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What's A Good Starter Linux distro?
alen writes "I've been working with NT for a year now, and I'm getting really tired of it. So I finally decided to learn Linux, after a year of putting it off. I've got an old P2 266 that I'm going to use. Now the next question is what distro do I get?
What's a good starter version? I'm just looking to get the feel of it and to play around a little. " This question gets asked periodically - it's always good to hear have a lively discussion about it - I love my Debian but have heard that Mandrake is a good starter distro.
Debian is an easy system to install/uninstall, including most apps. Its also not too hard to make a barebones system. This is why I'm playing with Debian (after installing RH for a friend for a very specific task - and no, its not connected to the network, I don't trust a 6.2 install for security especially when I don't know jack about it. I don't have problem's with the distro's security, I have a problem with my knowledge on how to impliment it.)
So, why do I want a minimal install and the ability to add/remove stuff easily? Because, I feel that I learn better when I have to do everything myself. It may take longer, and I'll probably screw up bigtime, and get hacked/crash the system, but I'll be learning. Anyways, right now, the box is being used as a temporary file server that doesn't have anything over a week old on it, and nothing critical. (I dial up at home, at work I can use a T1, a box I can SSH into at work is rather useful).
At the moment I'm running OpenSSH, proFTPd, and Apache, and looking at configuring TinyDNS, as well as setting up Tripwire. Slowly, I'll learn. Heck, later I'll probably add Gnome, but atm, I'm happy in the command line.
It's a modified rescue disk, with lessons!
Designed by a college prof, for use in the school lab. No hard drive support, so you can't f up your current system. perfect for the first couple days of "what do I do?" at the command line. Download from http://floppix.com
I just upgraded my system to a 1.1 T-Bird (DDR RAM and what not), So i decided insted of messing with windows, getting it to work with a new system I would just reinstall(My registry and some missing Dll's is what really drove me to reinstall). I installed windows, and spent 2 days finding drivers for my cards, I installed Mandrake 8.0 befor I went looking for drivers for my windows side. It worked perfectly, I had Mandrake working better than windows in less time. Plus I have Q3 for Linux (Thank you Loki). If I could find UT and Max Payn for linux, I would delete windows.
Now in order to be flammed evenly on all sides let me say that there is no one particular solution for everyone. In fact, ANY of the major distributions are fine for beginers becuase the Linux community has tried (IMHO) in recent years to accomidate some of the "troubles" of first time users and made the install process pretty friendly. That being said each distribution still has its problems. For instance, if you had an Abit motherboard with the High Point Chip you were screwed with Red Hat 6.X series if you had hard drives on your ata-66 channels. Linux still requires you to do a bit of background work on what ditribution is good for you, but this is good thing. I think its still in the best interest to check newsgroups and the web for background because it gets you into the whole Linux community instead of being an isolated bump on a log and leads you into being a more interactive user.
Cthulhu for president!
I picked Red Hat because most of my Linux friends use Red Hat distribution. This way, I can always get help if I run into problems. I could have gotten Mandrake, but none of them use it. When I am ready, I will try other brands.
I would try picking a distribution if you have friends who use a popular Linux distribution.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
If you just want to 'try linux' but don't want to put much time into it, Mandrake or RedHat is probably a good choice. However, if you *really* want to *learn* about linux, try debian.
Debian is similar, but better supported and IMHO much better put together. Things get installed in the right places. Package management is a dream. Default settings for many things are *sane*. Finding documentation, or packages to do something, is easy. Fixing it when it breaks, or upgrading bits when new holes are discovered, is also easy. Debian is powerful, well thought out and well put together.
Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
CL (Conectiva Linux) provides the same thing and more, you can choose exactly what you want because all packages are subdivided. Feel free to test it.
And what version of SuSE were you using?
Fired right up with my GeForce.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Sure some good points but with a GUI you can have more than 6 shells and play some games in between learning to be a *NIX guru. Personally I find my eyesight has deteriorated since using any GUI and I yearn for the days when all real computing wasn't done on a Mac :-) .... but lets face it when most people talk about an OS they mean GUI because unlike you and me and probably still most Linux/UNIX afficionados, people want a desktop for productivity apps (whatever that means :-)
It's for people who prefer a straightforward configuration and component package. People who like to MODIFY their installation with new kernels & software packages would probably prefer it. There's nothing easier or instructional about it.
If you think you need handholding or better all around package function, you're better off starting with RedHat or Mandrake.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
I ended up buying TRI-Linux from LSL. It's much quicker than burning all those ISO's! I also picked up a couple of BSD distributions. (I'm not affiliated with LSL in any way, other than being a satisfied customer... I bought Tri-Linux a couple of years ago but never used it to set up a "production" machine, so I didn't really use it that much).
Also, after quite a lot of reading, I came to the conclusion that I want to run Debian, but I don't think I'm quite ready for it yet, and it doesn't seem to support all of the hardware that I need without lots of patches and such that I just don't want to deal with right now. Maybe next year.
You're probably saying already, that doesnt make sense. Let me ellaborate.
RedHat/Mandrake are both very similar. Often, one user of one hates the other. RedHat people will say 'RedHat is more powerful and stable' and Mandrake people will say 'Mandrakes easier and less buggy'. As you can see, these statements conflict. Overall however, there very similar, and either one is fine. They're both based on RPM, and they both can be used for virtually anything.
Then there's the Slackware/Debian crowd. They tend to stick together, but they have differant views none the less. They take pride in their 'elite feeling', in that only people with 'skill' can use and know these distributions. They're typically harder for the novice, yet easier for the seasoned Linux user. Debian has arguably the best package management, and Slackware has probably the most loyal user base ever formed. These are top choices for someone experienced in Linux. Additionally, their is Progney, a commercial debian-based distribution that makes using Debian easier, and provides commercial support. This is quickly becoming a good alternative.
Finally, there's the SuSE and other crowd. They are less known and used, and usually appeal to a specific crowd. SuSE for instance, is very popular among non-US users. These are also generally good, especially if you have really specific needs.
Now, which crowd is right? None. Which is the best? None. It depends on what you want, what crowd you fit in. If you're very technical, You fall into the Slackware/Debian crowd. If you like what's popular, easy, and commercial, you'll like hanging out with the RedHat/Mandrake folks. And if you like something very specific, or a close community, you'll like SuSE or something else.
But what is right for you? That's up to you. Research all of them, Try a few, Play with them. It's like shopping for a car. Some like Chevy, Some like Ford, and some are fine with a Honda. And some just dont care.
What I use depends on the target machine. If it's a server, I'll go with either RedHat or Debian. If it's a workstation, RedHat. Firewall, I use OpenBSD or Debian. But like I said in the beginning, my opinion, or anyone else's, means nothing. Good luck.
Linux: Because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.
James Brents
its the distro i started out with, and since then ive tried every single distro under the sun (with the exception of debian, thats next).
every time, i came back to slackware, and for the following reasons i recommend it for beginners:
1) first and foremost, its not going to mollycoddle you. redhat, mandrake, suse all make extensive efforts to be userfriendly and easy (dare i say it, like windows..), but in the long run they simply give the wrong impression: that linux is simple; its not.
2) secondly, its not going to kill you either, it lets you learn the OS at your own pace.. i started out barely being able to use xwin, and as and when i was ready i learnt about the console and its various uses and features (and correspondingly obscure things in x, too)
3) thirdly, after a year or two in slack, you'll have no problem adapting to a *bsd; i went from slack to freebsd and noticed little difference. this ofcourse is because one of slack's philosophies is to be as BSD-like as possible.
the only problem with slack is that some programs will need a little tweaking or hacking to run under it (the first thing that comes to mind is win4lin) because they are made for redhat and similarly setup systems (inconsiderate bastards that coded them.. hehe)
anyway such are my thoughts, take them as you wish..
Ratio of replies to old sig content : replies to actual post content > 0.5. Sig changed.
If it's because of a moral/open source issue, then realistically you have to go with Debian, but you can expect to encounter an almost vertical learning curve at the start - it's not reknown as an "easy to install" distro. So much so in-fact that I would *never* recommend a user with no *nix experience install it until they had played with another distro for a while - that's the beauty of Linux of course, you can play around until you find what suits you best.
If you are getting into Linux because you are going to be using it in a corporate environment, then you probably want Red Hat; it (or a derivative) is used on perhaps 90% of systems with "Linux Inside" and corporates seem to like Red Hat best, but check your intended first... Red Hat's installer has leapt forward recently and it's a very nice distro for support because it has the largest user base abd has generally given me the least grief.
Finally, if you are coming from Windows and are just curious to see what the fuss is about, then checkout S.u.S.E. and/or Mandrake. The former has an "everything including several kitchen sinks" approach and the latter is perhaps the best at making Windows users feel at home and has a very nice installer.
Finally. Play. There are lots of distros; the above are just the ones I know enough of the current specifics to support a new user on. Once you know your way around; install another distro. Play. Install another distro. Play...
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Man did my friends laugh at me, still using Slacky 2.3 in 1998!)
As a matter of fact, I've written a course here in NZ which will teach everyone to to build their own distros from scratch. I'm hoping it does teach them an awful lot about an awful lot which would help them an awful lot and gosh, I've said an awful lot an awful lot of times. :o)
RedHat is FAR too close to Microsoft, in happy-friendly GUI ways, basic utilities crash constantly ways, and ebrace-and-extend ways.
/etc/sysconfig/network/*, ifconfig, and route.
:)
1. Happy-friendly ways. chkconfig, linuxconf, rpm. The ideas are nice. they're very nice ideas. However, they're botched in a number of ways i'll soon get to. KDE, GNOME, whatever is available in whatever default installation of RedHat is nice and quite useable. Just like Microsoft. That is certainly admirable. Doesn't make it good, though.
2. Basic utilities crash. Have any of you done an RH 6.2 FTP install? Hell, even a custom CD install can easily pull a segfault out of RedHat. netconfig on 5.x and 6.1 will segfault if it doesn't get specific PTR lookup responses. Even worse than that, it'll segfault in the middle, so you don't know if it's changed your sysconfig settings, your live IP address/subnet/default route, or what... and if they're out of sync, don't expect netconfig to work once more to fix it. It'll just segfault some more and leave you hanging unless you can vi
3. Embrace and extend. RedHat has positioned itself to be the high-market-share distro. However, RedHat intentionally releases broken standards (RH 7's egcs for one?) and moves things around in such a way that if a software developer writes a program to be installed on a RedHat Linux system, it won't install on any non-RedHat-based distribution. If it does install, the crazy egcs release will keep it from running on the new machine. RedHat often screws with things like init scripts just enough to make them UNIX-like, but to break POSIX standards. What pisses me off about RedHat is how deliberate their embrace-and-extend design policies are.
I don't recommend RedHat for anything, because learning the quirks of RedHat puts users into bad practices of using their proprietary tools, or expecting the proprietary behavior of their tools to be standard cross-platform. It's sort of like how a lot of linux distros have a 'route' command that, for some reason, won't accept 'route add -net default' (which is standard across UNIX) but will accept 'route add default gw'... annoying.
And why do users use SysV-style Linux distros, and still use ps -ax? why not ps -ef?
.... um, i lost you after "0110100001101001".
hehe, I did the exact same thing, though on a Pentium200.
- The installation
- The management system (often related to the installer)
- Room for going out of the management system
Overall, I was most impressed by Redhat's installer. Of all the machines I installed on it caused the least amount of problems. Mandrake in some ways looked a little slicker, but when it had much less control, and ultimately annoyed me enough not to go further. Debian's installation lacks a lot. I beleive this is partly because the installation is less important with Debian (and I've gathered the same with Mandrake?)Although there is a certain amount of simplicity involved with distros based on tarballs (i.e. slackware) with the number of applications it can be rather time consuming after awhile. As I mentioned, I used redhat for a long time, and I found the RPM system to be rather frustrating at times. However, for a beginner you probably won't notice the some difficulties that might come up, as well as user friendlier front ends like ximian's installer.
Overall, really the key to getting used to Linux is: (a) patience (b) an ethusiasm for some punishment for great reward later in life [sounds like a religion..] (c) you need to make sure you sit down and spend a lot of time on the linux box - its a matter of needing to do things, and having no choice but to research how they are done [for instance, you 'need' to burn a CD, and you have to figure out how to set up ATAPI cdrom writers up] (d) an O'Reilly book by your side (I still have not found a good substite) - yeah, its basically what you'll find online for free, but unless you have another computer around, certain things could be difficult to lookup, and paper is sometimes better.
Comparing a vast majority of Linux distros together is like comparing apples and oranges.
Each distro has its major features, enhancements, and drawbacks.
I suggest you get 2-5 distros together, for a new user, I suggest Mandrake, Redhat, Debian, Suse, and possibly Slackware as good comparisons.
Try each for a period of time, then see which one you like best after you try them all.
Brent Jones
There's also the ZipSlack option, that lets you put Slack on and run it from a Zip/LS-120 disk (needs about 100 meg of space). It can also be run from a Windows partition. It's a 32 meg download, so even over a modem, it's not bad (I just did it a couple of days ago). Both of these options could get him started with Linux quickly and more easily than just about anything else, not to mention with less risk.
I plan to set up ZipSlack myself in the next couple of days (my CD-Rom died and I'm broke at the moment).
I've been using redhat since redhat 4.x days and let me say that I am sick and tired of it. It's easy to install and includes a lot of useful packages but you are completely at the mercy of redhat for future upgrades. It is guaranteed that nearly every package will have some bug or massive security hole and it is only a question of time before you have to update and then update again. And when the next release of gcc or texinfo or tex comes out, you hope and pray that someone releases an rpm for it. Most likely you wont be able to find the latest release from redhat. Eventually you must delete the outdated rpm package from your machine, pray that it doesn't break something else, and then do your own manual install in /usr/local. What a PITA. The convenience of RPM is an illusion that only lasts in the short term. An RPM-based distribution only works if the vendor keeps old versions up-to-date, which they don't, which forces you to upgrade whenever they want you to even if their latest distro is full of bugs like redhat usually is. If you don't upgrade you are on your own and the convenience you thought you received from RPM evaporate. I am going to try debian next since it appears to have a more active user community so you are not totally reliant on the arbitrary corporate whims of redhat.
That must explain why the Hyundai Excel *cough* Windows 2000 *cough* doesn't like to run NFS: Porsche Unleashed with my GeForce 2MX. It doesn't like the competition! ;)
I think that when starting out with linux, you must ask yourself what you will be doing, be it, starting a server, or just keeping it as your desktop, you must look at everything.
If you are an experienced computer user, that is comfertable with partitioning then, grab a distro like debian, or slakware, if you are new to the whole idea of resizing your HDD, then go with Redhat or Mandrake, they come with tools for setting up a loopback, come with graphical installs, and provide a good explanation of how and why you are doing certian things....
on second thought just install OpenBSD..
Back in the '80s, there was a television commercial that ran on certain NYC cable-tv channels almost constantly. It was an advertisement for a 1-900 phone sex line and featured an attractive blonde woman being urinated on by several off-screen men (the streams of yellowish liquid that covered her were later revealed to be Gatorade).
The ad's voiceover, a woman's breathy, sexy voice, said this: "1-900-555-PEEE. The extra E stands for eXtra Pee".
Windows eXtra Pee. At least Microsoft isn't telling us it's rain anymore.
Windows for Daleks 3.11.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Ah, that's your problem, you don't know about the other RPM switches. -i is install, -U is upgrade, -F is freshen, it's all good. *grin*
If you're gonna re-configure every damned part of the system, yeah, mebbe slackware is cool. But as of RH 7.1, it's simple to pick what you want installed, how you want it installed, configuration is a snap, package management is easy.
RH doesn't "try to configure everything for you and mess it up in the proccess" (paraphrase) very often, and if it is, chances are you're the one that's causing the malf. Get outta X and configure it from the command line. Easy.
I've been using Linux and Debian long enough that it is probably just a case of I forgot what I learned, but could those of you with more fresh memories of difficulties shed some light for me?
There is one difficulty that has long been a problem with (I think) any Linux setup -- getting it to work with your hardware; although that is changing more and more. But I see that as a distribution-neutral problem.
When it comes to having well integrated software, and convenience in upgrading packages when you want new features or bug fixes, I have had far better luck with Debian than I ever do with Red Hat or Mandrake. The one version of Mandrake that I tried (7.2) was laughably broken. KDE settings would be lost without warning, their upgrade utility was completely worthless, because it did no dependency tracking for me, and several of the packages the "friendly GUI" listed would fail to be on the servers when I tried to download them. It was all I could do to keep the thing from spontaneously combusting. I gave up and switched my wife to Debian 8)
Maybe I'm just using my system differently than others? One suspicion I have is that maybe most newbies just install from CD, and then leave it alone most of the time. Therefore they don't expect to install new software they read about on slashdot or freshmeat, or upgrade to the latest version of qt for anti-aliased fonts, etc.
Anyone have any input that could help me out here? I never know what to tell potential newbies, because I always want to recommend Debian, but I know I've heard lots of people say that's a bad idea.
I think I'm going to go with SuSe for my first setup. It's probably that I just like that chameleon...
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
If you really want to learn about Linux and how it works and all that, here are some useful footnotes:
Mandrake is the Mac of Linux
Redhat is the MS of Linux
You could do it with either of them, but with these two distributions, everything is supposed to fit into a framework that is predetermined by the respective vendor. All the hacks I did on Red Hat systems to get them to do what I wanted were just that... hacks. Mandrake is quite similar and my former roommate had the same sort of problems making his system learn new tricks.
Slackware is the UNIX of Linux
For learning, this is the system to do it on. I haven't actually used Slackware in a long time, and I've heard it has some kind of auto-tool thingy similar in kind to up2date or apt-get, but I don't recall its name. Installing Slackware is a learning experience. Maintaining Slackware is a learning experience (if you don't use the auto-tool). Anyone who took a Slack 96 system through either an a.out to ELF upgrade or a kernel 1.2 to kernel 2.0 upgrade knows this. I had fun with Slack and it gave me a good foundation, but it got tiring.
Debian is the Linux of Linux.
Installing Debian is a learning experience, but after that a trained monkey could maintain it. In fact, cron can be trained to do most of your maintainence - to the point that all you have to do is replace failed or full hard disks.
I like to play children's songs in minor keys.
"We're all sons of bitches now." --J. Robert Oppenheimer
darn it if i don't understand all these references to american cars. and what is wrong with not being circumcised?
If you ever plan to go "under the hood" of your linux, then I've got this warning:
/etc will take you forever).
;)
STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM RED HAT AND CLONES.
And chances are that you *will* need to go under the if your HW isn't 110% supported. And there the various Linux-HOWTO's wont help you much. Red Hat seems to want to setup things their own way (just try figuring out the mess in
And if you plan to compile something from source you're into another hell.
Red Hat is the distro that makes no sence!
