 500GB
*x4 810@3250mhz 1.32v - Xigmatek S1283 | MSI K9A2 CF-F 790X | 2x1GB Kingston HyperX | 2 x MSI GTS 250- shader 1890 | Antec EW 500
*Q6600@3330mhz 1.36v - Scythe Mugen | Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L | 2x1GB Ballistx | XFX GTX 260 (192) shader 1512 | OCZ Stealth 500w


Edited: 09/10/2007 at 06:03 PM by MikeB12

I agree 110% PCLinuxOS is amazing, and it's what I had installed full time for awhile about a year ago. I was very comfortable in it. Now of course you need to know some basic Linux commands and it does take some getting used to...but I think Mandriva and PCLinuxOS offer the easiest transition. I wish I would have tried out PCLinuxOS again this summer...now I don't have time with school and all...

-------------------------
My GT430 Is Folding For AMD Team 34106
FOR A GOOD CAUSE---Accepting Donations of New, Used, Working, Nonworking PC Components
Thanks to KLEETUS for his generous donation of components!!

Wow...actually I could try it now if I wanted to...I'm downloading the 2007 release right now for the heck of it...that's the nice thing about FIOS internet. I guess I could also stick it on my spare AXP machine to see how it runs...haven't used PCLinuxOS since 0.93. Also the better ATI support will be nice...

-------------------------
My GT430 Is Folding For AMD Team 34106
FOR A GOOD CAUSE---Accepting Donations of New, Used, Working, Nonworking PC Components
Thanks to KLEETUS for his generous donation of components!!

I agree with Mike, if they asked you to pay to reactivate it,then your key has been flagged, you may not be the pirater, but you may have provided someone, inadvertently to gain access to your key.

As to why it deactivated, well, you changed what must have been the 3rd item in a string. once 3 pieces of hardware change, XP flags itself in need of activation assuming a PC change. It will also do that on a major hardware change, ie. a motherboard or CPU. Vista is kinda cool, becuase it just reactivates. no calling microsoft, no hassling with anybody, it just said "reactivating due to a hardware change" and all was happy.

-------------------------

The opinions expressed above do not represent those of Advanced Micro Devices or any of their affiliates.


Edited: 09/10/2007 at 08:42 PM by Immortal Lobster

K/X/Ubuntu. They're pretty nice and easy to use.

I'll thrid PCLinuxOS. Its a great linux operating system release and installs programs with ease. I even installed wine and then played some windows games within 1 hour. Great OS, Highly Recommended for newbies.

-------------------------
Alienware m17x R4
17.3" 1920x1080 -- Intel Core i7-3820QM -- 16GB DDR3 1600MHz -- Intel 520 180GB SSD -- 750GB 7200RPM Data HDD -- Slot BD-ROM -- 2GB AMD 7970m -- Intel Centrino 6250+WiMax -- Mediacom 20 Mbps Internet Connection

Well I am a little confused as to the windows installation. If this is a legitimate retail item you should be fine. If OEM as long as you don't change your motherboard or processor (unless you know the loophole) you are fine. If this was preinstalled on an older PC then this may cause problems.

Anyways first I would reinstall windows and once you get to the activation screen choose not to activate now, and then get to the next activation screen and choose to do it manually (phone call).
http://www.microsoft.com/licen...rces/vol/numbers.mspx

Just answer the questions as they come. I have reformatted my main PC (a retail XP) many times, even had the call the dang activation center many times and never had a problem with them activating me.

As far as linux, I like Ubuntu and its derivatives, Mepis isn't bad either. Ubuntu in my opinion is picking up most of the business customers for a free linux (over Red Hat).

-------------------------
irc.globalgamers.net
Channels are #freedom and #forums.amd.irc.
Unofficial chat on both.

