What are your top tips for a Newbie?

[jamvaru]

nonsense, you are a party pooper

i would certainly recommend ignoring the previous poster for being conformist and discouraging discussion

'/

[Oscar799]

This is a thread intended to assist new users
Please don't derail it with bickering

[InkKnife]

A n00b should use the default installer settings and worry about customizing things like directory location latter, if ever.

[Catbuntu]

I suggest a thing which may be a bit radical, but it's what I did and I'm so happy with Linux. Just use the Patented Three Steps to be a Linuxer®* (:P) by Catbuntu!

1. Uninstall Windows. Yes! While installing Linux, don't create a new partition for living alongside with Windows. Just delete its partition! Of course, backup your data before. If you don't do this, you'll always have the temptation to go to Windows and use Photoshop for a while. Of course, if you need it for work, don't do this
2. Read that you should read before asking. First read, then, if you can't find nothing, ask! Google is your friend. Asking without firstly searching on Google will let the people think you're a lazy Windows noob, but you aren't... Are you?
3. Don't hop. This is very important. Don't start "trying distros for fun", because you'll end like me: a crazy man who can't stay in the same distro for two hours. Luckily, I've been healed when I found Mint. So stay on Mint! Or Ubuntu, if you preffer. Or Fedora, or openSUSE, but don't hop or you'll regret!

Follow this three steps and you'll have a nice free computer. Note that those three steps are only for radical people who wants to get rid of Windows.

Catbuntu

*No refund will be accepted. If you can't live without Windows, Catbuntu®, Inc. won't be responsible of your fail.

[widget]

I suggest a thing which may be a bit radical, but it's what I did and I'm so happy with Linux. Just use the Patented Three Steps to be a Linuxer®* (:P) by Catbuntu!

1. Uninstall Windows. Yes! While installing Linux, don't create a new partition for living alongside with Windows. Just delete its partition! Of course, backup your data before. If you don't do this, you'll always have the temptation to go to Windows and use Photoshop for a while. Of course, if you need it for work, don't do this
2. Read that you should read before asking. First read, then, if you can't find nothing, ask! Google is your friend. Asking without firstly searching on Google will let the people think you're a lazy Windows noob, but you aren't... Are you?
3. Don't hop. This is very important. Don't start "trying distros for fun", because you'll end like me: a crazy man who can't stay in the same distro for two hours. Luckily, I've been healed when I found Mint. So stay on Mint! Or Ubuntu, if you preffer. Or Fedora, or openSUSE, but don't hop or you'll regret!

Follow this three steps and you'll have a nice free computer. Note that those three steps are only for radical people who wants to get rid of Windows.

Catbuntu

*No refund will be accepted. If you can't live without Windows, Catbuntu®, Inc. won't be responsible of your fail.

What a great post.

I agree completely. Probably because that is just what I did.

Makes the learning curve just a hair steeper but a lot faster. It is really an easier way to go.

Only thing I would suggest differently is that if you need MS for work, change jobs. This is, of coarse, easier for a ranch hand (me) to say than someone that actually needs to use a computer for their main work. A lot more companies, however, are becoming open to the idea of letting folks use Linux on their company computers. I would ask about that at the very least. Libreoffice will handle all the files and produce files compatible with MS Office.

Many companies using MS are using Libreoffice anyway as it is a big savings for them.

Many companies using MS use Linux servers so they are not hostile to Linux.

Asking about it will, if not pushed to hard, cause no trouble and even if turned down may cause thinking to happen.

[Catbuntu]

I suggest a thing which may be a bit radical, but it's what I did and I'm so happy with Linux. Just use the Patented Three Steps to be a Linuxer®* (:P) by Catbuntu!

1. Uninstall Windows. Yes! While installing Linux, don't create a new partition for living alongside with Windows. Just delete its partition! Of course, backup your data before. If you don't do this, you'll always have the temptation to go to Windows and use Photoshop for a while. Of course, if you need it for work, don't do this
2. Read that you should read before asking. First read, then, if you can't find nothing, ask! Google is your friend. Asking without firstly searching on Google will let the people think you're a lazy Windows noob, but you aren't... Are you?
3. Don't hop. This is very important. Don't start "trying distros for fun", because you'll end like me: a crazy man who can't stay in the same distro for two hours. Luckily, I've been healed when I found Mint. So stay on Mint! Or Ubuntu, if you preffer. Or Fedora, or openSUSE, but don't hop or you'll regret!