I wasted almost a year with RH (6.x) until I discovered Slackware. And everything suddenly worked. Everything could be configured. The Linux-HOWTOs could actually be used. And I could actually compile stuff.
I'd say, if you ever need to fiddle, go with Slackware (or perhaps Debian).
... or just go FreeBSD.... *way* cooler than Slackware!
There was a varient of debian out there called Storm. It was relatively powerful, and yet had a great GUI for the beginner. As with any distribution, the installation would start asking questions about things you can not possibly completely understand at first or with a templated "beginner" install that would invariably not include something needed (such as a c++ compiler), so multiple installs are often necessary to get it setup with everything you want on it. (Hint: even if you don't code, you need a c compiler to install other programs).
Anyway, checking their website, I am sad to say they have closed up operations. I knew they had done this months ago, but the "hybernation" message is still on their web site.
I started with Slackware 3.0 on an old Gateway P5/100 as a dual boot system. I've run FreeBSD on my servers for years. I've run Slackware, Red Hat, Mandrake and a few interesting variations here at home just playing with them and I have to tell you, the most important part of picking a distribution is hardware compatability, imo.
For instance, on the machine I am on right now, I could not install Storm. It would not recognize the ethernet card in the system. I could, however, install FreeBSD on this one. Now if I changed out the D-Link ("el-cheapo") 100BaseT fast ethernet card for the other D-Link "el-cheapo", which is 10BaseT, I could install Storm, but them FreeBSD would not recognize it. Everything revolves around the hardware issues, or at least so it would seem.
Check through the sites, and find the ones that list your hardware - Start there. It's probably the least frustrating way to start.
Michael Coyle of ResExcellence.com says YDL (yellowdoglinux) is nice... check his site for more info on this matter...
I submit another, kinda clunky, but it really gets to the heart of the hard-drive-overheated-by-fragmented-swapfile Microsoft eXPerience:
4) eXtinguisher a Prerequisite.
That could also work because of the frequent crash-n-burn syndrome Windows exhibits. Case in point... A friend of mine works with a guy who was installing Win2k on a server. He rebooted after the install, and low and behold, the C:\WINNT folder was absolutely GONE without a trace.
Haha... just thought of another one... eXtended and Proprietary
For ease of use and simplicity in getting started, I recommend Red Hat 7.1. While it's true that Red Hat is often called the "Windows 98 of Linux distros", the fact remains that it's a good starter distro.
Also, if you find yourself craving a slightly slicker GUI than the default versions of Gnome and KDE that come with most distros, be sure to check out Ximian Gnome (http://www.ximian.com). In addition to providing a nice interface, they also have a number of nifty "Setup Tools" available [warning: beta versions, but I've found they work pretty well] that are at least as easy to use in admining your box as the Windows equivalents. Plus, there's the Evolution groupware suite on the horizon; be sure to download their beta and check it out!
High-quality Linux web hosting for geeks and coders.
The command prompt is good for those that understand it and need it. Windows has a far easier to use GUI environment than the Linux distributions I've seen yet. Why accept this? Why not make Linux not only faster/more advanced/more hacker friendly/etc.. than Windows, but more user friendly as well?
Probably because it is cooler and more technically challenging to hack kernels. Writing documentation, GUI programs and install tools is obviously too boring. But, this way Microsoft will win the large masses.
A good starter car would be something like a Chevy Malibu. One of the automatic-transmission Volkswagens would also do you wonders.
[Mandrake, Suse]
Once you crave a little bit more power, but still a friendly set of controls, you might want to look at something like a Chrysler (or Dodge).(Debian and Progeny)
As you get better at driving, you may want more power and better handling, as well as a bigger engine [and you're probably going to want to rebuild the engine yourself, too]. A BMW or standard Volkswagen would cut it, as well as more powerful vehicles like a Corvette or a Camaro.
[Suse, Debian Woody, Red Hat]
Once you're a driving pro and you've learned lots about the internals of your car as well, grab a few manuals and a wrench and build yourself a hto rod from scratch with all the parts chosen and built specifically for your vehicle.
[Linux from Scratch].
The best *unix* for a newbie to start with is freebsd, due primarily to the excellent box The Complete FreeBSD by Greg Lehey - I'd recommend any newbie to invest in a copy with the cd's... It's not even a difficult install (if you can read...)
For a beginner and personal uses I would go with Red Hat. On P2 266 I would go with updated 6.2. Though getting to work all the hardware(3D graphics,CD writer,USB) would require some work.. With 7.1 all above right almost out of box - but 7.1 requires a lot of RAM (128MB minimum) and is a bit slow on PII 266 if you use KDE/GNOME. Jacek
I've been a linux newbie for 2+ years now. Why? I've never had a successful install. I've been trying SuSE and RedHat on and off on my DEC AlphaStation 200 and it never works. What I mean by never working is the install can either never start/finish, or if it does X will crash within minutes of using. And I don't have anything complicated hardware-wise (unless you consider that it's an alpha), it just a stock AlphaStation with a S3 Virge DX video card being the only foreign piece to it. It's all left a very sour taste in my mouth as far as where linux has been and where it's going.
And forget about RedHat, I'm never touching that again. I kept trying to fire up the 7.1 iso repeatedly and the kernel wouldn't even decompress in aboot. My old copy of 6.2 actually worked and installed, but I couldn't do squat with it since it would crash if you just moved the cursor around or dragged windows, which is the exact same thing that happened to me over a year ago. Why I thought it would work this time, I don't know. And why is it that a distro over a year (7.1) later can't even boot off it's own bootable cd, when a way earlier version could? So I decided to try SuSE and do a FTP install (I had tried it before and it worked, but I didn't have enough disk space to complete the install. Now I have more so I thought it would work this time). Nothing..."You need a minimum of 128MB RAM to complete this install." What?!?! I thought linux was all about using old hardware with minimum specs. Since when do you need 128MB of RAM to do an install? That drove me nuts right there. And the fact that most of these distro's have a 2 cd install setup is just as nuts. Windows doesn't even require that much space or need for cd's to install the OS. Sure there are a ton of apps being thrown in with those disto's, but what happened to just installing a core OS? Can't I just do that? And can't I get a cd that does just that?
Searching for help on this matter isn't exactly easy either for a newbie. There was an article a while back (by taco i think) about how linux is going nowhere with the attitude in support for newbies by the general community. Every deja archive I went through was either generic as hell in describing a fix, to no replies at all, or just plain downright rude. That just simply has to end or Windows will rule the market indefinitely.
Which is exactly what happened to my little alpha again. I flashed the bios back to ARC from SRM and proceeded to reinstall NT Server. Literally a million times easier and less hassle than I got trying to get linux to even install or boot off some floppies.
However, from reading all this, it looks like somewhere down the road I will have to give it another whirl with Mandrake as the distro this time. From the posts it looks to be a good starting point. Also, linux is about the only life left for Alpha's at this point so it's do or die.
It doesn't matter which distribution you choose, but...
/usr/doc, and learn what you have to know.
One thing that you need to realize is that in *NIX GUI (X) is not a necessary part of the OS. In fact you won't run it on a server. Most of the things are accomplished by starting processes in the shell and telling them what to do. You shouldn't start learning any *NIX with a GUI, period. GUI is there for GUI apps and convenience, not an essential tool needed to run the system.
That said here's what to IMHO to do:
1) Read hardware compatibility information lhd.datapower.com is one of the good places to go to.
2) Learn the basic *NIX commands from a book.
3) Understand how the system is set-up (FS layout, where things usually go), everyone must know and understand this. Also, simple commands and pipes and redirection. If you want you can do basic pipes and redirection in DOS first.
4) Everything is a file. (Though this could be understood after you install and play.)
5) Read how to install it. Install it. cd
I think he meant that RH was MS-like in terms of usability (i.e. GUI-friendliness versus hardcore-user friendliness) relative to other Linux distros as opposed to MS's usability relative to other OS's. At least, thats how I read it.
This has been fixed, thank goodness, and other little things work better now too. Setting up your /etc/apt/sources.list file is just a matter of removing comment #s, but really knowing takes time. Program names, etc. Other distros used to be easier to install.
Debian is a great system to install for someone you are willing to help out. Once they get it, it's much easier for them to move on with. I really like how stable their configuration files have been, and your friends will like that too. If you don't have that kind of time, throw Red Hat at them with a book like Linux Unleashed. That's what I did to myself, so it must have worked.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
When I decided to try Linux, I picked Debian because of the cooperative development project. I liked that I would be accessing, and maybe helping, the work of truely interested software engineers and advocates.
I learned to keep, and read, the manuals for my hardware! Why? Because I had to learn what the questions were before I could answer them. Now that I know what the ethernet drivers are looking for,and sound, and tools for configuring X have improved dramatically everywhere, it's become very easy to "pick the right one."
This familiarity is true for every flavor of Linux, but the quirks of Slackware, RedHat, and the other flavors I've tried send me back to Debian to see if it works at all, before returning to the other flavor.
I've also been very, very pleased with the package maintainers efforts. Company needs some network monitoring fast, MRTG? Yep, it's in there. Hear of a neat freeware Linux game like X-ShipWars? A quick "dselect" search shows that it's available, and choosing it will get all the needed drivers and support software versions at the same time.
I would say that Debian works very well as a beginners distribution, because you don't have to work hard to install working software.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
For some reason I prefer Slackware as my Linux
distro. Why? Well basically, it doesn't have
Yast or Linuxconf, of which both suck like no
other women have sucked before and which in
this case, is _not_ good.
Well, anyways. Slackware it is!
1. Open BSD is difficult , but not impossible, to install. You will learn more this way.
2. Most network services are turned off by default. Therefore, if you are new to *nix and have no idea what 'NFS' or 'identd' is, you don't open your machine to every Tom, Dick, and Script Kiddie by exposing services you don't understand.
3. The code has been audited for security. This means, if you are like most newbies and don't know/understand the patch and update system, you are more likely to have a relatively secure machine when you connect to the net (also see #2 above). If you install a popular Linux distro from a disc, you are most likely going to have at least one or two well-known exploits exposed until you patch.
4. Everyone should be made to use the 'sh' shell for a while. It builds character.
5. The base install doesn't include fighting penguin games or 4 different kinds of graphic manipulation or 3 different word processors. It gives you just the basics, just what you need, and it installs very fast. If you need more stuff, it provides a really nifty package management system that will grab source from the project's home site and build it for you.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
In contrast, Mandrake 7.2 works out of the box. At this point I'd recommend trying Mandrake 7.2 or waiting for 8.1 . Skip 8.0. Especially for a Pentium 266.
tune
skkkoooonnnggggkkk ptui
I installed Linux. It lasted about a month. I quickly came to understand the meaning of the quote, "Linux is only free if you don't value your time." First thing I had to do was recompile the kernel to get all (well, most) of my hardware recognized. Then I had to write my own network card driver. I don't think I ever managed to get my video card running at 85Hz. DVD support was... well, we all know about that. And it crashed more than Windows 2000 ever has. Day to day operations were simply not as intuitive as they should be. There is only a certain subset of people who enjoys spending their time this way. In my view, it is Linux that is the cumbersome toy.
Unfortunately, I have to post this anonymously, because obviously it would cost me karma otherwise.
P.S. -- The "ls" command does work in Windows 2000...
Windows9x is a bit like a Z28 with an automatic transmission; it gets you where you need to go, it's not slow per say, and it does most things for you whether it's the right thing to do or not.
WindowsNT is similar, except it's got more horsepower, and thusly you're more likely to die on the highway in it.
Linux is alot like a highly-turbocharged Toyota Supra with the turbo dialed down and a manual transmission. It ain't slow, but you can get it to go faster, if you know how. Just getting around in it requres some getting used to, and you can die on the highway with it as well. On the whole, it's what the "real" racers would prefer, but comparatively few people are "real" racers.
***JUMP PAD ACTIVATION INITIATION START***
***TRANSPORT WHEN READY***
Debian is easy. I first started with Linux in 1996, using Debian stable whatever it was back then. It wasn't that hard to install.
I agree with it... I have been using Windows since 3.1 came out. I grew so used to it, that I didn't look beyond that until last year, when I got a copy of Corel Linux. Strike one. It was a nice-looking release, but I found it very very cumbersome and limited. Wrongfully, I assummed all linux distros are like that. Then, few months later I gave it a second shot again, using Second Edition. It was really bad, and crashed on my machine evrey time I ran it. Strike Two. I still decided to stick to Windows. It was not until few weeks ago when I put up a server running RedHat at work and... Homerun! I had all best experiences with it, everything from daily tasks to networking and even gaming. Of course I had problems with certain apps that I tried running in Wine, but nonetheles I am really happy with going that route. Hence, as a person who dealt strictly with Windows, I would highly recommend that with KDE 2.1 or 2.2 as a start. Of course, I am aware that there is as many other opinions as there is users and distribution.
Hence, I would suggest to try RedHat if you haven't used UNIX on a daily basis. And even then, if you wouldn't like it, I would not get discouraged and tried other recommendations. I bet after a few days you will find it a really attractive alternative (or a definite change).
In my experience, Linux has quite a few little impasses that are incredibly difficult and time-consuming to figure out, but can by easily bypassed by someone who knows what they're doing.
FAQs, HOWTOs, man pages and bulletin boards usually have the steps to do what you're trying to do, but in my experience you can't understand the answer until someone explains the source of your confusion.
If you really want to save yourself some grief, find yourself someone who knows Linux reasonably well, invite them over for dinner regularly, and then get them to help you figure out the problems you've been stumped by.
for $30 at CompUsa, it was the best one i found. Easy install, decent manual to walk you through the more bizarre install pieces (I had 4 partitions and 3 OS's on my primary drive) and decent online help (better if you speak German, but good in English). Plus, you get a cool lizard on your desktop and stickers. STICKERS RULE!!!
See, when a user first installs a distribution like Redhat or Mandrake, they see a desktop that looks and acts remarkably like Windows...up to a point. After which, little things simply don't work (IE, try to do cut & paste between two apps that implement their own versions of cut & paste, which annoyingly many do). When things that they think look familiar don't work properly, I've found that more often than not, they give up in disgust.
But with Slackware, you're immediately greeted with... a text console. You have to set up X yourself. And to do that, you have to figure out what the command is to set up the X server. And the learning curve continues to be steep as hell, all the way to the top.
At which point you realize that you know Linux. Intimately. Your system is customized, you know every nook and cranny, everything's set up how you like it, and you know how everything's set up.
Another reason I reccomend Slackware is that it's much easier to set up a secondary machine running Slackware. I still regularly fit Slackware installs in under 100MB of disk, so I can have a friend set up a little spare machine out of spare parts using an old Pentium I or even 486 board so they can get used to the system without having to take the big productivity hit of giving up Windows or MacOS entirely. Dual-boot systems, I've found, never get booted into.
I've set up four of my friends using Linux. One with Slackware, one with RedHat, and two with Mandrake. The only one who's still using it is the Slackware guy, and he doesn't use anything else. One of the Mandrake guys is slowly getting back into Linux using Slackware.
first of all, close your tags if you don't want to look like a complete moron.
secondly, if mandrake got you hooked... good for you. i got hooked by yggdrasil, doesn't mean it's right for everybody/anybody. i *liked* not knowing anything. i *liked* learning something completely different. you liked a familiar comfortable environment.
as previously noted, who cares? try something... try to learn it, if you don't like it, try something else. lather, rinse, repeat.
LFS!
Yes, building your linux system from scratch is fun! I've been using various distros for a little over a year now, and I've only recently built my own from scratch just last week. It was an enlightening experience that taught me many of the little details that used to frustrate me so much in the past, like those confusing rc.N folders, and the common "Where is the config file for XXX?" questions that always appeared in my mind.
linuxfromscratch.org is a bible, a buggy bible, but one that teaches many great things in an easy to follow manner.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Debian is not that hard of an install. Frankly if you dont know how to partition a disk, and can't figure out the debian installer (2.2) then you will have lots of problem with linux. Maybe starting with mandrake would be a good idea. But try debian first.
Slackware is too much for a real newbie, but while a little bit of a challenge to get up, it is NOT rocket science! The current system is not the challenge some like to claim it is. debian's packaging tools make getting applications up and running very easy. Doing cool shit is a major motovating factor, debian makes getting cool shit running easy.
Install debian a few times, get things going nicely, try slackware a few times, then try that linux from scratch thing, I forget the URL....
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
Don't use 6.2, use 7.1 if you go with Redhat. If you do go with 6.2, don't use NFS without upgrading, there's a remote root exploit. I found out the hard way.
and Suse ? the OS/2 of Linux ?
well, i was helping someone through an mdk8 install, and i figured "hey, you know, mandrake, its easy and purty, i'll have them use it". before you know, after a completely good install (3 of them in fact, in the end), she gets a kernel panic whenever she tries to boot it. i found that this was probably a problem with her chipset, and i didnt know how to fix it. watch out for such things while installing stuff for newbies.
as root
# adduser [username] audio
to get normal user CD access (for grip, etc)
# adduser [username] disk
Heh. Sounds like Linux 1.0
Mandrake will not allow you to install packages if you don't tell it you have the second CD. It's very convenient like that. Nonetheless, it includes good software, I'd get it if possible.
As for Red Hat, it's practically a requirement if you go beyond the standard distribution. If you decide you want XEmacs, for example, it's on the second CD. No warning whatsoever (Grr), and you end up restarting the install process. My guess is you went with a default install like workstation.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Personally, I'd pick Debian. Mandrake is great if you just want to get a working Linux distro up and running quickly, but I find that it is really detrimental to your actually learning Linux and the ins and outs of a UNIX operating system. With Debian, it's not a PITA to install, but you actually have to LEARN how to do things. When I first started using linux in 1994, Slackware was king, there were no RPMs for installation, no pretty graphical (X or otherwise) setup routines, and compiling your kernel meant you had a choice of make config, make config, or make config. I wouldn't know anywhere near as much about UNIX/Linux or computers in general had I had something like Mandrake to hold my hand all along. Debian installs can be somewhat frustrating if you're new to it all, but the experience and enlightenment that you get will be invaluable.
It's the only distribution I know about that you can run completely from the CD, no on hard disk installation is needed.
Just FYI, Slackware has been doing that for years. Yes, it's a nice feature, but it's not unique.
Hey! vi is all I need for editing, but even I wouldn't dream of installing Slackware!
<GOAK> Debian for purists, RedHat for those lazy enough to that RPMs actually save them time (if you have probs with libs try SRPMS, oh yeah and try maintaining half a dozen boxen around the net using .tgz oh joy!) and Mandrake for the newbies. SuSE for the Europeans, and Turbo for the Asians .. not to forget RedFlag for those damn Chinese commie worm writers!</GOAK>
. . . who has been playing with Linux for two months, I like Mandrake. I have tried Debian, Red Hat, Progeny Debian, and Mandrake.
