kde

[Skreecheeboy]

I'm thinking about changing my OS from Windows XP home to KDE. Once I've backed up all my important files, what's the next thing I need to do. What's the safest way to go about doing it?

[fo3nix]

KDE is not an OS, it's a desktop environment.

I assume you're planning on using some GNU/Linux distro... which one?

If you're not sure, I'd recommend Ubuntu (which uses GNOME, but Kubuntu is there if you must use KDE).

Regardless, backup your important stuff to another drive (another hard drive, and I'd also put all your personal stuff onto a DVD or CDR too).

Then, decide whether you want to partition your drive to keep Windows too, or just do a total format and install GNU/Linux over the top. Once decided, it becomes important as to which distro you want to use (Ubuntu for example has a liveCD, but other distro are installed in other ways).

[Skreecheeboy]

Cheers Fo3nix, I am planning on backing everything up onto an Ipod that I'm hopefully going to get at xmas. I am assuming this will be possible. It will be some kind of open source but I prefer the appearance of KDE to the Gnome one. The reason I'm apprehensive about it is that I'd like to wipe the slate clean on my PC but I know somebody else that did that but then when he tryed to swap over the PC didn't know what drivers, graphics cards and stuff he had on it. Any ideas what the school boy error he made might have been and how I could avoid it? Does the programme that you download have the intelligence to work all that stuff out itself or do I need to programme it myself?

[fo3nix]

Getting things working can be complicated with GNU/Linux distros, some more than others.

Ubuntu has some of the best support for peripherals out of the box, and Kubuntu may also be like this (I assume they just swap GNOME for KDE, but I'm not sure on the specifics).

My suggestion would be to decide what distro to go for, and ask all your questions in their forums, where people far more knowledgeable about that distro than on here can answer.

Which iPod? My suggestion would still be to get a dedicated separate hard drive, and do a proper disk image of your current Windows setup to that (and not just copy some files and folders), so that if everything goes wrong you can still get out of it without too much mess.

DriveImageXML will let you do this (for free),
http://www.runtime.org/dixml.htm