Rigs: AMD 3700, MSI RD 480 Neo 2, X850Xt, 2GB GSkill
Dell Latitude D810, Pentium M 740, 128MB (ded.) X600, 2GB Crucial
AMD 3200, GB K8NS Ultra, x800xlaiw, 2GB Corsair.

I recommend ubuntu. If it took 2 hours for you to install a program then you definately didn't yet know what package manager is and what it does. Downloading and installing programs manually isn't recommended way of installing a software.

-------------------------
[Gentoo 64b][ASRock ALIVENF7G-HDReady][AMD Athlon64 X2 2,5GHz][Corsair XMS2 2x1GB@800MHz][Samsung T166 500GB]
[Ubuntu LTS 32b][VIA EPIA EN-1200EG][VIA Eden C7 1,2GHz][Kingston 1GB@533MHz][4x Samsung T166 500GB]

Your key won't need re-activation through payment unless it was a VLK flagged IMO. Your best bet is to email through and ask them what is happening.

My recommendations would be, Ubuntu (Xubuntu/Kubuntu) first for a noob, then PCLinuxOS, then Fedora Core, then Slackware, then Mandriva and so on. Soon, you'll have a few up and running to use through VMWare. I usually try out the latest builds and betas in this fashion, around 8-9 simultaneously and choose to keep 2 in VMware, one as a separate install until I feel like moving on and then triple booting a few of the best ones.

Make a crucial note, you won't be able to simply lie back and hope everything is to be straightforward 'n' simple while very unknowledgeable and inexperienced with Linux or any OS, even MS ones. There is no doubt Linux was mainly centered around and appealing to pure geeks who showed a very high level of enthusiasm and love for this kinda stuff not many of the average people did, so to get familiar with something they take for granted as common knowledge, you'll have to don their learning coats too. The multiple OS are simply too different to each other and you will need to spend quite a bit of time, read, learn and practice around before you start increasing familiarity and making opinions whilst getting an accurate feel and taste of the different OSes and what they offer. Once you get going without all bugs and learn the basics, you'll see, Linux is like using Firefox or Opera in comparison to IE -> flexibly suited individually by you, for you, while obviously free.

Here's some distro's I was testing in VMWare a while back (although the Player size wasn't maximized), so you can see how they look roughly.
Kubuntu 7.04: http://img224.imageshack.us/my...?image=kubuntupi0.png
PCLinuxOS 2007: http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/3977/pclosxu8.png
Fedora Core 7: http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/6757/fedora7bg9.png
Slackware 11: http://img98.imageshack.us/img...650/slackware11sr7.png

i had it happen to a cyberpower media center xp
microsoft said it was invalid key after 90 min on phone and to contact pc maker for new key.
contacted cyberpower they told me it was a microsoft problem.
so now the pc runs linux mint with linux media center installed
mint also has easy software installion program

-------------------------
Biostar TA-990FXE-Extreme
amd-fx8120 @3.7 1.2750 V
corsair ddr3-1866 16GB
ocz-vertex3-240
windows 8 rtm

Edited: 10/09/2007 at 07:37 PM by mbjbdc

Hi there, I had MS stop me from putting XP on another computer in my house. They said five (5) was the limit for any home addition of XP. So I had to go buy another XP OS so I could put it on another computer I had built. If you want to put the OS on more than five (5) computers then you have to buy an OEM version. But that did tick me off, so it put another nail in MS's coffin from me. MS will stop supporting XP in 2008, the reason is they are trying to force everyone onto Vista. Well I am tired of all the VIRUS, Hackers, and bad updates on the Windows OS, so I am switching totally to Linux as soon as I get this new computer I have just built to operate.
Larry

-------------------------
L.E. Lovely

I also agree 110% PCLinuxOS is amazing!

Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS are great. Some people would suggest SuSE, but I don't think so. First off it's a DVD and its a huge dl and therefore a huge install...ubuntu and pc are installed of a 700MB CD which makes it less bloated than some other distros are.