Progeny Debian was my first test case. I like the principles behind Debian, but was intimidated by accounts I'd heard of the horrible installer. So when Progeny said "We're like Debian, but with a better installer and auto-magic hardware detection," I said "Great!"
That didn't work. For some bizarre reason, it couldn't see my PS/2 ports in XFree86. I could use my keyboard fine at the command line, and my USB mouse worked quite nicely. But.
if ($NoKeyboardinX){ delete($Progeny); }So next I went straight on to plain old Debian (2.2r3). And the installer was not as bad as I heard. It got the job done well enough. So it's not pretty -- so what?
The apt-get command makes maintenance really easy. When I'm in Debian, my sound card only works if I'm logged in as root, which probably has something to do with device permissions. It's a good distro, but not for the faint of heart. I spent four days trying to install accelerated drivers for my nVidia TNT2 M64. It involved recompiling my kernel 6 times and STILL not getting it right (unresolved symbols in my modules). Eventually, all the mistakes I made rendered my system inoperable. I had to format the hd, buy a new one, and give Windoze and Linux separate living quarters.
Red Hat installed fine. I liked the option to do a "partitionless install" although I didn't use it. That might be a powerful recommendation to a total newbie who wants to play with Linux without a) giving up Windoze, or b) repartitioning. On the other hand, Red Hat uses Gnome by default. It's okay, but KDE is so much more polished.
The Mandrake installer was really cool. Not only that, it detected my TV card and had drivers for it, something which none of the other distros did. It uses KDE, and the selection of games that comes with it rocks. Pingus rules! Furthermore, it gave me the option to use an accelerated driver for my graphics card right there in the installer -- no mucking about with kernel recompilation in this distro!
Based on these experiences, I would recommend Mandrake. One caveat: when selecting partitions to format, the yellow star means that the partition is selected. There was no indication which color meant selected and which not -- choices were purple and yellow. I guessed wrong and formatted the Windoze HD by mistake. No data loss (backups are key!) but reinstalling and configuring is a pain. I mean, a checkbox would have done as well. Or perhaps the stars could have been green or red.
Anyway, I currently have Debian, Red Hat, and Mandrake on my second hard drive. I'm still evaluating them -- I haven't picked my favorite yet. But just based on the experiences, I'd say try Mandrake first. Oh, and if you have multiple distros on one disk, a boot partition for your kernels and loader helps a lost!
Oh, I almost forgot. Several months ago, I briefly flirted with DragonLinux , a customized version of Slackware which lives inside a giant file on a regular Windows partition. Avoid it. I couldn't even get X to run in that thing, never mind anything else.
Selanit
Sure slowlaris(sparc) has its place on corporate nets that can afford the ridiculous price for the hardware or need an app that only runs on it.
The rest of the world is abandoning it for good intel/AMD hardware and their favorite flavor of open source UNIX.
Debian..
I've only tried two flavors of Linux- TurboLinux and Debian... Getting the Debian CD image was a bit of an adventure (having to use make-pseudo-image and such) but made me feel all warm inside at the end- I'm a usual Windows user so such an experience was new for me. The installer ran perfectly on the test box I set up.. after a few reinstalls (to get the serial module loaded in, I was unaware it wasn't part of the kernel.. I also didn't know how to add modules once Linux was loaded!) I had the box booting into X and such. I must stress that I've never used Unix before ^_^' After Debian I decided to try TurboLinux, you know, just to see. For some reason I remember the bootable installer scaring me.. I couldn't really figure out what to do. So, I immediately developed an uninformed opinion on My Favorite Distro.. Er.. I really like apt-get.. but then again, I've never tried rpm.. Just another luser newbie ^_^
for what little it's worth, your lockups were probably related to your sound card problems. i had the same problem with this install (suse 7.2) until i swapped out the sound card and now it works beautifully.
"The things we wizards have to put up with."--Jethro Bodine
The BSD's are better than linux, so use one of those instead.
I realise you're obviously joking, but pity us poor souls who actually do have to use Solaris! Luckily here at work we have a RH6.2 server with everything installed, so I basically just use the Sun box as an X-server and run everything on the Linux box :-) The only commands I ever have to type in Solaris are the name of a script to open the x-server to the linux client apps, and telnet!
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Take a look at distrowatch where you can find a fairly comprehensive table comparing all of the major Linux distributions.
Why do you come to Slashdot then?
I'm a relative gnubie, having played with LINUX only over the last 5 years. Last year, at the big NYC LINUX expo (the one BEFORE the crash ;) I got about 10 distros on CD and a boatload of enthusiasm. Since I've administrated Netware/M$ shops for the last 3 years I've been trying to get the chance to implement LINUX in some capacity, especially so I can advance down the *NIX road and actually have some useful skills. Mandrake 8 IS a wonder to install, but it left me flat.Frankly, since I approached things from a workstation perspective first, the fonts were /and are terrible out of the box. This actually is my biggest gripe of the LINUX desktop among all distros...fonts ugliness. If they were smooth and pretty, I'd have no issues. Well, a couple of months ago, I picked up SuSE for the first time, 7.2, and I was converted. Suse seems to do a nicer job with the fonts, installs graphically-as easy as Mandrake-, has Geeko the Gecko AND Penguins in abundance, and has the whole Pro distro available on a single DVD or 7 CD's. I was giddy when I installed it on to my laptop from my Suse workstation, via NFS from my PCMCIA NIC. A first I will cherish. I'm now running Suse LDAP (for company e-mail directories that work with our netscape clients, I refuse to roll out Outlook) and web servers at work.
Last week though, I blew off a spare PC at work and tried out Debian. It was a similar thrill to pop in a few startup floppies and install via ftp from a Debian mirror (It's the little things), and then..apt-get...I'm in love. THis package installer/dependency checker is a work of art. Kudos to Debian for keeping such a remarkable database to allow for such seamless updates.
Well, rambling aside, I say that Suse, Red Hat or Mandrake will all be great and easy to start, I lean towards Suse because of the ground it allowed me to cover with Yast2 (graphical setup tool), and equally the distance I travelled walkoing away from Yast...
Good luck.
Josh Marshall.
I wasn't trolling, I've used RedHat Linux (albeit 6.2) and I had a lot of problems with it.
About the worst thing I find is the dependencies to install new RPMs are always lacking, especially with the actual package manager being outdated. (I usually compile from source now, haven't bothered to upgrade RPM.). Otherwise, stable and reliable.
On the other hand, Hedwig (RH 6.0) was my first Linux. That profoundly sucked. It really profoundly sucked. Even coming from a long time UNIX user (with no root access before, mind you) it almost made me give up. Then I tried Cartman (6.1); it was okay. 6.2 is great.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Everybody's weighing in, so what the hell... I've only been using Linux for about six months, and I've tried 2 distros. I say go for Slackware, it's got all the editors and the HOWTO's... If you have too much trouble configuring, try VEC (Vector Linux). It includes SaX to configure video, monitor, mouse, etc. Very helpful. It helped me figure out how to get connected with a modem and get video acceleration with 256 colors :)
I've since moved back to Slackware to setup DNS Caching, IP Masquerading, etc, and it's a much more thorough distro.
Do yourself a favor and read some stuff at www.linuxdoc.org ... It's got the newest HOWTO's or links to them...
Happy Linuxing,
My two cents,
rutledge_almostaranch@yahoo.com
I've tried all the distros except Mandrake and SuSE is the best as far as getting setup and running smoothly.
I recently tried SuSE 7.1 for the first time on a Sparc platform (since RedHat dropped Sparcs as of 7.0.) Try as I might, I have had no success is getting the supplied 2.4 kernel to load on a SparcStation 20 - it returns with the message "Decompression error: uncompressed image too long - wouldn't fit into destination Image not found.... try again" The supplied 2.2.18 kernel, however, works fine.
Overall, while SuSE 7.1 works fairly well, I don't feel that it has any benefit to me over RedHat 6.2, though the Sparc platform has always been a poor cousin under Linux. (Curse you, Sun!)
On the Intel platform, I've been using RedHat since 5.0 or 5.1, and have no complaints and would recommend it for new starters.
Although Mandrake, RedHat and other distros might simplify the installation process, I still think that Debian GNU/Linux is the way to go. And I've never been too fond of RPM's either... It seems like the other distros are trying to turn Linux into something it is not, in order not to scare away users coming from Windows.
;)
Before attempting an installation, I think that new users should get a good book and spend some time familiarizing themselves with the OS.
Booting off a CD-Rom with the latest Mandrake distro and letting it do all the work might sound easier than reading a book (or a bunch of HOWTO's), but I have found that you will get much further by actually knowing what you're doing...
Oh and apt-get is the best thing since sliced bread!
Cheers.
Why not just run debian testing or unstable then ? ... The package system does make a lot of stuff easier.
If you tend to want to run the latest version of stuff anyway
And with debian especially you have the advantage of being able to easily change the source of a package and then rebuild it into a package and install that so that your package system knows you do have that, you can even do that with a custom kernel (which I haven't seen in any other distro).
Slakware is probably one of the easiest distro's to use. Yes, it has a command line installer and doesn't boot into X by default, but its config files are very easy to understand and getting things to work is a matter of un-remming a line. A mouse is not what makes things easy, common sense does and Slakeware config files are written with common sense. Jim
"Life is art...Paint your destiny"
first off you forgot the slackware evangelists, that aside you obviously have no idea what you're talking about saying
/dev/psaux, if it weren't for mandrake i'd never have gotten hooked on linux. so what you start with should be easy
just pick a distro that you like, be it Debian, RedHat, Mandrake, Suse, Caldera or even FreeBSD or something.
a linux n00b has only a faint idea of what a distro even is (what? multiple version of an OS i no understand, where's clippy?) anyways he's lookin for a recommendation, i'm a debian user, started out on mandrake, if someone had handed me debian on day 1 with no help i woulda been gone in a sec, how the hell am i supposed to know that my monitor has a refresh rate, or that my mouse had to be specified as
Photos.
A very interesting distribution that was recently developed at the Ateneo de Manila University called AdmuLinuxGO seems to be a very good distribution for newbies who aren't really sure they want to go the Linux way. It's the only distribution I know about that you can run completely from the CD, no on hard disk installation is needed. It's a great distribution for newbies to try, as it doesn't really require any installation at all, you simply boot from the CD and you get a complete graphical Linux development system.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
You'll have to try them all, and stick with NT/W2K/WXP as I did. All that altruistic shit is great, but look, I have to make money. So I'd like software I write be licensed under some license that permits to make money out of it. It is not about whether or not Linux is great (I don't think it's THAT great by the way), it's about windows being installed on 95% of desktops worldwide and representing the best platform to market software on.
SuSE is the distro I love more and more. All software precompiled and patched to work great from the very beginning. The boxed set also have all documentation you need to get started very quickly.
I belive it to be the MS of the Linux if You recognise MS as the makers of very user friendly software.
They are *not* the MS that makes buggy software.
SuSE is just dependable and secure all the way.
http://www.millnet.se/ GO/U d- s+:+ a C++ UL++++ P- L+++ E W+++ N+ w++ M-- PE+ t+ X++
I would recommend that you try Mandrake. I have installed Red Hat, Mandrake and Debian in the past month and as far as ease of use and easy installation Mandrake beats them both. I have seen quite a few posts recommending Red Hat. Here are a few reasons I would chose Mandrake instead. Let's talk about out of the box functionality. 1) Mandrake definately has the easiest install program. Red Hat comes close. 2) My mouse wheel worked when X started. This is not always the case with other distro's. While this might seem trivial to those already using Linux we have to understand that Windows users are used to things working (hold the flames) when they are plugged in. Trying to configure a cryptic file in /etc/X11/ is just out of the question for a newbie.
2)Disks are mounted automatically in Mandrake. Again this is just my experience with the 3 previously mentioned distros. This is a no brainer for those who have used Linux for a significant amount of time. But for someone trying out Linux for the first time imagine when they want to grab some files of CD-R and realize that they can't just pop it in, open up the file manager and browser to /mnt/cdrom.I could never get this to work under Red Hat. In Mandrake, you put the disk in and it's mounted. It has worked since Mandrake 7.2 (maybe even earlier?). And Debian? haha. Not out of the box.
Yeah, thats only two reasons, but I didn't want to make this too long. Again, I am talking about out of the box functionality. You put the CD-ROM in, boot up, install, and you get most functionality from Mandrake. For a Windows user I believe that they will get the closest Windows experience with Mandrake. Maybe that's not what we want. I mean we want them to see that Linux can do much more than Windows. But, you have to start somewhere. Use Mandrake for about 6 months, learn your way around a Unix system, then install Debian. (poster is biased)
With more and more distros getting loaded with GUI stuffs, the Linux distros are getting easier and easier for the newbies.
Some of the distros don't even require you to re-format (or re-partition) your Winblows harddisk at all !
And if you wanna re-partition anyway, then you can't go wrong on RedHat, or Suse or Mandrake.
But, if your harddisk is pretty much beatup, then, my suggestion is to try Mandrake, for their much powerful (as compared to others, for the time being) disk management software.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
If you're running Intel hardware, start with something sane and stable -- FreeBSD -- http://www.freebsd.org
It has execellent support, thousands of ported applications, easy-to-use, etc.
In reality, all Linux Distros are "for beginners."
/ok/. apt-get is a decent substitute for a ports-tree.
To some extent, they all 'hold your hand' during install, as well as providing you with a pretty & nice GUI for administration.
Mandrake is the undisputed King of user-ease.
Redhat is 2nd to Mandrake.
Debian is
slack feels just like it did back in '94.
If I had to chose a Linux distro, I'd probably either go with Mandrake (ease of everything) or debian (actually feels like real-unix to some degree).
I think what's comming out of this thread is that it all depends on what you want to do with you're Linux distribution. If you really want to learn what's under the hood then it seems that the generally accepted wisdom is to pick slackware, while at the other end if you wish to get up and running (and doing work quickly) then opinion generally points to Mandrake as being you're starting point. All the other distributions are somewhere in the middle and try to cater to different market segments e.g. security, servers etc. Personally I've been running and working on various linux distributions for a number of years now and I'm currently running SuSE 7.1. I find SuSE is a reasonable compromise between the two extremes (nice eye candy, well integrated KDE WM and config information in a reasonable locations/formats (for when need it)).
Well then don't run KDE2. That doesn't have anything at all to do with Mandrake. I run Mandrake just fine on a PII-266 with 128 megs of ram. I wouldn't advise using the ram and cpu sucking KDE or Enlightenment but I wouldn't advise using them on any distribution. Look into Window Maker or icewm or sawfish.
The new distributions try to hide what is really going on behind useless, extravagent, and confusing GUI's. If you read and understand the basics (runlevels, starting, shutting down, /etc/rc.d/init.d, etc) then you can clean up the mess your distro installs and have a fast, clean, fun to use system.
suse live eval 7.1 - whack the cd in your cdrom drive, hit reboot. it copies 3 temp files over to your fat32 partition, runs a configuration program to setup X (detects most stuff), sets up a user and then gives you the option to reboot into suse.
it's not the ideal permanent solution but if you wanna give linux a quick try without messing around with anything you could do worse.
I tried Caldera, Redhat and Mandrake and finally settled on SUSE 7.1. I do database work professionally. Suse Professional edition (which is much less $ than Redhat) provides Sybase 11.0, postreSQL and MySQL on the cdroms. I have successfully installed Oracle 8x on it, too. Suse's Oracle support blows other Linux distros away. Just click on the Oracle link on the suse website. I hear that DB2 installs well, too. And, I think that reiserfs is much preferred as a file system than plain old Linux FS for database files. And, Suse provides and is enhancing a logical volume mgr, so one day open-source striping and mirroring features will be avail. Plus, Suse's Update feature to get individual package updates works (and you don't pay extra for it).
I recommend Mandrake 8 to everyone who asks me this same question... the latest version basically installs itself for you. Plus there's a long list of supported hardware,, and setting up my dvd player took five minutes and three dependencies.
Are YOU listed?
There are several Linux distros for beginners.
Several of them do not even require you to re-format (or re-partition) your Winblows partition.
And if you want to re-partition your harddisk anyway, there are several to choose from.
Nowadays, with the GUI and all other things in ample supply, it's a tose-up between RedHat, Suse and Mandrake.
However, if your harddisk is pretty much beatup, I'd advice you to go with Mandrake because of their powerful disk management software.
This is just my two cents, and YMMV.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I think Mandrake is probably the best choice. It has the easiest install of any distro I've used (I've used everything but Slackware), has a great selection of software, and is very helpful with getting your hardware working.
I would NOT recommend Debian to a newbie. A Windows veteran should be eased into Linux, hence Mandrake is the best choice. (And I review distros for a living. Not that that actually means anything.)
If you enjoy frustration, then get Debian. Of course, since you are using an older system then it is OK. Be prepared to use older kernels and libs, because Debian does NOT like keeping anywhere up to date. If you like compiling and building yourself, however (real men don't use packages) then you will be ok. But newer libs, kernels, functionalities and anything else that is less than two (2) YEARS old will be in old non-functional packages that have a very high probability of screwing your system up. Remember, Linux is for the l337 (at least that is still the prevailing attitude in most posers) so try going with a very user/admin friendly distribution like Mandrake or Redhat
people may tell you it is hard etc dont believe it. you really get to learn. coming from an NT background thats what you need.
my 2 bits
r
"So I finally decided to learn Linux..." I tend to think this kind of comment is off a little bit. To me you dont "learn" linux, its not a programming language that you learn in a academic sense. I like to substitute embracing Linux when people say "Learn Linux".
so much beer, so little time
I'm not knocking "dumbed down." I'm using Mandrake 7.1 (kernel 2.4.6 and KDE 2.1) at home, rather than Slackware or LinuxFromScratch. I AM a Windows refugee....
/.configure, make - make install" is somehow more sanctified than typing rpm -i...
You know, I never understood the logic of forcing everybody to go to Slackware as many have suggested in this thread. I mean, the question was "What's the best starter distro?" and people are basically responding "F*** you, I suffered, so should you!" Go get a copy of slackware and figure it all out the same way that we did.
In effect, they're saying, "I have nothing to offer to the experience of using Linux - You are doomed to suffer the same frustrations as I did."
That's such a load.
They think that typing "tar -zxvf, .
If I write a tool or a script or a howto, it's to make things *easier* for the next guy - Not to punish them.
"Linux from Scratch" - When did you first hear that term? A week ago? A month ago? It's a meme - A great ideal, a great-sounding idea. What percentage of slashdotters are actively using a LfS OS as their primary OS? Fewer than one tenth of one percent, I'd guess. Don't feel inadequate because you didn't build your own GUI using VI and assembly language. Use what ya got. If Mandrake does what you need, use it - Don't apologize.
If someone asks you which version of Linux you are running, don't get apologetic, look them in the eye and say "2.4 Kernel".
As for tech vs. traffic cop, I'd suggest getting into databases - as a very wise person once said, "Databases tell you two things: Who owes you money and where they live - as long as those two things matter, you'll be able to find work..."