Follow this three steps and you'll have a nice free computer. Note that those three steps are only for radical people who wants to get rid of Windows.

Catbuntu

*No refund will be accepted. If you can't live without Windows, Catbuntu®, Inc. won't be responsible of your fail.

What a great post.

I agree completely. Probably because that is just what I did.

Makes the learning curve just a hair steeper but a lot faster. It is really an easier way to go.

Only thing I would suggest differently is that if you need MS for work, change jobs. This is, of coarse, easier for a ranch hand (me) to say than someone that actually needs to use a computer for their main work. A lot more companies, however, are becoming open to the idea of letting folks use Linux on their company computers. I would ask about that at the very least. Libreoffice will handle all the files and produce files compatible with MS Office.

Many companies using MS are using Libreoffice anyway as it is a big savings for them.

Many companies using MS use Linux servers so they are not hostile to Linux.

Asking about it will, if not pushed to hard, cause no trouble and even if turned down may cause thinking to happen.

Yes, many intelligent companies are doing that. But I remember I had to do a presentation for the school, and I happily did it with LibreOffice. Result: Complete fail when we saw it with PowerPoint on school. I could ask the teacher to install LibreOffice, but he is so stupid... He thinks HTML is a compiled language!

Catbuntu

[jamvaru]

that certainly is a case for portableapps.com
they have both openoffice and libreoffice, which runs on wine or windows xp +
so you can just plug in and run or easily convert to working ppt
and free, buy the promo stick to support the project
'/

[MintGuru]

Hey,

I'd say the best thing to do is go slow. You'll have a number of apps, games, desktop environments etc to mess around with.

In my experience, I saw the repo for the first time (repo = repository). You'll be going through menus and see Synaptics package manager, or some other.

Wow... thousands of apps. Some of them seem to do the same or similar things (which can be troublesome if they conflict with each other)

Suddenly you have files all over the place, a blank desktop, kernel panic or something else. Bugger.

The first thing I used to ask people when they wanted a computer off me is "what do you want it for". Keep this in mind when you're experimenting. Ask youself what you want to get out of it - do you just want to set up emails and browse, or something else?

What I like about Linux is the evolution of it. Starting in about 1999, it took overnight onto 3 hard drives raided up just to get Mandrake with KDE on, and that was with a few tries at it.

Of course I messed it up less than a week later.

Whilst W1ndows had the GUI and had to become more "multi-user/network" aware, Linux already had the networking and multiuser capabilities and had to (simply) become more user friendly. The background was already there.

I also see Linux as the "ABC TV" (maybe channel 4?) where anything half decent on Linux ends up being bought out and the source code being buried in a vault somewhere. It's the hub for anything creative.

Also, maybe it's been said, but give it a go as a live DVD for a while (if you don't know much about it, it means just to run it direct from the DVD without installing it) and have a muck around first. Like most things, the more you use it, the better you're going to be at it and the more enjoyable experience you will have.

I guess the last piece of advice is that once you do install it, get Virtualbox and run the ISO on it, so you can have a play and if something happens, you can go again without destroying your desktop. There's more resources about VM's, but in layman's terms, it's one or more operating systems inside another operating system. Your "host" would be Linux mint, then you can run other operating systems within it. It's great when testing for new things, different desktops etc. I also have a VM with a live (VERY) simple browser from an ISO, so once it's closed, everything is gone (aka no nasties, virus etc and it's secure enough for things like banking).

Good luck with it, I'm sure on a good PC you'll find it a great operating system.

[meteorrock]

I provided a blog for us over in the cyanogenmod nook color forums on using linux and virtual boxes for teens of our age group from our point of mind. Come check over in these forums here at this link. I got lots of videos and other helpful hints over in my forums for that device. My blog on how android works is also in that forum at this link here. http://forum.cyanogenmod.org/topic/5099 ... w-to-code/

This link below is for the nook color forums proper.

http://forum.cyanogenmod.org/forum/222- ... ook-color/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

How I got started in learning about linux and commands is using an android device, you can input into the terminal for scripts and everything just almost like linux does. It don't have the apt-get fetch package functions but allot of the basic understanding of that OS and its commands is just the same as linux. I did lots and lots of lurking up in the XDA forums and picked up on it that way.

Lots of helpful people from around the world up there from different cultures and ages, I got into linux now because of my desire to try to develop custom android kernels for the device I have running cyanogenmod. The developers up there are really helpful and spot on. Learned the git and the github commands by watching and learning from developers up in XDA.

