1. I have never used or dealt with unix, linux, or any variation thereof, and want to. My biggest problem is that all the versions I've looked at want you to install from a CD or DVD, but I'm wanting to put it onto an Asus eeepc, which has no such drive. How would I go about installing on it? I've not seen any install options specifically for netbooks, so I don't think that's it.

2. As I said, I've never dealt with any variation of the OS, so I'd like to know how different the versions are? Is there a version more suited to beginners or is it more a matter of functionality differences instead of capability differences? Not sure I've said that in a way that makes sense or not.

3. What kind of resources are there? I've heard of the "man pages", and assume that's a manual. Is that online or in the OS like the help pages in MS products?


Thank you to anyone who helps.

Ad 1) There are guides on how to install Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora from an USB stick. Just don't expect any performance wonders from an EeePc

Ad 2) Read up on UNIX, Linux, GNU, Solaris, OpenSolaris, BSD, Linux distributions, and POSIX

Ad 3) There's plenty of information out there. Man pages (manual pages) for the most part describe what a certain command does and what command line switches it accepts. Other than that most free operating systems rely on the internet: mailing lists, boards, forums, IRC channels, ... Unless you buy a support contract you probably won't find a central contact for any issues, but that won't mean you can't get help. You just have to know how to word your question correctly.

I don't expect great performance from the eeepc, which is part of why I'm using it for this. I can't really screw the thing up (I don't use it for much really), it wasn't exactly great with XP on it, and I can use my other computer (the one I'm typing on) to look things up if I really need to. My biggest problem was figuring out how to get it on there in the first place. With so many variations, it isn't exactly easy to look at all of them and see which have a way to install them on the netbook. Thank you for the links, that will make this much easier.

If you've got a regular PC, I'd suggest downloading a few Live CDs/DVDs, and test-drive them first. This way you'll get a first feel for the system and how to handle it, without endangering your system.

New set of questions! Yay!

I followed the instructions for Ubuntu on USB install and have the netbook booting from the USB. I get a screen with UBUNTU at the top, and has options of what to do: Try Ubuntu Netbook Remix with, Install Ubuntu Netbook Remix, Check disc for defects, Test memory, Boot from first hard disk, Advanced options, Help.

If I choose Try or Install, it goes to a black screen with a symbol that I'm pretty sure is the Ubuntu symbol. Then, it takes me to a black screen which seems to be an error message. I don't know what to do here. Lines like "can't open .dev.sdb: No medium found" and "can not mount /dev/loop1 on /cow" don't sound right. I'm left with a prompt and I think that it's asking me to mount a filesystem, but -a (which it tells me is "mount all filesystems in fstab) gets a reply of
"/bin/sh: -a: not found
(initramfs)"

Am I doing something wrong? The install guides I'm finding all seem to think that I'm past the hard part now that the USB is set up and being read. They all say to "follow the instructions" and "it's easy"...

I've tried setting up the usb drive again, and nothing changed. Any ideas what I can do here? Sorry for the huge message, I just don't know what's needed here and what isn't.