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
Keep in mind, this guy will be running it on a P2 266. I have a K6-2 350mhz box running Mandrake 8, and it crawls a bit, because of KDE2. Just think what would happen on a 266...
I don't follow things out of blindness and loyalty either. But I remember when I first installed 95 OSR2 back in the day. It was EASY. I never used it before but i installed it without looking at a manual, without a crash, it detected my hardware. It was simple.
I tried Corel Linux 1.0 and Caldara OpenDesktop 2.5 (I believe) Corel crashed on install, and Caldara didn't pick up my fairly good and 2-3 year old hardware.
Why can't linux be just as simple? (I haven't tried the new distros yet, but i'm willing)
It seems like there are alot of Linux elitists out there who what to keep linux to themselves. Now, There have been a small few of Linux users who have gone above and beyond the call of duty to help me out. I'm just saying, I cought alot of hell from those other asswipes becuase they were unwiling to help me solve my problems (which i tend to believe it was childsplay to them)
You want linux to grow? You want linux to make money? You want Linux to thrive and become an OS power to be reckoned with?
Personally I like the idea of an ordinary man being able to open the hood of his operating system and do some fixing if he feels the need to and has the compacity to do so. I like the idea of open source. Now, i don't know jack from shit about how linux works, but at least if i learned how to, familiarize myself with it, use and gain my own sense of pride by doing it myself in the process. This is actually what drew me to linux in the first place, it was the philosophy of it all. Not necessarlly becuase i hate MS. (which changes with the weather, and it's usually rainy.)
I'm just tired of the cold shoulder.
I found this particular article to be very helpful (along with alot of good comments). I also want a flavor of distro that feels and installs like windows to start off with. Not becuase i'm a wolf slipping into sheep's clothing, (or vice versa ;)) but because i want to acclimate myself to it, adjust to it without getting lost in the process.
And when I feel i have hit the bounderies of that particular distro, move to something more flexable and challinging, or maybe not.
Not everyone who drives a particular car has to become the sole mechanic of that car. Not everyone who wants to use linux nessessarly wants to hack and *really* get in the mechanics of it.
Is there such a thing as a "dumb linux user" like a "dumb windows user"? What i mean by that is, A person can use windows without ever knowing how to change certian hardware settings, or without knowing how to change the startup + shutdown screens, tweak the registry and the OS. A person who doesn't use windows with a wrench but just knows how to drive it. Can't there be a linux user counterpart?
Is that so bad? I mean christ, you hand the man a OS that is in essence free, give him the tools to fix and manipulate it, So you basically give the man the *Oppertunity* to put linux through the motions. He may never get that far, but at least if he has the desire to, he can do so and perhaps may even fix or create something great that he can then turn around and share with his fellow users.
Isn't that what Linux is supposed to be about, or am i completely missing the target here.
#Sig Goes here
A Penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!
ive been thinking about trying linux for a while, after reading the posts here i think i want to try mandrake, i went to the ftp for the ISO of 8.0 distro.. what file do i download? the mandrake80-inst.iso or the mandrake80-ext.iso? Is inst what I want and ext is for EXTras, Or do I need both?
no need Kates the girl:)
eXtra Pain
Bush's education improvements were
Now i'm using SuSE on 2 computers, 1 with GUI, 1 without. Both works fine, and is relatively easy.
I never really tried another distro which you can compare to today (i've tried an ancient version of Slackware long time ago...)
For the people who really can't get satisfied with any distro, they can try Linux From Scratch, but you already need some linux installed for it. (or you can try with one of those "Linux on a cd" thingies, never tried those.)
Question: Of the two Mandrake ISOs offered, is the second disc a mandatory download-and-burn? Of Redhat 7.0, Disc 2 was never asked for. Still don't know what's on it.
Thanks
Isn't that a kind of Linux? Okay, so maybe it's not but I'm running Pine on it and that's kind of Linux like, isn't it? Okay, so running Pine isn't Linux but you get my meaning. I can read the ads now: OSX, the Linux that's not Linux but is sort of like Linux.
well, if you have unix experience, I'd use slackware. it's very close to a pure unix system.
If you're new to all of *nix, I'd use something like mandrake. It's very straightforward in it's design, and is great for those who don't really know what they're doing yet.
When I started out, I started with slackware, and SLS, but that was a long time ago.. :P.
Heck, even corel linux would be great for getting people used to linux. it's a great distro for those who just want a desktop machine that runs linux.
Another you might want to think about is Conectiva, as it's very easy to set up and use. I've suggest that one to people also.
Essentially, the best thing to do is grab a couple of distributions, and see which one you like best, they've all got ups and downs.
Mandrake comes with the most "junk", the best control panels, the most support for weird hardware out-of-the-box, the most apps, and (possibly) the nicest installer. It also is based on Red Hat, so it's industry standard.
Red Hat is a good choice too; it's a little more non-nonsense, a little less fun, and slightly more stable.
There's always Redmond Linux if you're a die-hard Windows user that wants your interface to change as little as possible.
Other than that, I would have to say that I don't specifically recommend any of the others, although I will admit that most of my experience is with the "big names."
I would personally recommend Suse, but the truth is it doesn't really matter. If you have wierd hardware, check that the distro you're going to install supports it. What is much more important than the distro, is a good beginner's book on Linux (or a good friend which has enough paitence). I'd reccomend O'Reilly's "Running Linux", which I still check stuff in (I'm running Linux for at least 3 years).
It tends to install okay.
Gives you lots of GUI configuration help.
All in all it is a nice beginner distro. As you learn more you can move away from the GUI configuration and do it by hand. Then latter on, if you want to keep learning more you can start setting up the more expert distos like Slackware, of Linux from Scratch.
Whatever you decide to do, Mandrake is certainly nice - hell my sister and Mother in Law both manage to use it everyday, without problems.
I come from a LAN down under
Where the packets flow and routers chunder
I tried most of them, but came back to SUSE. I'm currently running a home network with suse 7.1. This includes a Sony Vaio, and various PC's. It runs samba, netatalk, nfs, firewall, and IP masquerading without any problem. It only goes down when the power goes out.
The choice of redhat is a good one, for all the reasons you mention. But using 6.2 is very bad advice. Get 7.1 which is very secure and very stable. I think that a default 7.1 workstation install is pretty secure. Then you should register with redhat and use their up2date program to do any security upgrades (no cost for one machine). If you use 6.2 you are giving up most of the software improvements of the last two years (old kernel, old GUI). More importantly you are giving up two years of security fixes!
Gah, trolls. Windows is what everyone uses for graphical environments, and RedHat is what everyone uses for linux environments. Get over it.
I have a laptop which runs Windows 2000 for my Windows development work. I often also wish I had Linux installed on it too, but didn't want to partition the disk, and didn't want to trust my Windows data to an experimental NTFS driver.
So I installed the Cygwin tools. Recently I upgraded them to the latest versions, including XFree86. Wow, do they ROCK. Most of the CLI tools I"m used to from Linux (BASH, SSH, man, info etc) where there. XFree86 defaulted to twm, but I downloaded the IceWM sources and compiled it with NO CHANGES WHATSOEVER and it works perfectly. Some configuration changes were necessary in some of the window manager files to get them working just so (in particular XTERM defaults to the current SHELL environment variable which normally under NT is set to cmd.com; changing the menus to xterm -e "/bin/bash" does the trick).
So far all the Linux sources I've downloaded have configured and compiled without any fuss.
If you aren't doing anything with the Linux kernel and you don't need a Linux desktop, then Cygwin on NT or 2000 may be a good way to get access to the user tools you get under Linux.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Progeny seem to be a good starter distro. One can use it initially and graduate to the more complete Debian distro, which Progeny is a subset of. Also Progeny comes from the father of Debian. Also GNOME comes very well customised. Progeny also has a good hardware detection program, which recognizes almost all the hardware, thereby reducing the problems for newbies.
I like debian a lot, but it's installer (at least the potato one) is pretty crappy. Once you install it it works pretty well though. Mandrake is pretty easy to install and use, but it's (IMHO) a bit bloated, and you won't learn as much from using it since it's so graphically oriented.
Personally I like freebsd a lot (which isn't linux at all) but Debian would be a good choice as far as a linux distribution. Apt-get is a great convenience and works pretty well most of the time. I would stay far, far away from redhat personally. I haven't used suse or slackware extensively, but they might be good choices as well.
You must go with NINJALINUX.
A lot of people slam slackware for it's (relatively) difficult installation.
Thing is, I learned more about how Linux works, and what is needed and not needed for an installation to work by installing Slackware than I ever have by installing Mandrake or Redhat.
If you want Linux up and running in a quick and dirty way, go for RH or Mandrake. If you dont mind taking a little bit of extra time, and getting a distro that you can learn a lot with, go for Slack.
OpenBSD.
While Solaris isn't open source, and x86 Solaris software and support isn't as readily available as it is with Linux or even BSD, Solaris is *big iron* even if it's running on your little Pentium. 2 year old hardware is well supported, and it's a good taste of UNIX, too. It's *free* to download at www.sun.com! And it's Solaris! :)
Though, I still think that a bash shell is best for a newbie, and Solaris 8 doesn't come with that.
(If you're having problems burning Solaris 8 binaries CDs, there's a workaround, e-mail me.)
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Yeah. Silly question.
Liberty.
slackware is definately the best distro to start out with, and to stay with. After you've used slack for a while, and try another distro.. you will appreciate the simplicity of slackware.
Why restrict yourself to one distribution, particularly if you're going to start out by installing on an older computer? One of the best things about Linux is that you can get distributions dirt cheap. Go to a place like Linux Mall and get a bunch. You can even get multi-disk sets containing several distributions packaged together specifically so you can try out different ones and pick your favorite. Of course if you have a fast network connection and a CD burner, you could even download the ISO images and burn them yourself instead of paying $2 per CD. If you want, you can set up your partition scheme with a separate /home directory that doesn't get reformatted with each new distribution so that your settings are preserved from one distribution to another.
The big message, though, is not to take our word for which distro is best for you; find out for yourself. But don't forget to pay full price for the one you decide you like after you've made your decision. You'll get manuals, support, and help keep the maker of your chosen distro in business so that you can keep using it in the future.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
I started off with Slackware in 1994, and I've been happy ever since. With my computer, that is. If you really want to learn the ins and outs, slackware is it. The installation procedure has gotten very good, and version 8.0 is the easiest yet. But along with the ease of installation, you get to do a whole lot of stuff manually that Red Hat and others sweep under the rug. Definitely a great distribution, and if you go with it, other Linux users will think you're a stud. Or insane (but that's because they don't know any better). Good Luck!
I think it stands for eXPloit.
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
Sorry I couldn't resist.
You realize of course we'll be marked as trolls for this, right? But, you beat me to it. So I'm ganna give you an AMEN.
I don't want to start a FreeBSD vs. Linux war...
I don't want to start a FreeBSD vs Linux battle, either. I get enough of that from some of the people I know. But I have to admit that after using several Linux distros and using FreeBSD, the choice (for me) was quite clear. That's not to say I didn't like some of the Linux distros I tried. Not at all. I really liked Storm and I fully intend to install either Debian or Slackware on an IBM I have sitting in the corner. But when it came time to choose a system of the many I tried to run my web-server off of, I had to settle on FreeBSD.
At first I was a little wery about going with something slightly less mainstream than Linux, but good Linux binary compatibility (not to mention the Ports Collection) was a plus that won me over to FreeBSD.
With FreeBSD the first few days were really rough because there were several major annoyances I had, and none of my Linux friends had any useful insight. But I quickly solved most of my problems on my own. I feel I have learned much more this way. Plus, when I needed quick answers, web-searches almost always provided immediate and exact answers because there is only one FreeBSD and many other users have experienced the exact same problems.
It's something of a shame that Storm went the way of the wind, but after I made my choice to run FreeBSD it hasn't mattered too much. As for my soon-to-be Linux system, that just shows that I'm not knocking Linux at all (how could I?) it's just that I made the choice based on my needs and what I like. I personally don't feel I was moving forward fast enough with any of the Linux distros, but I felt comfortable with FreeBSD very quickly.
That's just me.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
There are a lot of distros out there, and a some of them are good, but isnt it time somebody provides a custom-built solution for each user ?
Something similar to building your own computer. You select the motherboard,chip, memory, and create a custom configuration, and order it .
I understand it can be done with any conventional distro with apt/rpm/yourpackagingtool etc, but cant it be done ina more interactive, newbie friendly way?
Possible questions at Customlinux.org(.com?) :
1) Hardware Configuration :
Processor :
Memory :
MM kit :
2) Required applications :
Office suite
Browser :
Multimedia kit :
Link to App database offering other apps:
Once the options are done, just mix them together into an ISO, and start serving !?
Three years from now you'll now _exactly _ what you want your Linux box to do. Then you have a choice, type in the exact command such as
grep default.ida access.log | awk -F- '{ print $1}' | sort | uniq
or you can point and click you way to trying to find this info in a gui.
How many times have you clicked on the wrong box while speeding through a gui ?
Barnaby
Although Mandrake has a ways to go before it becomes really easy to install and use, out of the distro's I've tried: RedHat 5.1, Mandrake 7.2, Slackware, and TinyLinux, it's definitely my current fave.
So .... you believe only mechanics ought to drive autos ... ? Even if the 'driver' needs to get across town to complete a path_integral calculation in parabolic_coordinates. Not a mechanic, but a ... quantum mechanic - Limiting, seems ta me: the term 'bitchy' comes to mind ... Hummmm sounds a bit like an M$ marketing rag to discourage Linux use, so I figure you own tons of M$ stock.
Yes, one of the most frustrating things I see is the lack of humour. Sigh... I guess next time I'll have to use tags. :-)
But hey it's not too bad, maybe I'll use the car advice after all.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
What's even funnier is you didn't even get it ;-)
I have been using Linux for just over a month now, and have tried 3 different distros in the process. This is my experience: First of all, I installed Mandrake, which has a reputation for being the easiest to install, and supposedly has a rather large user base. However, upon installing it, I was immediately dissastisfied. Mandrake did not offer to me the control I wanted over my system, and seemed too "dumbed-down" for me.. everything was oversimplified, and I was unable to get help from the linux help channels on irc.openprojects.net since Mandrake had non-standard configurations for all of the major functions. Additionally, I ran in to some package incompatibility problems, and performance in Gnome was unusually sluggish (I had used Gnome before on a friend's PC of less spec.). So seeing as I was still in the experimentation stage.. i decided to try Red Hat first. Red Hat was the distro I had heard the most about, so I decided to install that. Everything went smoothly for at least a week and a half while I started to delve deeper in to the workings of the system. Everything was fine till I decided to test-drive the new version of KDE. Problems arose when I tried to change some configuration files required for KDE to start on boot. I discovered that RedHat had it's own distro-specific settings for a lot of things in it's /etc/sysconfig directory. This is a convention I was not very happy with, as once again I started running in to support problems...
So on a whim, I decided to give Debian a try, I figured I should see what the "power user" distro has to offer. I downloaded Progeny 1.0, which is a mix of Debian Potato and Woody (the stable and testing versions). It took me a few tries to get the distro installed properly (mostly due to user error during configuration). Since I like to play with fairly new software, I upgraded my Progeny install to Woody almost right away once I finally installed the system properly.
And that is where I have been ever since.. I am extremely happy with Debian as a distro. The packaging system is excellent, much better than what RedHat/Mandrake have to offer. A majority of the people in the Debian help channels and mailing lists are extremely helpful, and the community atmosphere is great. I have not run in to any problems I have not been able to resolve, and have learned a lot about how Linux works in the process.
Overall, I would say if you are not too experienced/adventurous and don't mind having a whole boatload of software you will probably never use installed on your system, I would recommend RedHat and Mandrake, they are not bad, just not my thing.
However if you like having a distro that is extremely configurable, has a great package managment system, and a good community, I would recommend Debian. If you don't want to brave the standard Debian installation, try Progeny, the installation is extremely simple (even easier than Mandrakes) and I hear it is possible to purchase printed installation manuals/users guides as well.
I hope this has been helpful. Any feedback is appreciated.
Wrong..don't get a newbie confused with slacks ridiculous BSD init..
He can run BSD if he wants BSD..
Debian all the way..
Who uses slack?
Only on slashdot... The third post gets a "redundant" moderation.
As a primarily Windows user, I've never had a problem with Red Hat, be it on its own system, under VMWare, or even on an old Sun Ultra 1 system I was playing with.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
I personally use red hat....and i've been usin' linux for a couple of years...i've tried other distros...but redhat is well-supported, and you can choose which packages and services you want to use..and what to upgrade and not...you can customize ANY linux...so its just amtter of personal preference.....for me its Red Hat.. Crittle
Actually, some of the CD vendors charge such low prices, it's cheaper to buy from them than to burn your own CD. Strange, but true. But they don't always have the distros you want.
But you're right, it does make sense to download if you can, and experiment with different distros -- provided you have the patience to sit through all those installs! And you don't really need a burner, though it does make life easier. The better distros will install from network file system, or even an FTP server.
This is so true. I just switched to Slackware this past weekend after using Redhat and Mandrake for years. I am learning more in a week of Slackware than I had in a year of RH or Drake. Long live Slackware...DISTRO OF THE GODS!
I've heard this analogy quite often, but it's not fair. (And I think we all know that even if you didn't mean it negatively, in these circles, being compared to MS isn't exactly an endorsement.)
Red Hat might have the best selling and/or most popular distribution, but they're not Microsoft-like an any meaningful way. In fact, they're one of the most -- if not the #1 -- Free Software-friendly commercial distributions. All of the software they write is released under the GPL, and with the sole exception of Netscape 4.7x, the distro includes no closed software. (They've said that Netscape will go away when Mozilla is a completely viable replacement, which shouldn't be too long now.) And, they've shown repeatedly that they're not interested in becoming a monopoly (of Linux or in general) -- they're interested in increasing the Linux "pie" completely. (A great example of this is the Mandrake distribution, which basically started as a branch from RH Linux.)
In fact, take this as a challenge to people in general: point out one way in which Red Hat's behavior is like Microsoft's. From what I can tell, it's pretty much all "they're-too-popular-to-be cool" syndrome.
(As a side note: I'd say Caldera, with Ransom Love's anti-GPL rhetoric, is more like Microsoft -- or at least, they'd like to be.)
When I started using Linux a few years ago, I began with Red Hat 5.1 on a 486 66 Mhz computer (it was my only spare computer to mess with). It didn't really have any difficult hardware, except for a proprietary cd-rom drive. This was my first real experience in a *nix, coming from a relatively long DOS and Windows background.