I just found out how to build my first module on this linux mint box just yesterday trying to get host file control for my VMware hypervisor that is using linux mint as a guest OS right at the moment, and just learned how the <make> command works.

[MintGuru]

I provided a blog for us over in the cyanogenmod nook color forums on using linux and virtual boxes for teens of our age group from our point of mind. Come check over in these forums here at this link. I got lots of videos and other helpful hints over in my forums for that device. My blog on how android works is also in that forum at this link here. http://forum.cyanogenmod.org/topic/5099 ... w-to-code/


How I got started in learning about linux and commands is using an android device, you can input into the terminal for scripts and everything just almost like linux does. It don't have the apt-get fetch package functions but allot of the basic understanding of that OS and its commands is just the same as linux. I did lots and lots of lurking up in the XDA forums and picked up on it that way.

Lots of helpful people from around the world up there from different cultures and ages, I got into linux now because of my desire to try to develop custom android kernels for the device I have running cyanogenmod. The developers up there are really helpful and spot on. Learned the git and the github commands by watching and learning from developers up in XDA.

I just found out how to build my first module on this linux mint box just yesterday trying to get host file control for my VMware hypervisor that is using linux mint as a guest OS right at the moment, and just learned how the <make> command works.

That's great!

I installed Android x86 on a dual core laptop a year or so ago... you know... just for fun. I got bored with Vista on it. The laptop has since died a hardware death (the second computer I could fry an egg on). The "lovely" smell of burning silicon. I digress.

I got started in the days when KDE was going from v2 to v3. Your average 486/586 was a bit clunky and slow at the time. You would have to mount/unmount everything yourself. You'd plug in a device and then go modifying conf files for Linux to see it. You'd spend most of your day in fstab files.

The point is, Linux is becoming the next step in serious alternatives for operating systems because of the user friendliness getting..well.. more user friendly.

This is a good thing for new Linux users. In my experience, most Windows users wouldn't have a clue what Linux is, or even understand that it could be installed on the computer they are using. Most mac users would have heard of it, but never used it. Most still think Linux's place is in a server room, to be configured in a text environment by propellor heads like us

As Linux becomes more user friendly, it becomes more popular. Therefore, those with the monopoly on operating systems want to do one thing - stamp it out or buy it out.

Recently, a well known mobile phone producer was sued by another (http://www.forbes.com/sites/conniegugli ... t-shortly/). It's been the other way around also. This one is quite important, as it talks about one system "copying" another, instead of being innovative in its own right.

Now, in the days of Windows 2000, where icons were flat, 2D, there was an OS which was an offspring of Raymond called Lyroris. Upon installing out of the box, what did we see? A green meadow with a blue sky, with clouds. The icons were 3D.

lycoris1.jpg (11.8 KiB) Viewed 1470 times

Sounds familiar?

You're at a good point if you want to start using Linux. There are more choices than ever before. There is more developmental improvement (aka less likely chance of bugs). When I used to spend all night getting KDE2 to run, only to install something that created a kernel panic (and back to the drawing board), 10+ years on and it's nothing like that anymore.

Someone did say "stay off the package managers". I agree! Take things slowly. What I like about using a VM, is that I can say "today I'm going to install Thunderbird, evolution, Kmail and a heap of others". I'd then have the ability to give each one a go, see the pros and cons, and make a decision about what my email client would be on the host OS. There is a myriad of choice out there.

Do the same. Say "Today I'm going to see what there is in the way of music apps". Install Rosegarden (you won't be disappointed), XMMS, Lilypond, and a heap of others onto the VM. Give them all a go, then you close the VM and say "I liked this the best, I'll install it". That way you're not clogging up your host Linux OS with things you'd have to remember to uninstall later. I probably go through about 5-10 apps per day like this for about the last 5-6 years.

Security is nothing that's of much concern. Like anything, create a good password for your user account, activate the firewall - really simple.

Go to start, type Firewall

firewall.jpeg (14.5 KiB) Viewed 1470 times

Click the Unlock button, type your password, and turn it on.

firewall2.jpeg (10.59 KiB) Viewed 1470 times

There are other firewalls available, but this is what I mean about user friendliness. It's easier now than ever before to protect your computer.

Also there's probably about 10 viruses out there (I know... someone's going to flog me for this!!!) but they're almost all:
- with their own uninstallers
- Don't do much damage
- Stamped out by upgrades, and
- most of them tell you that you have a virus anyway (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badbunny_% ... er_worm%29)

There's a big debate as to whether Linux even has viruses. I guess on one hand it's off topic, so I'm not going there. On the other hand, it's something a new user of Linux should be aware of. Like all things - if you want a virus, go to a place that you know a virus exists. They won't care what operating system you have..