Ok, I have tried both PCLinuxOS 07 and Ubuntu and I have to say that Ubuntu is the most user friendly, I mean Add and Remove Programs in Ubuntu is the easiest install manager that linux has ever had. Just point and click what you want and it installs the program and all its shortcuts just like it would in windows. Plus, if you like the eye candy, it comes with compiz fusion and boot literally in under 30 seconds. Ubuntu has given me a liking with Linux, and I've tried almost every other distro and nothing is as good as Ubuntu. Its so windows-like but yet its linux.

-------------------------
Alienware m17x R4
17.3" 1920x1080 -- Intel Core i7-3820QM -- 16GB DDR3 1600MHz -- Intel 520 180GB SSD -- 750GB 7200RPM Data HDD -- Slot BD-ROM -- 2GB AMD 7970m -- Intel Centrino 6250+WiMax -- Mediacom 20 Mbps Internet Connection

Edited: 02/21/2008 at 10:00 AM by FrozenSteel

Linux distributions are all pretty much the same when you really get down to it. There are only two things that can "major" differences between any two distributions: the package manager (apt, rpm, portage, pacman, etc.) and the method of package installation (binary or source.) Different distributions will also have slightly different GUI frontends for configurations and sometimes slightly different locations of configuration files and system files. These differences are all rather minor and once you learn to use one distribution, other distributions are very similar if not darn near identical.

If you want for me to recommend a few good solid distributions that are relatively painless to get initially set up:
1. Ubuntu or Kubuntu. I run Ubuntu 7.10 i686 on my laptop.
2. Debian. I run Debian 4.1 (lenny) AMD64 on my desktop.
3. OpenSUSE

Gentoo is a good distribution, but it has relatively in-depth installation and maintenance procedures that would probably scare some people off. Granted, everything is very well documented and it is largely "look at the page on the Gentoo documentation website and follow the steps" but the fact that some work is done using the terminal will not go over well with the people who think that keyboard shortcuts are "too complicated" and have to use the mouse to click on "open" and "save" icons. Also, the Gentoo project itself has been having some issues recently that have been affecting the distro and some (libexpat, anybody?) have caused some pretty onerous problems that take somebody that knows what they are doing and have enough time to fiddle with it to fix.

-------------------------

http://forums.amd.com/forum/me...d=92366&enterthread=y



My early experiences with Freespire. May be worth your while to try out.

-------------------------
My GT430 Is Folding For AMD Team 34106
FOR A GOOD CAUSE---Accepting Donations of New, Used, Working, Nonworking PC Components
Thanks to KLEETUS for his generous donation of components!!

I've just loaded openSuse 10.3 from a cd. http://software.opensuse.org/ You can choose a cd install or dvd.

-------------------------
MSI K7N2 Delta2 LSR|35w XP-M2400 11x214 1.62V|2x512MB OCZ EL 2 2 2 11 2.9V|9600XT|Seasonic 350w
Abit AN7|XP-M2800 10.5x227 1.62V|2x512MB Mushkin XP4000 2 3 2 11 3.2V|9600XT|Seasonic 550w
Asus A7V600|XP-M2600 6-11x202 1.6V|2x512 Crucial PC3200 2.5 3 3 9 2.7V|PCI 32MB gfx|Corsair 450w

Ah I see. But you have to dl the one with the GUI of your choice (KDE or GNOME). But hey, that's the same case with Ubuntu (Ubuntu = GNOME, Kubuntu = KDE, Xubuntu = XFCE).

gentoo all the way!

but seriously, i think you should take a look at using sabayon, it's a very user-friendly os based on gentoo and will get you to start learning a little about how the system functions. because gentoo is fully customizable to your specific needs, it's the choice of many experienced users... and starting with sabayon will get you going in the right direction.

or, you could visit www.gentoo.org and dive in head-first by grabbing the minimal installation disc and using the handbook. it's a lot of fun to do most everything manually and then reboot... voila! it works!