From my experience the most frustrating part of learning Linux is getting all or most of a computer's hardware to work properly. For a long time I had no sound card that Linux supported. Fortunately, hardware support and automatic detection has improved tremendously. Now many ethernet cards, video cards, and sound cards are automatically detected by various Linux installs. CD-ROMS are almost always compatible with standard IDE and SCSI drivers. I believe that new users to Linux should be focusing on learning to install software, use popular software, and learn his/her way around a shell. Learning Linux shouldn't be mostly about learning how to install Linux, and this is where a few distributions have made great progress.
As your first distribution, I would recommend Mandrake. I have been a Red Hat user since my first install (and administering Red Hat based Cobalt servers). Red Hat's install (both graphical and text based) are reasonable for a new user, but they don't explain things as thoroughly as Mandrake. I installed Mandrake a few times and was fairly impressed with the installer and explanation, but it's a little too annoying to non-newbies. However, a new user simply wanting to toy with Linux would probably be best served by starting out with Mandrake.
Mandrake is nice that they are a download-friendly distribution. No other distribution is as easy to find in downloadable iso form. Yes, Red Hat offers it, but they promote their pay package far more than Mandrake does..companies like making it no-so-obvious that they can get it for free. I can't blame them. Also, Debian offers downloads, but their website isn't as easy to navigate and I'd hardly consider Debian a newbie-friendly install. Visit the mirror list for mandrake to download the install isos. There are two iso images to burn to cd-rom using common software like Easy CD Creator. If interested in Redhat, the mirror list offers a variety of sites to find both RPM files (for individual software install) and iso images.
However, buying a boxed set may be worthwhile for a new user. No need for big downloads, a cd-writer, and figuring out how to install. These include support and an installation manual.
I find computer books extremely helpful in learning a new operating system or programming language. Yes, website and forums are available, but a book is generally arranged quite well for new users. My first book was "Red Hat Linux Unleashed", that huge orange book. It included Red Hat 5.2 (though I already had 5.1 installed by that time), and had a few chapters on installation. Then, as I needed a reference or wanted to learn about setting up new services, I just read through the appropriate chapter. Though many disagree, I find it most helpful to have a large comprehensive book that covers all topics lightly to give a user a start. From there many websites provide the detailed information required to complete a task. I found the how-tos helpful in most cases.
So, in short, get Mandrake (or possibly Red Hat), get a good book or two (buy from a bookstore to be able to flip through it and see if it seems right, while also looking online to find reviews). Once you get the feel of using Linux a bit - take a look at other distributions (Progeny is a nice entry into the Debian world, for example).
Good luck.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
I like Solaris, but only on Sun hardware. The x86 version is a pig, IMNSHO. BTW, I am writing this on my Ultra 10 ;)
There are no lame penguin graphics like on Mandrake... and everything is just KDE.. clean and simple. Very professional-looking, like Windows.
It also has some very nice graphical system administration tools. Also, if you like Webmin, Caldera is its primary sponsor.
People may bash Caldera for their business plans, but hey... they are just trying to survive. I definitely respect them, and their distro. All of the others are just annoying.
You can get the ISOs from ftp.caldera.com. The current version is eDesktop 3.1, and there is a server version there too... also at 3.1 I belive.
I run a lot of old SPARCs, mostly SPARCStation 5's. I run primarily Solaris and OpenBSD on them, depending on purpose... However, I ran two SPARCs on Linux for about 6 months as production servers. (shell, mail, dns, web, ftp, some sql)
:) The Linux kernel itself isn't very mature for SPARCs, and its process creation time is AWFUL. These machines managed to handle about 200 users for 6 months, before the load just got too high. However, kernel-level resource problems required that I rebooted the machines about once every 60 days.
:)
At the time, three main choices existed: RedHat, SuSE, and Debian. Redhat installed rather easily, but it completely sucked, and a lot of things were just broken. In fact, the machines locked after less than two days of testing. Lather, rinse, repeat - same results for 2 weeks.
I tried for like 12 hours to get SuSE to install, and I just couldn't hack it. I'm _very_ familiar with both Sun hardware and Linux, so I was lead to believe that it was just bad packaging. I gave up on SuSE.
I installed Debian... The first two installs weren't quite right (user error!)... but after I got things in order, I installed Debian on these machines, put them through testing hell for a week, and put 'em up. They ran pretty well for being 110mhz
As far as SPARCs go, Solaris has very little competition. NetBSD and OpenBSD both run a bit faster, but file I/O is noticeably slower. However, *BSD is insanely stable on SPARCs (I've got a server with over 280 days uptime on SPARC/OpenBSD). Linux doesn't really hack it yet. Perhaps I'll get bored in the next few months and try out Slackware's SPARC distro... If anyone can do it right, it's Slackware
.... um, i lost you after "0110100001101001".
If you want to learn about Linux as just a user, Mandrake and Debian are the easiest to put in setup, and off you go. I fyou want to learn about Linux with an eye on becoming a Guru, then I'd say Good would be something you had to do by hand, as it were.
Go to a website, and do it FTP style, you'll need to get familiar with this, and really the best way to learn is to do it.
note: You still might want to buy a distro, even if you do everything FTP style. Its good to have 'just in case', and its good to put a few bucks where your mouth is. really, whats 30 bucks for an OS compared to what you'd have to pay for your current OS type?
IF you really want to get a 'Good' experiencs, get an older version, ten recompile it to the newer version. IMO your not a 'Linux guy' until you get a few of these under your belt.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Unless I know the person has some command line experience in an OS other than DOS I will refuse to help them install anything but Mandrake. They and the Linux on a desktop movement are better off if they have no experience with Linux than a bad one.
"If there is nothing you are willing to die for, then you are not really alive." Myself
When I got started, I went with Debian (still a 1.x version; Slackware (a 6.x version) and Red Hat (a 5.x version). Having zero experience outside Windows these were fairly harrowing (esp deb and slack) but I got through it and read a LOT (sidenote: if your local library is any good, they'll have some decent books on linux in general, check out as many as you can and READ THEM ALL). Depending on the degree of technical competence and interest I recommmend different things. To my NT admin friends who want serious stuff and know their hardware back and forth, I tell them to go with deb, slack or a BSD. My wife, on the other hand, who just wants word processing, email, and web surfing on a box that doesn't blue screen every 20 minutes I went the Mandrake route, and my brother wanted more multimedia support so I pointed him to SuSE. I have changed "favorite" distros so many times I've lost count, all that matters is that you find one you're comfortable with, which only comes about by experimentation.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
Debian is the best to use for the long run (because of easy upgrades) but Mandrake is the most user-friendly and as a result is what I have been recommending to new users since 8.0 came around.
Normally, for people who want an easy Linux system, I'd recommend Mandrake 8. It has an excellent installer, the internet connection sharing is easy as pie to set up, the firewalling works reasonably well, etc. However, it really crawls on a K6-2 (or equivelant) 350 or below. This is mostly because KDE2 isn't the most efficient GUI for low-end machines, but anyway...
If you want to get the most efficiency and speed out of your box, I'd recommend Slackware or Debian. Neither one is as easy to set up as Mandrake, from a new user perspective. However, I've generally found them to be more straightforward as long as you pay attention, and have some computing experience. Slackware is a bit simpler than Debian for installation, but they're both excellent distros. Very secure, very efficient, and excellent for servers and power user desktops alike. The ultimate downside (or perhaps benefit, depending on your confidence with Linux and computers in general) is there aren't many/any bundled GUI tools for configuring things easily with these distros. You'll often find yourself firing up vi and getting your hands dirty in config files. Personally I like that, but it's a matter of taste. :)
The other major option, of course, is Red Hat. I've always had problems getting Red Hat to fully recognize all my hardware, while Mandrake never had a problem with it. That's just me, so YMMV. Red Hat is a fairly good distro for starting out, just make sure you avoid the .0 releases (example: 7.0 really sucks and requires tons of patching, otherwise it will literally stop working in 3 weeks; later 7.x versions are much better though).
I think, in the end, my recommendation would be this: grab copies of each of these major distributions, ideally in ISO format from the net so you don't have to cough up too much money. Install one, play around with it for a week, then install another, etc. and see what you think of them after a little bit of usage. Then, when you have an idea of which one suits your needs best, go all out and buy the CD set with bundled manuals etc. for that respective distribution.
Good luck, and happy Linuxing!
So, you're using Windows NT for a year and tired of it. That's funny because Windows NT isn't supported by MS anymore, maybe you should try Windows 2000 then go to http://www.cygwin.com. You want linux, you got it, as well as Windows. Unless you plan on using it as your web server, but from what it sounds like, you're not into setting up dedicated servers. Unless you are really into StarOffice, Netscape, and countless other useless X windows programs, just get cygwin and start developing away...
Red Hat 7 doesn't use egcs. If you meant gcc-2.96-rh, you should probably have a look at http://www.bero.org/gcc296.html for lots of reasons why gcc 2.96 could be a good choice.
and moves things around in such a way that if a software developer writes a program to be installed on a RedHat Linux system, it won't install on any non-RedHat-based distribution.
Red Hat 7 and later plays rather nicely with FHS...
If it does install, the crazy egcs release will keep it from running on the new machine.
Use binaries compiled for the platform you're using, or compile yourself. Complaining that some binary compiled for JoeRandomsDistro won't work with your Red Hat install isn't very relevant, IMHO.
RedHat often screws with things like init scripts just enough to make them UNIX-like, but to break POSIX standards.
Examples?
What pisses me off about RedHat is how deliberate their embrace-and-extend design policies are. I don't recommend RedHat for anything, because learning the quirks of RedHat puts users into bad practices of using their proprietary tools
What proprietary tools exactly? Red Hat doesn't do proprietary tools.
or expecting the proprietary behavior of their tools to be standard cross-platform.
A behavior cannot be proprietary (unless it's patented), afaik.
It's sort of like how a lot of linux distros have a 'route' command that, for some reason, won't accept 'route add -net default' (which is standard across UNIX) but will accept 'route add default gw'... annoying.
GNU/Linux. The Freshmaker.
I'd have to call this a gross exaggeration. My last experience with installing Debian was with Potato when it first came out, and it was nothing like the above. It was more than "a few questions" to begin with and I ended up with a non-functional network due to Debian's inability to correctly set up both NICs in the machine. It would set up one or the other, but not both (3c905c, if you must know). This is not rocket science.
How anyone can consider dselect "sophisticated package management" absolutely snows me. Whatever you're smoking -- share.
There are too many screwy things about Debian for it to be a good "starter" linux. For example, the default emacs installation is -- wait for it -- version 19.34!!! It's five years old & completely outdated!! Duh! Fire up your Gnome desktop (your only choice OOB) and try to access the internet. Surprise, no graphical browser. As I recall, in Potato, there actually is a "netscape" icon but it points nowhere.
No thanks. Slackware buries Debian in easy of installation and use. As for "package management," this not-so-grizzled user gets along fine with ./configure, make and make install.
mp
"The secret to strong security: less reliance on secrets." -- Whitfield Diffie
Please buy it from me; I've had my learning experience with it.
I'm a Multimedia Designer and just during the last 3 Weeks finally once and for all ditched Mickeysoft. I live in germany, so SuSE is kind of considered cream of the crop to me. I had trouble with 7.1 pro (more a .0 release), but 7.2 stands up to Win2k with out any problems. It comes with Tons of current stable Software releases, 7 CD's and 1 DVD. Which means no stiff arm from changing the CD's constantly if you've got a DVD-drive. Along come a stack of very good books on all kinds of subjects. 'Networking with SuSE Linux' being the new kid in the family. Tim Oreilly is probably starting to get grumpy about this. Until there's a Linux port, you'll have to run Macromedias Dreamteam with VMWare though. At least I will. :-) ;-)) ) just tested a bunch of current distros. Mandrake 8, RedHat 7.1 Deluxe and SuSE 7.2 Pro turned out best. Summing up all the minor flaws they favoured SuSE 7.2 Pro a little more over the other two. Also because of YOU (Yast Online Update - new gadget and good thing that) and the best documentation. German "Genauigkeit" I'd guess. Consider that germany has one of the - if not THE - highest amount of Linux users per capita. Also due to SuSEs Linux distros.
BTW: The worlds best Computer Magazin (the german CT of course
Bottom Line: If I were a reseller, I'd give you a "money back" guarantee on this one.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I have been using linux about 2 years, 1st your w/ RH/Mandrake/OpenLinux1.3 etc, last your w/ slack. Everything you learn under in can be applied to other distros.
I'd say try a few distros and see what you like the best. PLAN on reinstalling and you won't be disappointed if you don't like a particular distro.
I'd also recommend using an empty drive. 1 or 2 GB should be plenty to play around with. Physically disconnect your Windows drive. That way there is no way for you to accidently zap Windows data. If you do this then you'll probably need to boot from a floppy, which is a little slower, but it's the safest way.
I've been using Linux since pre 1.0 kernel days and that's what I do right now with Win2K and Mandrake. Lilo and Grub are nice but don't risk your Windows drive by making a newbie mistake if you don't have too.
For desktop distros try:
Mandrake for the pretty GUI and easy install.
RedHat for the same if you have older hardware.
Slackware if you really want to learn what's going on when you install. It's not too hard if you are willing to read a bit.
I just don't grok Debian but some say it's the best, especially for servers.
My personal favorite for a VERY easy server install is e-smith (http://e-smith.org). It's a very simple install and it has a web interface for admin. You'll need to dedicate a box to it.
You won't learn as much as using something else for a server, but if you are tired of sweating over all the little details then you might want to consider it.
It's RedHat under the hood and you can easily get to a root shell and modify it if you want to. But you probably won't *need* to.
Install on a P-75 with a 4x CD-ROM and 64MB RAM takes less than 30 minutes. It runs fine on such a little box too!
I'd stay away from Debian, Slackware, and other technically-oriented Linux distros, especially if you're coming from Windows. The amount of setup and decision-making will floor you, amaze you, and finally frustrate you as you try to figure out what IRQs are assigned to what, and exactly what hardware is in your box, down to the last minute detail of versions of firmware. Stick with RedHat, where most of that crap is figured out for you.
Linux will NEVER gain any signifigant advantage in the desktop market until idiot geeks and technogods figure out that computers aren't supposed to be for geeks only, and one shouldn't have to have a PhD in CompSci in order to install and run software. Sheesh.
-- Ed Carp, N7EKG erc@pobox.com PGP KeyID: 0x0BD32C9B What I'm up to: http://intuitives.mine.nu
I have to agree. You might not stick with FreeBSD, but if you only try Linux, you're missing a whole other world out there called "unix".
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Being a new linux user myself, all i know is that my video and sound card only have supported drivers for Red Hat. I liked mandrake a lot, but could get nothing working in it. The fonts in Konquerer were screwed up, drivers, etc... I think you'll find that the few vendors who support linux drivers start with Red Hat.
Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor
It runs 'linux binaries', and does it faster than Linux does. FreeBSD has over 5000 programs that ship with it via ports.
The recommendation to try several is most appropriate after someone gets their first install working the way they want it. There is nothing like a successful install to boost confidence in a product. Plus, it will give the user a chance to practice basic changes to the system and get some more experience with the CLI. Once someone has the basics down and is comfortable enough to back out of their own changes or do a little trouble-shooting, then go for the multi-distro playtime. (Esp. if the other distros may not have the snazzy GUI's or rich hardware support out of the box...)
Also, don't forget the value of a good book to go with it. There are a ton out there -- pick one that meets the appropriate reading level and style. I like Linux Administration: A Beginners Guide, but that's just me.
I've used several different distros and I've found that Redhat was fairly easy to install. Partitioning was the main problem I had as a linux beginner and I found Redhat's install program made this a lot easier than some other distros. I started out with Redhat 6.2 and I've also installed Redhat 7.1.
My personal favorite is Slackware. It requires more hands on configuration (which I enjoy most of the time) than some other distros, but it's really helped me learn a lot about Linux. I also like the installation options with Slackware better than Redhat. My system is a P133 w/ 16MB of RAM and 2 200MB HD's so I don't have much to work with, but I've not had any trouble getting Slackware installed.
I've also found the Linux Unleashed book to be very helpful for reference. It covers everything from installation to configuring numerous services.
peace.
-expa-
That depends on the intent of the user. If he wants to become a Linux Admin or anything along those lines, then by all means dive in head first. If, on the other hand, he just wants to use his computer to do typical everyday stuff and chose Linux because of it's stability/price rather than a repulsion from all-things-Microsoft then his best bet would be an easy-to-use distro. He has no need (or shouldn't) to know how to hack the kernal.
Well, since you linked to it, lemme just say a couple of things about that page:
:-) Anyone who is willing to accept plain copyright may use my GPL software. If you aren't willing to accept plain copyright, well, here's hoping you haven't read any books written this century...
(Under "So, why don't I use Linux")
>I don't understand the Linux development system...
The Linux development system is so fragmented because it simply has to be. So much more development is done with Linux that the guy who writes xyz doesn't have time to be involved with the kernel or the distribution phase. You can be assured things keep working by the distribution you use. The people packaging your distribution are really "in charge" of ensuring the software that comes with it works, no hassles. I guess if you don't feel comfortable trusting the distribution maintainer you can do it yourself (that's really not a good idea at all).
>If I have found a problem and a solution, who should I go to?
Kernel Problem: Linux or Alan Cox. But since that isn't happening (they're too busy making the kernels!), I'd suggest posting on one of the kernel traffic mail lists -- your suggestion will be reveiwed.
Software Problem: If you have the latest distribution, and the software you are using has been seen to work on other distributions just fine, send mail to the distribution creator. If it has troubles on all distributions, then send a patch to the author of the software (its probably still in alpha/beta). In the primary case the problem is limited to just your distribution. In the latter case the main software tree is repaired, which in time will flow into the other distributions, ensuring they are working in the future too.
>There is (maybe there is these days) no standard for installing additional software.
Well, if you're an RPMer, sure. If you do things the UN*X way, then its just the same as BSD. Choose where you want your software to live then:
./configure --with-prefix=/where/i/want/it
make
make install
Not hard in the slightest. It's been that way for the past few years. Before that you needed to edit the Makefile and change the install location. Before that I would agree, Linux wasn't ready for primetime. But that would be before '95.
You can be sure it doesn't screw up parts of the OS the same way you would be sure in BSD: Read the Makefile.
>Why does my startup-screen gets spammed with copyright about this and that, in multiple colours?
Funny, I don't get colours on boot in my Linux (Slackware). If you don't like the copyrights, well, you have the source. Use it. This really isn't a good argument against Linux, IMHO. Sorta like arguing you don't want an AT&T phone because it's red and says "AT&T" on it.
>I don't like the GPL.
I do.
As far as development goes, I prefer the protection the GPL gives my software from people like Microsoft or IBM using it in their proprietary OSes without my permission. But that's your choice, and I won't fault you for it. Other than that I really don't have much of a problem with the BSD license.
>which distribution should I take?
For you, definately Slackware.
>If I choose Red Hat or Debian or Suse, what are the consequences for later?