Last but not least, there's almost always a way "out" of something - there's no big red button on the keyboard that's going to stuff everything up. As much as every new Linux user I've seen think there's one little command they're going to type, I ask them - have they ever opened a command prompt in Windows and typed format c:/s? No? Then there's probably no need to worry. Linux almost all the time makes a backup of a conf file anyway, and you need to open it as root to do anything other than read it. In a nutshell, it's safer and warns you more than opening \system32\and deleting the drivers folder...

Making the move from a Windows PC to a Linux PC, there are very similar things - almost like translating from one language to another. For example, CTRL - ALT - DELETE will task manager on Windows, but Log off on Linux. CTRL - ALT - Backspace is the combination to shutdown. Opening a terminal and typing xkill will allow you to force shutdown a non-responding app (something that Mint has covered - if a program becomes unresponsive, it will ask you to force quit). ALT- F2 is like <the Windows key> - R in Windows.

There's a stack of them out there, and even better, heaps of resources. Here's one (not mine):
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10thin ... rience/378

Take it easy!

[mihalko]

Don't start off with Mint.

Over the last 12 years I've used several different Linux distro's and Mint is the only one that every time I move my cursor, the desktop gets smaller, and the open windows align to the 4 quadrants and the desktop is unresponsive for a second or two AND this happens about every 5 to 20 seconds regardless of where my cursor is or whether I click on something or not. the best I can figure is it only happens when my cursor is moving. I Googled it and found nothing on how to stop it. I plan on uninstalling Mint 40 minutes after I installed because if the developers couldn't realize that whatever functionality this is supposed to serve should be turned off by default, then I shudder to think what else I'll run into with Mint. Thank God I installed it on a VM. The number 1 determination of good software is how user friendly is it. Being forced to read a manual should be kept to a minimal. The best software is intuitive and Mint is not the best Linux distro based on user-friendliness.

Therefore, I highly recommend installing Ubuntu especialy if you are a Linux noob. After getting your feet wet with Ubuntu switch to Mageia, Suse, Fedora or Debian.

(UPDATE) The desktop problem was "Hot corner" was on by default and apparently the Top left corner extends well below and to the right of the center of your screen. Although I'm not immediately uninstalling Mint and will play some more, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who has never used Linux before.

Any developer worth his weight knows that when software comes right out of the box, the bells and whistles are turned off. The best example is AMD's Catalyst Control Center for their Radeon graphics cards. the first time you start, it is in "Standard View" mode. If you are knowledgeable then you can change it to "Advanced View". Ubuntu is much the same way. Simplicity and ease of use are beautiful and so far what I've seen from Mint, it is anything but beautiful. When developers of Linux realize that in order to be a popular desktop it needs to be easy to use out of the box and adaptable so even the most hardcore coder can turn on the bells and whistles to bring out a powerhouse of utilities.

[MintGuru]

Hi mihalko,

(UPDATE) The desktop problem was "Hot corner" was on by default and apparently the Top left corner extends well below and to the right of the center of your screen.

Menu - Cinnamon Settings - Hotspots

hotspot1.jpeg (20.77 KiB) Viewed 1461 times

You can either show where the hotspot is, change it or remove it.

That's what I like also about using Virtual Machines. You can install different desktops etc and have a play with them. I was (am still am to a high degree) a KDE user because I like the ability to change things. Gnome is (to me) the equivalent of Mac, where it's a bit more user friendly but in the old days, it took a bit more to tweak. Of course, you can install different desktop distros through the repository, I use KDE full because I want to take advantage of everything it has to offer.

The KDE desktop also utilises Plasma, and in the early days, like most things, it had its fair share of bugs. I see it's a lot better now. KDE also offers a heap of applications embedded as an immediate application rich desktop. As long as there is healthy competition between the desktop environments, it's no problem.

I also have an Elastix box that utilises a lightweight xfce desktop so that I can schedule and view backups without command lines. That's under a CentOS back end. These days, in my honest opinion, I see the command line as redundant unless I need to do some heavy admin work. Everything should be as simple and user friendly as a couple of clicks to get where you want to go. A computer is 90% a visual experience, so the ease of getting around is what will draw more people to it.

