I have an Old Upgraded HP with a Phenom II x4 955 and 4GB of DDR3 1333 and im using the old hard drive which is a 320GB segate 7200.10 and was thinking about Installing/learning linux and how to Program on it, the problem is i have no clue where to start, what language to learn, or even how to use linux.
My hope is in the future to be able to develop useful application i can use and understand enough about software to fix and identify most of the problems i may come across in either my system or someone elses.
Any advice on where to take it from here would be great appreciated!
Hey, leraning linux is not necessary these days. You can use a Ubuntu without knowing anything about the command line and programming.
If you really like to knwo what is going on with linux, try to install arch linux. If you are able to set it up an install your GUI and all the staff you need you figured linux out ;) but be warned, it is a hard task! Or take a look at Gentoo, that is even more hardcore :D
I would recomend to install Ubuntu and learn python. You will have an system which is easy to set up with the capabilities of using the command line. Python is a simple porgramming language and will teach you the main concepts of programming. For the future you should learn C and/or C++. Those are complicated laguages but way more powerfull. You could solve almost all problems with python, but C/C++ is in most tasks faster.
Questions? :)
Well are there any basics,like tutorials to get me started ?, i dove into hardware pretty hard but im complatley new to understanding anything about software, so what some people may assume to know i probably know nothing about.
download Ubuntu here: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop
make a bootable usb stick: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows
install Ubuntu: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vFhSyA7BsA
to get started with Python, you could watch this http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5BFF1549EDD52C37 or read the official tutorial http://docs.python.org/2.7/tutorial/ (that is for Python 2.7, which in installed on Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 12.10 has Python 3 installed)
Ok thanks, guess ill have to dive in and see if i dont screw anything up (a)
Do you want to install only Ubuntu on your system? If so, you could always reinstall Ubuntu, it is realy easy to do. Also installung Ubuntu alongside with Windows is no problem http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00N0DsD9sog .
You could also install Ubuntu in a virtual machine under Windows, which is even easier. Just get virtualbox https://www.virtualbox.org/ and try Ubuntu.
And dont be afraid, the more you break, the more you learn ;)