About the same as the consequences of choosing OpenBSD over FreeBSD. Nothing earth shatteringly different. Just -- well -- different. Like Swiss cheese is different from Mozerella cheese.
>Can I run the program compiled with Debian Linux under Red Hat or Suse.
If you compile it staticly, for sure. If you compile it dynamicly, make sure you have similar libraries on both. Again, the difficulty level is your choice.
>Can I even get it compiled?
If you are able to run *BSD, I don't see why not. You obviously have the necessary knowledge to run a Linux system without problems.
Just my 2 cents.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Mostly good advice. A couple of disagreements. I don't think you should rule slack out. It's not the easiest to install, but it's really not that hard. Anyone that's installed pre-win95 dos shouldn't have much trouble getting slack going. The package management is minimalist, but it does the one thing you really need and does it well - it installs and uninstalls packages cleanly. I've used it and I've used RPM based distros and honestly had a lot less trouble with slack tarballs than with rpms. And it's the leanest, fastest distro you're likely to find - perfect for an older slower machine. I've run slack with KDE happily on a machine that was just unbearably slow running Redhat or Mandrake with KDE - very impressive. The slack team takes care to configure things properly before compiling, and it shows. The guy asking the question didn't give enough information about his own situation to rule slack out IMOP. While Mandrake is perfect for the would-be Windows refugee that is installing to a new, fast machine, and wants the minimum of hassle or unfamiliar-looking routines, it's not exactly the leanest and meanest and may not perform very well on an old backup computer.
Other than that, I agree with everything you say, although I prefer WindowMaker instead of Ice that's just personal preference, either is a great choice, full featured window managers without all the overhead.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I'll second that, I've tried all sorts of distros and for ease of use mandrake wins hands down. Yeah, it might be buggy, but so is windows. Being the first distro with a journaling filesystem makes it wonderful for everyone from windows who thinks a reboot is the only way to fix a problem when it comes up. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if they put in a cosmetic BSoD in their next release just for people making the transition from windows.
um, I'm really not intrested in searching round the net for what makes slackware unix-like. I just would expect that people who think and more important say that slackware is best for advanced users, or that slack is more unix-like be able to back their shit up. You were able to come up with the one thing, bsd style init scripts, but last I checked, System V was a UNIX. And changing /etc/HOSTNAME on my RH box seems to have the effect of changing the hostname.
1. If you really want to LEARN linux and don't just use it make sure you cant use it. Don't install X at all that way you won't have something to distract you.. But maybe most important you will be able to control/config you system remote even if you are in china on a 14.4 connection and your server in canada. 2. Make sure to have a good book about linux to learn.. I used http://www.slackware.com/book/ but had it as a text file.. for debian there is http://www.newriders.com/debian/html/noframes/node 1.html anyway don't expect to be able to do so much in the begining noone can..
3. read the book as much as you can.. i spent 6-8hour/day in 1-2weeks.. but then I also masterd the local linuxgurus in some stuff =).. I also became dubbed linux guru by my friends about 1year later..
This I think is the best way to be a master fast.. As long as you don't give up..
That was my 2cent..
I haven't been running Linux lately, but I had the perfect opportunity in May - I was going out of town with my Laptop, and as long as I could use email, I was set. So I downloaded all the distros I could remember offhand - Mandrake, Corel, Debian, and Red Hat.
Debian - this was easily the toughest of them all. Text-based installer, questions I didn't know how to answer (why does it want me to become a USENET server?), etc, etc. But it finally ran, and being able to "apt-get" is amazingly cool.
Corel - I know I'll get flamed for this, and it DOES have disads. But it installed flawlessly on my computer, and seemed to work pretty well. On the plus side it acts a lot like windows, and installing software uses a variant of apt-get (which Corel is based on). I use it at home. On the downside, it's not nearly as supported as, say, Red Hat, so you need a lot more hand-holding. But I heartily recommend it.
Red Hat. I downloaded 7.1, and it had a great installer. The good side is that it's commonly considered the standard, so FAQs and programs are built specifically for it. On the down side, all the trojans and the like are built for it too. The problem I ran into is that applications stopped working for no apparent reason (even with re-installing from scratch) and Usenet didn't offer any solutions.
Mandrake - amazingly well put together. The installer was smooth as silk, everything looked and acted great, pretty sweet. I believe it's based on Red Hat, so take the pluses and minuses from that.
Overall - Any of them will work. Someone else suggested doing what I did, and I concur - buy or download all of them (and just go to linuxberg/linuxburg/linuxville and download the debian image- it took half an hour to figure out how to use debian's vaunted smart-installer, and then it didn't work. Get the ISO image), and try each one on your machine. I'd almost say to try installing them in this order - Corel, Debian, Red Hat, Mandrake. See how you like each one. Try installing a few programs. See what you think and once you're done, make sure to secure it. Keep it off the network until you have (if you can, since you'll be downloading stuff to patch it). In that part Debian has the advantage, due to "apt-get update", which will update all the packages, and I believe install all the security patches. But you still need to secure the thing, look at Bastille.
And let Slashdot know what you went with, and why. If it gets posted, it'll make an interesting followup.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Baptism by fire. Through the newbies into the water and let tehm bob to the surface. That's the only proper way to learn linux.
A file manager like Windows Explorer is the direct opposite of what should be wanted, personally I cannot understand the concept of clicking files anyhow.. if you are going to use Unix though a GUI, you may as well not run Unix at all.
and Suse ? the OS/2 of Linux ?
Heh, if that were the case, I'd have to give Suse a shot, then. I started using Linux full-time after I gave-up on OS/2, but I still miss the latter.
-Karl
It doesn't have a nice graficall interface (not until you instal it anyway), but it's really cool to use the shell and all the command line stuff. You really learn.
Since you have a separate computer to try linux on, you don't need it to be 'productive' right away. Once you get X and a window manager working, you are ready to do anything with linux (and replace NT for good).
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
Six years ago when I was looking for switching from OS/2 to (any) Unix I had the same problem. Single White Nerd looks for New Operating System. Clean harddisk available etc. I didn't understand how Linux worked (regarding organisation and development that is) and I choose FreeBSD because I understood how their development-model worked.
l
See http://www.mavetju.org/unix/whyIdontuselinux.phtm
bash$
My first distro was Red Hat 5, I guess... then was Conectiva 3, 4 and 5. I even had Mandrake once. Now I am using Slackware (for almost 3 yrs), witch was the best distro Ive found. Slack 8 is killer. But Im afraid thet it is not the best way to begin. My boss came to me once and said "I want linux. Gimme the best distro you know.". So I installed to him Slack 7.2, and he hated the "user-unfrendly" interface and called a friend of his to install conectiva 6 (this was about a month ago). I think he is happy now. But dont you make the same mistake that I did... There is some distros made for people who know how to use a computer and know how to learn new things without smashing their hands on something fragile, just because they are dumb. Let them learn the basic first, then the real thing... Up The Irons!
\m/
I'm primary a C++ programmer. I had several good Windows compilers, so I stuck with NT as my primary system for a long time. I'd used Unix in small doses along the way, and I'd always had the MKS tools installed (ls, grep, find, etc.) since the days of MSDOS. Complaints about the stability of NT are overblown. The NTFS file system was extremely stable and it didn't bug me that I had to reboot once every two weeks. The real problem with NT is that the environment is claustrophobic. Using multiple tools should be the easy way to do things, not the hard way.
My first project was converting an old 486 box into a firewall for my new cable modem. A high school student down the street started me off with slack. One of the first things I had to figure out was how to differentiate my two identical network cards by creating an alias. I asked the kid down the street. He had no idea. He said, "I just use different cards." Thanks a lot.
No matter what choice you make, if you have an ambitions at all sometime in the first week or two you're going to find yourself in over your head. Think of it as survival training. Be ruthless, beat the problem to death, and take notes. Survival skills at the command line will stay with you no matter what system you end up chosing. Somehow in my messing around I hosed my route table. I must have typed "ifconfig" and "route show" 2000 times that day. My neuronal patterns have never been the same since. That's where the real learning takes place.
I didn't find slack "logical" after leaving NT. It might be logical, but it didn't seem logical. The rc.d hierarchy gave me shivers. Major transitions are never painless.
The Linux packet filters were in major flux at the time. I found it very confusing to keep track of the new/old ipchains/whatever. It seemed to me that Linux changed way too much and way too fast. I decided to crawl into a peaceful corner where I could really think. I replaced slack with OpenBSD.
For me, OpenBSD was an instant love affair. I could tell right away that OpenBSD was a product of a similar mind. Your first experience installing OpenBSD is the partition editor, a tool that takes you back in time further than Austin Powers. One thing OpenBSD does not have is good looking teeth. Some people never get past that.
One of the qualities of OpenBSD is that the internal documentation, the man pages, are both comprehensive and accurate. Very light on actual examples. You have to be prepared to try out many, many different arguments until you get the incantation right. Then it works. In most cases, forever.
Even in OpenBSD I had some horrible fights along the way. If you set up a DHCP interface a script file
When I upgraded to OpenBSD 2.6 I discovered that the DHCP server at my ISP was incompatible with the changes made to OpenBSD's dhclient. It was my ISP who was violating the standard. I had to scour the web for hours to find a patch to dhclient that allowed my internet interface to function. Five minutes after installing the system I'm patching kernel utilities.
When I upgraded to OpenBSD 2.7 I happened to have the exact network card (a certain 3com) which the OpenBSD people had broken in that release. I had to patch and recompile my kernel before I could bring my network up. Once again, I was patching my kernel five minutes after completing the install.
The moral of the story is don't get yourself a Jeep if you aren't prepared to change a flat tire.
Part of changing a flat tire is being willing to work with whatever tools you find in the trunk. In OpenBSD that means suffering with "vi". As painful as it was, I forced myself to use vi for every configuration file I edited. I've mostly been using xemacs for source code editing on both Windows and Linux/BSD. I think vi sucks, but that's another entirely personal judgement. I plugged my nose and learned to get by, because I know someday I'll be in a pickle and vi will be the only thing there.
About six months ago I set up a second desktop machine. I now have Redhat 7.1 beside my w2k box. I chose Redhat only because the C++ compiler I use, KAI, is only officially supported under Redhat 7.1. It probably works on other distributions, but I don't consider myself experienced enough (yet) to be breaking my own trails. It's another "plug my nose and live with it" scenario.
I didn't find the automatic Redhat installer any easier than the OpenBSD installer. Austin Powers has a prettier set of teeth, but that's about it. When the graphical installer lets you down, you're left twice as confused about what to do next. I had a Matrox G450 in that box, but the support was only up to date for the G400. Partly it worked, but partly it didn't.
What I can say about Redhat is that the man pages are three points less trustworthy, complete, and accurate. The Redhat man pages feel content to document some Unix, some place, some time. Not necessarily how Redhat 7.1 itself works in the here and now.
Next time around it will be Debian. As you learn more, you'll realize that management is more important than quick gratification. On the other hand, when you try out Linux for the first time it doesn't help if you have twenty problems and you can't get quick gratification on any of them. You'll just end up thrashing.
Here's some words of wisdom that will matter in the long run a lot more than which distro you choose:
Learn to use the power of a good shell. I have zsh on every machine because zsh has the best support for interactive command editing. This is even more important when you don't know shit and you have to type every command ten times to get it right.
Set your machine up with reasonable external security (no unnecessary ports open to the world), then make your internal security lax. I was having enough trouble coping with all my problems that I didn't need to worry about whether I was root or not. A year later I figured out how to set up sudo for noauth, so I could use sudo all the time without having to type my root password all day long. Now that I mostly know when I need to be root and when I don't, I'm starting to tighten up my internal security as well. But during the steep part of my learning curve, internal security was a whole lot of extra hassle I didn't need to deal with.
Use SSH exclusively. Nuke telnet. Nuke ftp. SSH can do amazing things once you get to know it. Maybe that's not the first thing to start with, but you should plan on making it the second.
Learn as much as you can about the localhost routing table. I ran OpenBSD for a six weeks before I finally got my DNS set up properly. That was an aggravation I don't ever want to live through again. Connection attempts would hang mysteriously for 15 seconds. Half the command line tools would lock up in resolver freezes (unless I added the -n argument to everything). Somehow on Redhat when I upgraded a network card it lost the default route. The machine was crippled until I figured out how to restore the default route manually. People who've been using Linux for years completely forget what it's like to have a broken resolver and not know how to fix it, or to have to type numeric IP addresses for all other hosts on your local network segment because you don't have your "search" option in resolv.conf set up right (or whatever mysterious place that might exist under Linux).
Finally, try not to chmod 777 too much. I'm sure I did that a lot in the first couple of months. Any effort you put into understand Unix permissions ultimately goes a long way.
The attitude you bring is ten times more important that which distribution you start out with. You're going to wreck your first install, get over it. I've now build six OpenBSD firewalls and I've just barely reached the point where the process is entirely smooth. Learning takes repetition and that means a lot of breaking things and a lot of fixed things.
Finally, the most important point of all. There's a psychology that goes along with using NT that you'll have to lose. In NT when things don't go well there's a panic that rises up inside. Because you know that even after you fix the problem, it still isn't going to work 100%. You can't afford be screwed on both sides. NT teaches the attitude "play now, pay later". The "pay later" comes when you really need something to work 100% and it just isn't possible.
In Linux/BSD the psychology is "pay now, play forever". In your worst moments repeat the magic manta "once I fix this, it will never ever bite me in the ass again". If you've been using NT for a long time you aren't capable of believing that, but it's true. Trust me.
Actually, I've been thinking that next time I go and install Linux, I'll probably go with Slackware ... because of just what you mentioned. After having lots of problems with package managers (I want to get the latest version of x, and then need to figure out how to tell the package manager that I really do have the program in question on my system...), I've simply been starting with a Debian base system, and then installing/compiling everything I want from source. (Since most programs are just fine with a ./configure; make install, it seems simpler that way.) However, it does seem a little silly to be installing Debian when I intend to remove just about everything at some point to make room for the new, and thus making the package system useless. Would Slackware be a good distribution for someone who tends to use their system in this manner?
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Any OS these days is going to be user friendly because they all have to be in order to remain viable. The Linux of 5 years ago is not the Linux of today, just like the NT of 5 years ago is not the 2K/XP of today.
As easy as it might be for anyone, my 91 year old grandmother included (God bless her), to figure out how to navigate in Win2K in a matter of minutes - there remains a big difference between being able to launch Word or Excel, and being able to, say, add a "DisableDHCPMediaSense" dword to your reigstry so that your NIC works without a physical connection (Bastards). Grandma can't do that. But you know what? Grandma don't care.
The same is true for every flavor/distro of Linux and Unix. The point of just about every OS today is to allow most people to do what they have to with ease, while at the same time allowing the really really smart guys to do what they want to with the UberSkilz they got that Grandma lacks.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Get Mandrake 8.0. This install is nice, the interface is familiar, and it will network nicely with your NT machines with minimal hassle.
I started out using SuSE and Turbo Linux. I eventually moved to Red Hat because that's what all my friends knew. By using my friends as a resource, not only did I get another resource beyond online faqs and man pages, but I also had them checking up on me to make sure that I was learning about it. I use debian now, but my learning process was made that much easier by using what they used.
My advice is to use whatever distro your friends use. While you can definitely do it on your own, it just makes it easier to have that extra resource.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
I know you're joking, but define "real". If by "real" you mean "hardcore by means of text-based shell", then sure. If Windows isn't real, what is it? A fake operating system? A virus maybe?
Windows is a real operating system in the same way that a Hyundai is a real car. And Windows 2000 is like a Hyundai Excel with leather seats and air conditioning.
Unsophisticated, unrefined, but solid as nails and powerful like my 1976 Dodge Ram, I like a base install, text-only, of a mature UNIX. It's the raw unbridled power of a 400 cubic inch (6.6L) V8 bolted to a couple of frame rails while some joker in a Hyundai with tinted windows pulls up beside you and revs his oil-burning 1.6L chainsaw engine. Running FreeBSD is great for that, it gives me exactly the same feeling of unrefined raw no-bullspit power.
In comparison, I see most Linux distros as being like a Jeep Grand Cherokee. Solid, reliable, comfortable and versatile. It's a great first step when you're learning how to drive something other than an oil-burning Excel.
For refinement, I like the Mac all the way along. Macs through the years have been like Jaguars. Pretty, refined, sexy but frequently broken or unstable. Until recently - now they apparently work quite well.
And then there's Windows. Maybe with XP, Microsoft will upgrade it to the operating system equivalent of a Hyundai Accent. Of course, it will have air conditioning, leather seats, plush carpets and S-rated tires, but it's still a Hyundai.
That's what I meant.
That aside, I know exactly what you mean. There's always WinVi, which IMO is an excellent Vi clone for Windows (acts like Vi and NotePad).Doesn't have the 32k Notepad filesize limit either. :)
But you're right, Windows does seem chunky... Makes me wonder how much time M$ spent on optimization...Intel does that for Microsoft.
I still swear that there's a conspiracy between those two.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
If you really want to learn the stuff Slackware.
If you just want to get something up asap to play with, and learn how to configure and run a system later, Mandrake and Redhat are OK.
Slack however, is truly for those who want to learn just what's going on. It comes with several services on by default, and the stock Xwindows configuration utiltities, so step by step, you learn just what your doing, and not letting "wizards" do the work for you. Get your X up, get your network configured (ok ok there IS a wizard type application for this one... and I use it I admit... but you have to handle getting the right network driver running all on your own) turn off the services you don't want, rebuild your kernel and your done with your first install... but an educated done.
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
SuSE and Mandrake are both good - and surely it's better to be spoon-fed with Mandrake if you're going straight from Windows to Linux for the first time?
I say we take off and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure...
Okay, I shouldn't do this, I know; but its monday.
> What pisses me off about RedHat is how deliberate their embrace-and-extend design policies are.
No. Sorry, no. Not even a bit. Generally, the design approach is something along the lines of "What the $#**! Why is it doing that? That's absurd. It breaks (i18n/printing/USB/my toaster). Well, fix it. Yeah, but the only way to fix it breaks (backwards compat/non-ANSI C/5 year old packages). Damned if you do, damned if you dont. Grrr, go with the future compatible stuff."
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
Which Linux distros are as easy to upgrade as FreeBSD ?
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
> I was a windows MCSE guru Guru? "High School graduate" carries more respect than MCSE!
Do not use any distro or you will be disappointed. Build your own system from www.freshmeat.net.
Following that line of logic we should all head back to Windows.
Well, if you want to *learn* Linux, then you want SlackWare. I recommend it without even hesitating. Use Slack for 6 months to a year, and you'll know far more than you would if you used anything else. There's not easy to use GUI config tools. If you need a kernel feature, you'll probably compile it. If you need to change the way the system boots, you'll edit the init scripts. If you need software you're going to compile it 80% of the time. Using Slack *forces* you to know how the system works. It's just you, a text editor, and the config files. It's old school.