I hope I've helped. Really, every desktop has its own pros and cons, depending on how "heavy" you want to use visual effects. To date, I've used the following (and probably left some out):
Fedora, Red Hat, Mandrake (Mandrivia, and some spinoffs), Knoppix, Puppy, Slackware, DSL, PCLinuxOS, Lycoris Desktop LX, Ultimate edition, SimplyMephis, Debian, Slackware, SuSE, OpenSuSE, Ubuntu (and Kbuntu), Gentoo, BSD and a heap of spinnoffs, such as:
Asterix/Elastix (from CentOS)
OphCrack (to get back corrupted Windows files from a nasty on someone's PC)
MythTV
...and run Ultrastar from an Ubuntu-like back end

Each of these had combinations of KDE, Gnome, XFCE and others. All run for various reasons, mainly that I like to mess around with distros.

I'd run Mint 13 on a laptop that once had Vista on it (the one that I'd put Android x86 on once) and it collected my emails without a hitch for over 2 years. In the end, the hardware gave in before the OS did.

That's what led me to Mint14 on this PC.

There was once a time where the installation of Mandrake (Mandrivia? I forget, one replaced the other) that was a total of 20 steps to get it installed! The beauty of Mint is that it asks you questions while it is installing - where you are, your user name etc. When installing Mandrake, I went to sleep, came back to it the next morning and it was sitting there wanting to know who I was. I gave it a username, and found that it was only about half way through the installation! What's your network connection? What's your monitor? The list goes on...

If you had a bad experience with any distro, you can usually quickly find if it's just you or everyone (and if everyone, what the fix is). It's like years ago someone said to me "I hate Fords". I said "Yeah? I have an XE Falcon and it runs like a dream, so what's your excuse?" He said he drove someone's XC Falcon once (a car about 10 years before mine) and didn't like it.

If you see a cow in the field with 3 legs, as a computer guy I don't immediately read that as "All cows have 3 legs".

Honestly, if a hotspot in the top left corner that can be turned off is the reason you're willing to uninstall rather than keep playing with the distro you have, I think you're about to spend the rest of your life uninstalling distros because of such small things.

In every Windows 7 installation I've ever done, I do the following:
- Change the quick launch buttons so I can see them all on the taskbar rather than have a stupid upward facing arrow that hides stuff I want to see, and
- Change that stupid "Keep all programs on top of each other on the taskbar so people who don't know about computers open the same thing 5 times". In essence, instead of one icon that moused-over shows the last 20 things you opened and forgot to close, just put the damn thing on the taskbar and if it fills up, maybe the end user might be inclined to close a few, rather than call me and tell me their computer is slow.

So if I said to MS, "I'm going back to XP because it never did that, or worse still, 98", they'd probably laugh at me. I'm not having a go at you, I'm just stating that you should take it on board that the makers of each desktop environment want to give the end user an experience, and in the case of Cinnamon, it's a quick mouse gesture to do one of the things Linux does best, and that is to display multiple desktops.

Even better for you, if you don't use multiple desktops, just make it so it has one. If you REALLY want more than one desktop and hate the hotspot, turn it off and do this:

Start - Cinnamon Settings - Applets

Then find this, and turn it on:

workspace_applet.jpeg (8.04 KiB) Viewed 1461 times

I think desktop producers and programmers take a lot of feedback into account, so by just saying "Do this or I'm going somewhere else", they probably will look at the 95% of people who like it the way it is... they must have asked for it. As a programmer and software support specialist, I always looked at what would please the masses and create (and charge for) something if someone wanted something just for themselves. I hope that you can understand this. I'm not affiliated with any desktop programmer, but I've seen people ask for things before. I can guarantee 100% that if Cinnamon turned off the hotspot by default, the programmers would get a flood of emails asking "Where did the hotspot go? I liked that".

As a business owner as well (in the past), I've read the 80/20 principle. I'm not saying they won't listen to you, but from the perspective of pleasing the masses, they've probably read it too.

Keep going - there's a lot to learn. If it takes you 2 minutes to change (or remove) the hotspot and place applets on the panel that will let you change workspaces instead, that's all the more reason to spend the next good part of an hour having an enjoyable experience with Linux Mint.

Take care.

[Haysdaddy]

Hello everyone!

Just wanted to say thanks to you all in advance, I am new to Linux altogether and after destroying ubuntu 12.10 in less than two hours I did some research and decided on Mint 14. One thing I've already noticed is that people in this community seem very helpful and pleasant and that deserves much acknowledgement. I am trying to learn Linux to expand my knowledge of Operating Systems because my career path is changing. I'm sure I will need help along the way. To start, does anyone have a command line (terminal) reference that they prefer?