Using Slack will teach you how things are done, and it will teach you what not to do. You will spend a lot of time doing menial admin tasks. Slack doesn't even rotate your logs, so you'll have to do that yourself!
After you've mastered Slack, move on to something that's well maintained and stable; i.e. Debian or Red Hat Linux. Forget Mandrake. All of my friends who've used it have found it to be less stable than Red Hat. Noticing that a Linux distro isn't stable is terrible, and frustrating. Red Hat or Debian will be blissful in comparison to Slack, and you will love them for the rest of your days. Plus, most all of the things you learned from Slack will still apply.
Most newbies we get at LinuxJunior use Redhat or Mandrake., although Suse, Debian and smaller distros are also there.
None of it matters though - as everyone needs help at somethings, and dont give me HOWTO's, It was over year before I understood most of them.
Any distro is an upgrade rfom windows, but you'll need help - and sites like LinuxJunior amd linuxnewbie.org are where to go.
Try Redhat 7.1 and/or Mandrake 8.0 out first. Make sure to create a /home partition during install if you just have one machine to use linux on. This will allow you to keep any work / files you have generated when you go to install a different distribution.
Head over to the HOWTO Index and peruse through any HOWTO's that interest you.
Open a terminal, and type 'man man' :)
After your comfortable using linux, or on a separate "test" machine try installing Debian 2.2 r3 and/or Slackware 8.0. You will now have some experience using linux and this will give you a chance to check out the more "advanced" distributions.
Ok, to know what is really going on try out linux from scratch
Seems like there are a million "how to setup linux" guides out there now, but I found this site here, TrinityOS to be very helpful years ago, and it still is.
Oh yeah, here is a great deal from Cheapbytes where I bought my first linux cd.
- MONDO Pack Edition 28 for $17.95.
- includes all 5 Redhat 7.1 cds, Mandrake 8, Slackware 8, and StormLinux 2000.
- Debian 2.2r3 3 CD set for $9.
good luck.I'm going to take heat for this, I know, but I'm really kind of tired of the "I'm just starting with Linux, what distro should I use?" questions that Slashdot gets.
I don't want to rain on anyone's parade here, but I'm a Win2K guy. I don't really choose to be one, so much as that's where my company makes its money, and I don't really have a choice, unless I want to get another job, which I don't.
I'm not down on Linux. I love it, but it seems to me this site is more about "Yeah, yeah, Linux" than "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters." Yeah, we get a bunch of articles that fall under the banner, but we also get a lot of this stuff, which, I'm sorry, just doesn't interest me.
I've made my points in the past about the failings of Linux. I don't want to put it down, but this site seems to be better suited for more "nerd" info than just Linux, and sometimes it seems like it's too much about Linux and not enough about "News for Nerds." Maybe I'm wrong. Shoot me. I just get tired of this kind of stuff, personally.
Try Caldera or Mandrake. Caldera makes a good job of being a "commercial" distro and has an all time simple installer. Mandrake is similarly easy and has some nice tools. Either I regard as good and getting better desktop/workstation distros.The next thing you'll need to decide is which desktop (KDE or Gnome) both of which are great however for stability I feel KDE still has the edge.
DukeOfURL wrote this helpful article in choosing the best Linux distribution for your skill level, with comparisons of Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced distributions. They highly recommend Mandrake Linux for beginners, and I would tend to agree.
What do you want, for pure reliability and cars that will last years go for the Japanese cars toyota,honda,nissan. If you want something fun to drive you cant beat the german cars VW,bmw,benz and if you wnat crappy unreliable cars go for the American cars, its true I live in detroit and american cars are crap, If you wnat to be Safe go Swedish Volvo,saab. If you want to be cheap Korean cars are easy on the wallet.
IIRC, Mandrake splintered from RedHat over KDE, and then they decided to recompile for Pentium processors on top of that. So the user base was basically people who would be using RedHat, but are too cheap to pay full price for it, and wanted KDE (back in the day). Now it just seems to be targetted at beginners; I think much more of the system administration type stuff is handled by the combination of LinuxConf and whatever the current Mandrake configuration tool is called. Those are disgusting programs if you grew up hacking the files by hand, but hey...
:) Someday when I have that much time on my hands maybe I'll give it a shot
As you said, the newbies really seem to love them. And I have to admit, having tried Slackware, Mandrake, Redhat, Debian (YUCK!), and SuSE, the only one I think I'd ever be happy with is Linux From Scratch.
Daniel
The reason is that there is no connection between price (or company stock value or whatever) and quality in the Linux world. Mostly because quality is such a weird word in this context.
Me, I know Linux. I started off with Red Hat, then turned my ugly head towards Debian, then Trustix, then got a sniff of Mandrake, upgraded Mandrake, got tired and downloaded Slackware, then tried SuSE. At this time I had learned so much that people started asking me how to install and use Linux.
What kind of advice I gave? Well. Different advice to different people. For a while, software base * stability became my key. For instance, a (newbie) friend of mine wanted to play games and write kword letters. The hazzle of installing X 4 and koffice on a stable RH 6.2 through a 64K ISDN internet link made me reconsider and install Mandrake 7 instead - which had pre-installed X4, koffice and tuxracer.
On the other hand, when my school asked me what Linux to use for their web server, I told them to use a stable one, with a minimum of gadgets but lots of easy administration and installation tools They picked RH 7.0 (not my fault, I would have chosen RH6.2!).
The answer to your question is:
If you want to learn everything about Linux, try everything you have the time to try. Find out how those distros organize files, directories and startup scripts. Reinstall. Try features.
If you just want to generally learn how to cope with Linux, pick any distro. Learn how to use that distro. Don't care about the rest. If you're interested, it will come to you anyway sooner or later.
Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base are belong to you
1) it's lack of a large number of packages forces you to learn how to compile your own software
2) every distro has a different directory structure, and most people don't need to learn it anyway, since they simply rely on package management anyway...
Besides, as a learning distro, I've had the fewest distro related problems setting up slackware... of course I had the typical problems learning how to compile a kernel, set up X, etc, but those transfer easily to any distro..
Doug
Venn ist das nurnstuck git und Slotermeyer? Ya! Beigerhund das oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
BS. I was *heavily* involved in Cooker, on the mailing list, and mirroring the site. I can state that whenever a major update occured in a major package (say, KDE), the Cooker packagers took forever to package it. Plus, there are almost no sites that offer MDK rpms. Whereas SuSE releases at the same time as the major packages, and SuSE specific rpms and Red Hat rpms (which install nicely 99% of the time) tend to be provided by the author of the software.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
I'd just like to remind everyone before all the distro zealots start pouring in... This isn't about which distribution is the most hardcore or most powerful... It basically comes down to the one that can emulate Windows the most or hold the user's hand throughout the entire process. By that I mean at least documentation for everything, because users diving into Linux will only know that help doesn't always come from a talking paper clip... With that said, an auto install is a must. Sure, the guy asking the question was an NT user, and I'm sure the implies some technical merit above 9x users, but it still isn't much. Most people won't know the details of their hardware nor will they refer to the distro's website for compatibility listings. Why? Because Windows almost never required it... Hmm, the distro also has to be easy to use (tough, this usability thing isn't it) and easy to configure. People like making their computers look pretty and have nice wallpaper, so that's probably the first thing they'll dive for. Aside from a solid interface, a cutesy one would be nice too, complete with penguin or monkey or what have you, as to lessen the intimidation factor people have when using new technology. Oh and I really can't think of a solution for this, but it must be hard for GUI based users to get used to a command prompt. It's definately a necessary and powerful aspect of *NIX, but ya gotta admit, isn't it kinda cold and scary?
So, all in all, it doesn't necessarily have to be Windows, it just has to do the same things Windows does.
If you want politics, go with Debian. If you want a working system with very little hassle that you can tweak to your heart's content, go with anything else.
I use Slackware. I do not use packages beyond the initial install, aside from some security patches. ./configure --with-your-options=here && make && make install, that's all you need to know. Have problems? Read up on some HOWTOs or the included documentation (if any).
I'd rather buy Windows 2000 Pro and use that instead of using Debian.
SuSE is great for those who are new to Linux but not new to computers. Mandrake is another good starter, but it does sorta spoon feed you.
we speak the way we breathe --Fugazi
Funny, every out-of-the-box installation of Sol/8 I've ever done had
Basic workstation install, Solaris 8 x86. I installed Solaris to get to know it - I had no previous Solaris experience. I clicked okay to all the defaults during the install. It's not there as a default part of the installation, I have sh, csh and ksh available to me. And I think bash is an important part of a user-friendly Linux/UNIX newbie experience.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
This was my first Distro and I loved it. Currently, I use Mandrake(Recompiled RH with new logo) and Debian and they seem to be pretty developed.
Just because a bunch of people believe or do something stupid, doesn't make it any less stupid.
I started with Slackware in 1996, before there was much else available that I could get my hands on. I had some problems (as any newbie would) but I overcame these problems with documentation, and if I hadn't started with Slackware, I wouldn't know as much as I do today about Linux. So many Linux users don't even know what the inittab is or how to use mknod that it's driving us crazy trying to help them in IRC, and many times they don't want to read the documentation. I do want people to use Linux, but unfortunately too many people aren't willing to learn.
I'd vote for Slackware any day for the Linux distro to start with, one learns, it is up to date, and it's _free_.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Absolutely. This is the way I use my Slackware 8.0 system.
In fact, to make it even easier, take a look at Encap. It's a very simple concept. Instead of installing programs that you compile to /usr/local or /usr or whereever you normally install to, you install to /usr/local/encap. You can then use a program called "epkg" to automatically set symlinks to the proper files in the right directories.
For example, if you wanted to compile program foo version x.y and install using Encap, you'd do something like this:
/usr/local/encap
configure --prefix=/usr/local/encap
make
make install
cd
epkg foo-x.y
This way, you'd have /usr/local/encap/foo-x.y/bin/foo symlinked to /usr/local/bin/foo, /usr/local/encap/foo-x.y/share/foo/ to /usr/local/share/foo/, etcetera.
A very simple concept, encap just makes the symlinking painless. One could do the symlinking manually, but it would be annoying and time-consuming for something like the Gimp.
The whole point to all this is to make it easy to get rid of old programs without having to figure out what file belongs to what program. You can "epkg -r" the directory, delete it, then install foo-x.z the same way.
Thank you very much; that sounds like my problem!
All about me
Sorry I must disagree. If he has an older system, the he might also have some older cards installed. RedHat found and setup all of the cards in my system on install. Found everything including an ancient ISA Intel Etherexpress. Mandrake and most of the others require insmod and other commands to install the modules to load the card. I think RedHat would be better for a beginner. A newbie might be discouraged because they don't know the commands. Yes it is dumbing down Linux, but for Linux to be the "Desktop OS", then some sacrifices need to be made. For the record, I use Debian.
m.kelley
life is like a freeway, if you don't look you could miss it.
I think a good question is, What is best for a user from windows to do? learn a distro that is easier to use or to learn the distro that is more hardcore, and shed any windows-likeness in the process?
Stuff like this definately reminds me of the week I spent watching Win98 fail to install on my machine - I eventually worked out that my DOS SCSI CD drivers were causing the system to hang, via a laborious try-change-try again process. God knows that the installation process wasen't providing any meanigful feedback.
When windows fails, it (IME) fails spectacularly.
I think to get started the Only thing you need to care about is ease of installation, because if you're just starting you're definatly going to install something new/different_somehow anyway, if only just to try it after becomming familliar with linux in general.
/home and /usr directories seperate from /
:)
If you dont know linux, the easiest installer is definatly Red Hat. I've tried a couple others, but Red Hat, for the beginning user , is the choice to make.
After you understand the basics, you can move on to something better, like Debian. But start with red hat.
Something I didnt know at the time, but could be helpful to you, is Partition your
It makes changing distros a lot easier
Funny, every out-of-the-box installation of Sol/8 I've ever done had /bin/bash sitting right there. It's definitely on the CDs; what sort of oddball install are you doing?
zim# pkgchk -l -p /usr/bin/bash /usr/bin/bash
Pathname:
Type: regular file
Expected mode: 0555
Expected owner: root
Expected group: bin
Expected file size (bytes): 516392
Expected sum(1) of contents: 17782
Expected last modification: Jan 05 18:54:12 2000
Referenced by the following packages:
SUNWbash
Current status: installed
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Mandrake also has good administration-type tools. The software update facility works very well, as do the other things like the user manager. As an added bonus, the KDE Menu is organized more logically than any distro I've seen,
It's definitely a great distro for both newbies and more experienced users alike,
- Don't get RedHat, it's not that great. It's more suited to servers/businesses
- Debian is by far the best and most powerfull distro. The problem is there is a HUGE learning curve. Get some expiriance under your belt before attemping it.
- For a newbie or home user, the best distro (IMNTBHO) is Mandrake. Don't bother trying anythin eles. Mandrake has easy setup, good support community, lots of software, and works without a hitch.
Hope this helps. In summary: MANDRAKEComment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Jean-Louis Gassee was saying: "when you have a day to spare and don't know what to do. reinstall Windows."
Well, it happens that this sentence is even more true for Linux. How many times did I reinstall one distro of Linux over another one, I can not count. The last time I had debian installed, I screwed up something with the apt command and my system was so bad that I had to reinstall RH and then got Mandrake, then RH again because Mandrake installer was choking on my network card (and couldn't pass further.)
So RH ended up being the best distro for me, and what I did is buy extra HD so next time I have a desire for something else (Woody?) I won't have to zap my working config to get it running. Way cheaper if you considere your time as being valuable (even if the OS is free.)
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
I am a die hard Debian fan. However, for a beginner, Mandrake looks like the way to go. The install is somple, and there is a GUI config tool that ACTUALLY WORKS for everything. It's default security seetings also seem to be better than Redhat's.
Let them have fun with that for a while, then migrate to Debian.
Whatever you start with is probably what you are going to end up liking and using. I have been using redhat, although I have tried out slackware, debian, and suse. I came back to redhat because I started on it, was familiar with their tools, and well it's just plain easier for me. I can only think one distro would be better than another if you experiment. Alot of people suggest mandrake, well I am recommending redhat, which most people probably don't agree with. I figure it comes with standard packages that you will find in all distros (minus gcc 2.9.6) which are probably going to have bugs now and again. Plus redhat disables everything but SSH now, so the complaints about everything being "wide open" on install now shouldn't be a problem anymore.
but the funniest is that being modded "insightful"
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
RedHat is the best out of the box. Easiest install and the best hardware support.
If you want to learn something more standard, IMNSHO, the I would go with Slackware. You can get the boot disk and then install it via FTP. You will have to read more docs to install Slackware. I started with Slackware years ago, then moved to RedHat 5, 6, & 7. I just moved back to Slackware because I wanted something that gave me a finer degree of control on how and what was installed. Also I got sick of trying to manage packages via RPM.
I've searched long and hard for a good book to recommend to newbies. This one is EXCELLENT. It shows you how to do most of the things necessary to make Linux work for you, not just as a cool thing to brag to your nerd friends about. It also goes a step further and explains a few things that those people who learn best by "putting it to use" like install/config Apache and using BIND, etc. No, I'm not the author or affiliated, but if you're looking for a good book to get you from "just knowing how to install Linux", this is a good book.
Anyone know of any other good starter books?
Slackware might be the best distribution around, but i dont think it is meant for newbies who dont even know what a command prompt looks like, and how to view a directory. Most of the people coming from the windows world dont even know about the existence of a shell prompt. You wouldnd ecpect them to modprobe their soundcard to get it to work. For such people i think mandrake is the best thing around. It is as close to win2k in ease of use as you can possibly get. Slackware might only drive away a potential linux user before he is able to understand the power and strength slackware has to offer.
just my 2c..
Don't Panic
From easiest to most difficult, he pecking order is:
Mandrake
Red Hat
SuSE
Slackware
Debian
FreeBSD (not Linux, I know).
Once you have that down, then figure out which distribution to use and make sure that it has a kernel that supports your hardware.
I have been using Mandrake for some time and it has been my favorite.
-Kevin
I know you're joking, but define "real". If by "real" you mean "hardcore by means of text-based shell", then sure. If Windows isn't real, what is it? A fake operating system? A virus maybe?
That aside, I know exactly what you mean. There's always WinVi, which IMO is an excellent Vi clone for Windows (acts like Vi and NotePad). But you're right, Windows does seem chunky... Makes me wonder how much time M$ spent on optimization...
...what really matters is how competant (sp?) you are at picking up on solving issues. If you try hard enough you should be able to install any distro...and generally the more obstacles you run against, the more you tend to learn. I guess the well laid out GUI installers in some distros make it easy for a first time installer. If you want to be adventurous / enjoy a challenge, just pick any distro and go with it.
as far as american cars being crap. blah. very wrong on many points. my friends bmw m3's engine block cracked at 60k miles. i suppose it was driven hard, but at 60k miles? most likely it got thru bmw's quality assurance when it shouldnt. import cars arent the cure-all. i can think of as many nissan/toyota/honda horror stories as domestic. my friends 84 camaro has over 180k miles on it. runs great. no problems. my grandfathers gm station wagon (dont know the model) has over 160k miles, and he NEVER maintains his cars properly.
A short while ago, on a news server 7 hops away.. DISTRO WARS (cue cheezy music) It is a period of civil war. Rebel coders, powered by a well-stocked fridge, have won their first victory against the evil Microsquash Empire. During the battle, Rebel coders managed to steal market share from the Empire's ultimate weapon, the Death Screen, an glaring blue menace with enough buffer overruns to lock up an entire computer. Pursued by their own egos, the coders argue about their startup scripts, custodians of the GPL'ed code that can save their uptime and restore freedom to the marketplace...
I got a perfect install, no hassles, with Mandrake 8.0. It set up network connections perfectly. Very impressive, and a better-looking desktop than Windows.
Bush's education improvements were
I started my Linux endeavors with Slackware. I was a windows MCSE guru and it took me a while to learn the different ways of thinking. However I immediately realized that some of those ways of thinking were much better.
I tried playing with RedHat when all their hype started but I couldn't get into it. In fact, I hated it compared to Slackware. If I wanted dumbed down I could go back to Windows.
Start with Slackware. By the time you have a system configured the way you want it, you will have a very nice basic understanding of Linux. If you stick with Slack over a release or two, you will get tired of the system maintenance it requires and will then better appreciate one of the package managed versions.
I went to Red Hat, then Caldera, then tried SuSE until I settled on Debian. No looking back either.
If I were you, I would go from Slack straight to Debain. Oh, and Debian makes the jump to Solaris easier too.
If you want to know the real reason why you need Debian, imagine you are strapped into an electric chair. There is a system 1000 miles away that is sending a signal every minute that is preventing you from being electrocuted. You must upgrade that system over the internet and there is no console attached, and there is nobody on site to help you.
You have your choice of distros to run on that remote system. I would choose Debian!