[nomko]

does anyone have a command line (terminal) reference that they prefer?

Yes, i do:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install {package name}

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sudo apt-get remove --purge {package name}

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sudo apt-get autoclean

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sudo apt-get autoremove

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sudo apt-get update

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sudo apt-get upgrade

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sudo add-apt-repository {ppa}

and some more...

[jamvaru]

best thing you can do is get (or check out from library) a book on linux and read it, preferrably one with a disc so you can follow along with your own installation of whatever version they are using as an example in the text

just make sure your computer can run whatever they are trying to use; should be system requirements in the back or on the back cover

this will be a bit better than lurking, lol

for the next level, get a book on linux system administration and certification; get certified if you like, but you don't have to take the test if you aren't planning on making money at it

[widget]

best thing you can do is get (or check out from library) a book on linux and read it, preferrably one with a disc so you can follow along with your own installation of whatever version they are using as an example in the text

just make sure your computer can run whatever they are trying to use; should be system requirements in the back or on the back cover

this will be a bit better than lurking, lol

for the next level, get a book on linux system administration and certification; get certified if you like, but you don't have to take the test if you aren't planning on making money at it

Just to add to that.

There are some very good resources on line. Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu and Ubuntu is based on Debian. LMDE is based on Debian. So information for Debian will be useful as will information on Ubuntu.

Most Ubuntu information will have a lot on Unity (the desktop environment) so that part may not be real useful.
http://ubuntu-manual.org/shop/eric-drew ... 72748.html

http://www.liberiangeek.net/2012/07/mor ... -download/

http://www.debian.org/doc/

[Essexraptor]

For a Newbie, like myself

For the first few weeks:

1. Expect it to go pear shaped (wrong) because it will. You learn quickly ... by breaking it

2. Keep notes (written) of all the things that you do and command line tips that you find that work! It's quicker to get back to your last installation from scratch without having to Google it all over again. Don't be afraid to un-install and re-install if your not happy with your first few attempts

3. BACK UP all your valuable folders daily or after each session for the first few weeks at least !!

[widget]

For a Newbie, like myself

For the first few weeks:

1. Expect it to go pear shaped (wrong) because it will. You learn quickly ... by breaking it

2. Keep notes (written) of all the things that you do and command line tips that you find that work! It's quicker to get back to your last installation from scratch without having to Google it all over again. Don't be afraid to un-install and re-install if your not happy with your first few attempts

3. BACK UP all your valuable folders daily or after each session for the first few weeks at least !!

Back up is a great idea anytime.

You will have less chance of data being lost if you learn do install on 2 partitions early on (/ (root) and /home). I was lucky as I am very good at breaking things. Learned that the first week.

[slipstick]

If you are looking for a good, detailed book, the best one I've found (so far) is "A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux", third edition, by Mark Sobell (couldn't find one specifically for Mint). Lots of detail (1200+ pages) so maybe not the best first book for the average newbie, but a good one for the technically inclined newbie or as a reference for the more experienced. This edition was published in 2011 and covers Ubuntu up to 10.04, so no references to Unity.

[bb333]

I just took the time to read through this entire thread. I installed Mint 14 a few days ago and I have to say that I didn't do anything that all these good people suggest. I read nothing. I made no backups. I didn't know about downloading that program to make sure my downloaded file was correct and I just burned it to a dvd. I didn't know anything about Mint, or Linux. I just liked the screenshots. When I booted from the dvd I looked around for about two minutes and figured I had to have it. I even had problems with the touchpad, but that didn't deter me (I did figure that out later after it was installed). I installed it as a dual-boot with Windows 8 and just had to accept the default 129GB partition it wanted because I couldn't change it with the keyboard.

As it all turned out, everything works beautifully. There is a learning curve and I've gotten the help I need on this forum and it has been much appreciated, but Mint really isn't that difficult coming from Windows. I'm saying this from the perspective of being a user, not a techie. So, if you want to try out Mint, don't be afraid of it. But, do yourself a favor and read through this thread. There are tons of good advice here. I can see that I was EXTREMELY lucky not to have had any problems, but there are things here that you really should know before you install. Good luck. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Number #1 top tip: Ignore this entire thread.

These "good people" are posting some seriously bad advice. No separate partition for /home? Use /home for multiple installed distros? Swap, what's that? :lol

Number #2 top tip: Jump right in after you thoroughly test and have a working livecd available. I would still suggest a dualboot solution or know how to get windows working in a virtual machine.