I found Redhat (6.2) a very good start, but I could only compare it to Solaris (8), which was much more difficult at first. I wanted to run them both, but Solaris had one small incompatibility with the NIC's I'm using, so I went with Redhat all the way.
:)
Coming from Win32 and Mac background, the thing I can underscore to you about Unix/Linux is that you have complete control over the system. This is also why it is difficult at first. Go ahead and use a GUI at first (I like KDE) to get a feel for where things are and to ease your transition. Especially learn how to turn services off which are not needed. What's cool is that you won't have to reboot with every change. Then, after a while, you can lose the GUI and leave the system running at the command line, something you cannot do with NT/2k. The system will be much faster, you'll notice, and you'll eventually learn all the commands you need to admin things.
All in all, if you have an open mind about leaving your NT world, you will very much like using Unix/Linux, no matter what distro you start with. Just don't let yourself get too frustrated in the beginning, because it really is a different world.
I, for one, wish you well
You will outgrow your usefulness - actual Slashdot footer quote
Once you learn to drive BIG. You will be able to drive any other vehicle with no problem. Make sure you get a stick model. ATs are for pansys.
Of all my unsuccessful forays in to the world of linux, I've learned something: To truly do it properly, you need two computers. Your linux machine, and something else that you are familiar with so that you can grab info from the net when you are stuck in linux.
I'm going to finally conquer the beast that is linux (diving in with slackware probably), but I'm not doing it until I have a second linux box, with fully compatible hardware.
Another thing is that your cutting edge PC is as likely to have hardware that doesn't work properly under linux as it is to have hardware that will. If you are just trying to learn linux, you sure as hell don't need hardware problems on top of it. Which is another reason for getting a second box.
- Like the UI enhancements (Mandrake Control Center, Menu Editor, etc)
- Its the easiest to get ahold of, get the latest at your local Wal Mart (literally)
And no I am not a newbie, I have been using BSD since 1994 and Linux since 1997. I've used them all and once you get under the hood they are all the same. However everyone has their personal favorite and I love Mandrake. Look, I do Linux all day at work, the last thing I want to do is come home and dick with it. I just want it to work.My dad however was able to transition to Linux from Win9x with SuSE and StarOffice. He is very happy and is getting very proficient at the Penguin.
-- 4 8 15 16 23 42
My point was that you even a non-specific question (such as "what's a good starter car?") which RelliK thought there was no good answer to, can be answered.
~jawad
I use Red Hat 7.1, it autodetected all my hardware and on what I had generally worked better than Windows 98. Of course it's newer and has more drivers but other than my parallel port scanner everything, including USB, works.
Well you'll probably want to start off with something small. It'll be easier to drive while you get used to handling it. Small cars tend to come with small engines, which is ok for now, as a smaller engine is also good for getting used to. Once you're more experienced you'll be able to handle the power of a larger engine better.
There are a few key features that you should look for that will simplify driving for you until you get used to the basics. An automatic transmission, ABS brakes, front-wheel drive and traction control are all good choices. Fuel injection is also helpful, and comes on almost all new cars today.
Safety features are also important for new drivers, as they're more likely to be involved in an accident. Newer versions come with features such as both front and side airbags, seat-belt pretensioners, active headrests and more. Crash ratings are provided by the government to help you decide which cars are the safest.
Another thing to remember is not to be fooled by fancy gizmos. Things like in-dash navigation units are expensive and really have nothing to do with driving at all.
Once you've started to get the feel of driving, then you'll be ready to step into some more complicated machines, and you'll have a better idea as to which will suit your needs. Hope this helps.
</simplejoke value="takentoofar">
--
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]
I think there are a lot of Windows users out there that aren't afraid of the command prompt - some who even like it - but the Windows job market calls for Windows users in many areas. I know, not all areas, but up here in Wisconsin we don't see nearly as many Linux positions as NT/2000/UNIX (as far as I can tell).
:) (except for Diablo II of course).
Also, I don't think Windows users who are dabbling in Linux are necessarily looking for their hand to be held. I wasn't when I started the switch. However, they do need some help! Currently, most of the books out there aren't very good. Some only cover the GUI, which you don't need a book to learn. Others assume a bit too much about the reader, making it useless.
I think the best hope for a Windows -> Linux user is find a good Linux buddy or two, or find a that book that is a "diamond in the rough".
Oh yeah, and I think anyone who is interested in playing with Linux probably knows a little about their hardware settings. People who don't probably haven't heard of Linux anyway.
I'm waiting for WINE to be a little more stable, and I won't have a reason to use Windows anymore
Get a red hat based one (like red hat or mandrake) for RPM support which is easiest way to install then load up Ximian Gnome (ximian.com) for all those gnome programs and KDE if you need something easier to use. I got my younger brother (10) to run Red Hat with Ximian and he had no problem after I told him that in un*x files are /foo/bar/something.txt opposed to the windoze C:\foo\bar\something.txt also try and remeber case sensative. I myself have (on different partitions) Debian (stable of course), Red Hat 7, Mandrake 8, SuSe 7.1,FreeBSD (not linux), and Plan 9 from Bell Labs(not linux). Also on my network i got Slacware set up as a http, mail, jabber server.
I got two windoze computers, one for games that wont run on vmware or wine, and my fav. windoze version 3.1 on a laptop that I got 4 $20 yesterday which by tomarrow will have OpenBSD on it.
I have tried redhat 7.1 and mandrake 7.2 and I had a sound card I was never able to get working. Mandrake 8 found and configured it the first time(I did'nt even know KDE had a startup sound before).
I will admit that all the guis can make it a little to easy to set up services though. They can be a crutch and I try hard to learn to set stuff up by hand first using the gui as a last resort and trying to figure out what they did later when I can.
I really do want to learn to compile the kernel by hand one of these days especially because mandrake 8 will not install on my laptop at all(even in text mode). mandrake 7.2 did but I was never able to get my cheap ass nic to work.
But like I said I'm no expert and I use linux for work (SQl, perl, webdev) everyday.
I'm assuming, due to the NT postion of the submission, that you're looking for a decent distro for the x86 platform.
However, if you have an extra PPC machine kicking around somewhere, i would suggest getting a copy of Yellow Dog Linux 2.0. I just can't say enough great things about this one; smooth install, good package tools, works great by default. Check it out if you get a chance.
Anyone else have suggestions for good Sparc or Alpha distros?
--saintIve personally always used slackware, but just to try something different i installed Mandrake on one of my computers and would have to say its the easist distro ive seen. I didnt have to configure a single thing for it. It setup my soundcard by itself and it had all the options i used already compiled into the kernel, even scsi emulation.
I've had stability problems with Mandrake 8.0, Redhat 7.1 is simple to install and maintain and is very stable, and by all accounts Slackware 8.0 is very stable and not all that difficult to install. I would recommend Redhat 7.1 or Slackware. Mandrake 8.0 I've found far too unstable to recommend, though it's a joke to install.
We don't give a fuck if you like your Debian.
I have a Chevy Lumina (3.1 V-6) that has 170,000 miles on it, and is still going strong, other than a TCC solenoid that I need to replace one of these days.
But Japanese cars are good, too. I got 270,000 out of a Nissan diesel.
american cars are crap
Yeah, but American trucks kick ass.
I've been using public transportation for over a year and I'm getting really tired of it. So finally I decided to get a car. The next question is which model do I get? What's a good starter version? I'm just looking to get the feel of it and to play around a little.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Mandrake is great because it's so easy to use. It's really easy to install, and it's got a bunch of utilities that simplify tasks like changing screen resolution, etc.
It's also RPM-based, which means it's nearly 100% compatible with Red Hat, the most popular distro out there.
But if you'd rather your system's activities were more transparent, I'd recommend Red Hat or Debian.
If you're more adventurous try Slackware, but that's asking for trouble...
The best Linux Distro for a newbie is
While usually articles get posted to the front page because they will arrouse interest, perhaps in this case it would have been more useful to not put it on the front page. The most useful and informative viewpoints would have still been included, but by not being on the front page, there would be far less redundancy, flamage, fanboyism and uniformed opinions.
Personally I'd say Redhat for ease of use, Slackware for the most educational value.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Remember - distribution is just an easy way to avoid compiling all that software. It does not replace knowledge on the part of the user.
I was a loyal RedHat user from version 5.x to 7.0. Then I got a new PC that RedHat 7.0 wouldn't even install on (hardware not supported). So I bought a copy of SuSe 7.1. The install went smoothly. Overall, I have found it to be a very good distro that has leap-frogged RedHat in everyway. IMO, SuSe is a good distro for newbie to power user. I've also tried Mandrake 8.0 and hated it! It just seemed buggy. Also, check out the distro reviews at http://www.thedukeofurl.org.
Slackware is a way of life for many linux users. It may not be as mainstream as RootHat or Mandrake. Needless to say since day one for me as a linux user I have been using slackware (tape installs were a bitch).
You'll read a lot more, but the ammount you will learn compaired to roothat etc is insane.
<happiness>beer</happiness>
windows 2000.
an invitation for a holy war. Perhaps next we should have a 'what's your favorite editor?' debate.
I started on slackware myself. Might as well jump in and get down to buisness. Yet I always been a console kind of guy as well. I believe windows has all the eye candy. If you want eye candy you use windows. If you want performance you use the console ;)
I was amazed when I took my course for A+ certification that the students didn't even know MS-Dos! So I'd first ask how well do you know dos (freedos, DRdos + Novell Dos, rxdos, ptsdos, ROMdos, etc...) how comfortable are you with the command line or how comfortable do you WANT to get? Consider the Mini-Dirtibutions. They're interesting if not always practical, and many of them You could use on a Windows box without actually installing them. Floppy distros, zipdisk distro, CD distros. Portibility is a great advantage too, when you're first learning. Have fun.
Why not use vim seeing as how there is a Windows version and it has lots of useless/full features (multi undo, syntax highlighting) that plain vi doesn't.
I've been right in the thick of this lately, converting my 7-computer home (macs, linux, windows) into a 100% Linux home. My low-end computer is a 75 mhz 486 laptop with 4 megs of RAM, my high-end is a 750 mhz P3 with 192 megs of RAM. Here are my thoughts after getting into it with a lot of distros.
Red Hat is the default most new users would pick. As BigBlockMopar said in another post, it's what most howtos and guides assume you're using. They have marketshare, they have a GUI installer, they're relatively stable. They also don't invoke a die-hard following much anymore, probably because of stunts like the non-compatible gcc compiler included in the most recent releases. I also agree with BigBlockMopar that the .0 releases suck. His suggestion to stick with 6.2 and patch it, or wait for 7.2, that's good advice. I loooooveed 6.2 and 5.2.
Mandrake is clearly targeting the Windows-refugees. Their installer is slick, it detects even obscure hardware for you, it sets up a nice-looking GUI, lots of point-and-click tools. It also has a security setup which I love -- you can turn on a small firewall, set security to "paranoid" and really protect your machine. But Mandrake's 8.0 is like Red Hat's 7.0 -- buggy. Their graphical RPM tool will lock up if it can't do passive FTP -- it doesn't appear to time out or have any code to fail gracefully. The AbiWord fonts completely screwed up the 8.0 release, some text is almost unreadable. The TuxRacer game will die if you use KDE. But the community is great. It's the only place you can go, say "I love how Windows does this" and not get flamed. People are really friendly. 8.1 should be a delicious release if they squeeze in gcc 3.0 and X-Windows 4.1.
Debian is great because of apt-get. It lets you install just a very core Linux setup, and then add bits & pieces safely, as needed. But the installer is painful -- one install literally took about 6 hours, because there is a whole LOT of detail in there. You can switch packages on and off at a very granular level. Didn't help that during the video card part of the install, it locked up. But I still like this distro for one big reason: it will install on my lame old 486 laptop with almost no RAM. It's a miracle I can shoehorn anything onto that machine, and Debian does it. Debian is usually only downloaded, they don't much sell CDs. Debian is run by volunteers, so the system really works well, people put TLC into the bits they help with. But that also means packages fall behind if the maintainer is busy or loses interest, and it isn't really a mainstream consumer product. Progeny is a commercial version of Debian that is more up to date.
Small Linux is another good Linux for old old computers. It comes on 2 floppy disks for install, and you can run off a disk if you wish. I tried to copy it to my 486 hard drive, but it got too complicated and I bailed for Debian.
Here are three that I don't use (although I used to play with Slackware). First, Slackware's package tool isn't really a package tool. It doesn't resolve dependencies. I'm fairly good at Linux, but I still consider Slackware too advanced for me. It is the most up-to-date Linux release right now though. Second, I haven't tried SuSe, although I've lusted after it a little in the stores. It's a good, big distribution, lots of apps. Nice and graphical. But it also needs a lot of RAM -- I think 64 megs was the recommended base. This will be best on modern, fast machines, I think. Third, I don't use Caldera because their new license don't allow users to freely install Linux on multiple machines. More money for them, which is good (Linux vendors need to survive), but I don't use them because of it.
Lastly, some advice in general: if you're going to be installing on older machines, remember to AVOID using Gnome or KDE. Install them to get their apps, but then also install IceWM or WindowMaker, and use those instead. IceWM runs apps from other window managers really well, and it's responsive. It's what I'll be using on my 486 laptop when I get it upgraded to 20 megs of RAM.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Before I started using Linux for personal use (other than for classes in my high school's computer systems lab), I started attending the weekly student system administrator meetings, since the students run the systems lab (for a high school, this is certainly a rare opportunity). Fortunately, the lab used Slackware and I got my intro to Linux with it, but even better was the resource of learning from students who already knew it.
Once I finally got a new hard drive for my machine, I immediately installed Slackware on it. Sure, it was bare bones, but I have already learned tons more about Linux as a result than what I did from the meetings alone, and I also learned more than I might have with an easier distro full of nice GUIs. As long as you're willing to do some research and learning first (and have people who can help you learn), I think Slackware is a great distro to start with.
Keep in mind that you'll probably get stuck once or twice regardless of what distro you choose. Whatever problems you may have had, chances are someone else had them first; always keep places like linuxdocs.org (also included with distros as the HOWTOs) and other such help sites and discussion forums bookmarked. It may take a few tries to get everything installed the way you want/need it, but it'll run smoothly after that and you'll start to be able to fix things on your own without outside help.
TildeMan
not only is freebsd sane and impossibley stable, but for the beginning *nix user, IMO it is much easier (from a console *nix view).
granted if a person does need/want a GUI to get used to the OS, then one either Mandrake/RedHat linuxes will be perfect. however, if a person wants to learn a *nix of some kind (again starting w/ console), then freebsd is the end all solution. it is flexible enough to be used a server, it even performs well as a workstation, having the latest stable xfree86 version to date (as well as a very nice collection of window managers) available in it's ports tree (a beautifal package management system).
on the subject of the install process, the freebsd handbook tells step by step how to run the installation floppies (or grab a bootable cd) downloaded from one of their many public ftp sites. the install media can be either a cd or downloading/installing via FTP. the boot disks have a well-built kernel that seems to support damn near any known NIC (i haven't ever seen a computer unable to download the install files via ftp) (anyone had different experiences than this?). the actual instalation (tho console based) is very nice looking, very straight forward self-explanatory, allowing you to choose install options, network, hardware setup, and either a standardized (several choices) install or customized (choosing the packages install modes.
for a package-management system, freebsd originated what is call'd the 'ports tree'. this huge collection of software keeps makefiles and distro info/lists in well-organized tree of software that has been ported/approved/fixed by the freebsd team to work flawlessly on the fBSD platform. this collection is so well populated that rartely do users need to d/l tarballs and isntall software that may be for linux or or other *nix's.
on a slightly more interesting note, i read somewhere that freebsd has at times been known to run linux source/binaries faster than linux itself can, in it's linux-compatibility mode. (although i can't remember where i saw/heard this, sorry).
btw, all these opinions are coming from a linux user of only about three years, having been through slackware, redhat, debian, mandrake, and suse (in that order). i was just never able to find any distro of that os that served my needs and likes as much as freebsd has done. - uberbastard
Sorry, but I've tried 2 SuSe distros (last was 7.2 pro) and had nothing but problems with both of them. In contrast I've used RH since 6.0 and I've always come back to it as the installer works well and out-of-the-box it's usually pretty stable. I install both using RPM and just building stuff - RPM can be a bit flaky, but it's generally ok.
SuSe (7.2) crashed during the install on a laptop, then when it did finish installing, there were dead processes mounting up all over the place. Switching from KDE to Gnome (my preferred desktop) lead to another crash and resulted in my not being able to log in until I removed the .gnome and .kde directories. I thought I'd try the font anti-aliasing, (silly me) it worked so well the font's become completely invisible! I could go on, but you get the idea...
I like to show my support by buying the distros, but I won't be trying SuSe again...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Where's the standard disclaimer that those figures are subject to change?
And did you actually count or did you just pull those figures out of your ascii?
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
mandrake.
'Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things.'
In the end, as a newcomer to Linux, what you need more than anything else is someone to turn to when you get stuck.
:-)
Most of the common general-purpose Linux distributions should run fine on your PII-266, so just use the same one that your local Linux-using friend(s) use. That way, when you ask for help, they will be able to provide it more quickly, and they will do so without adding confusing rants against your particular chosen distribution
If you truly have no Linux-using friends locally at all (!), and plan to ask for help purely online, then using the distro with the largest market share is probably wise... which means Red Hat.
This is not meant as a flame. Please do not read it as such.
/. FUD tradition quite nicely. You said that "[Linux] blows NT/2000 out of the water in security and stability." then go on to say that "and do the BIND upgrade, since most older Linux/UNIX distros ship with a fairly dangerous DNS server vulnerability.".
I'm an avid Win2K user, and your post follows the
Isn't this a little contradictory?
2K has security problems, yes. So does RedHat. So do most other distributions of Linux. It's always a matter of patches/updates to the latest bug-free code. Yes, Linux usually gets fixes quicker than 2K, but at the same time, Microsoft was (as they should be) quick to jump on the fix to IIS5 with all the Code Red viri running around.
Please try not to bash 2K just because it's made by MS. It works. It works better than any other OS that MS has produced. MS took a clue about stability from Linux, just as Linux should take a clue about usability.
It's all about options, not "my dad can beat up your dad".
LOAD "SIG",8,1
LOADING...
READY.
RUN
1. Corel Linux 1.0
I tried it. I killed it. I couldn't stand the way it took over the boot process and I didn't understand anything about MBRs back then. 'Nuff said.
2. Debian Linux 2.2r3 :) And I couldn't get it to work with a multi boot program (again, I still didn't understand MBRs.)
Eventually I got brave again and downloaded the Debian floppies and XFree86 sources (through a measley 28.8, I still can't get anything better.) I installed it, managed to get it running at the command line only. I tried a 'make World' with XFree86 but it didn't work. Something about not having a 'make' command available
3. Mandrake Linux 8.0
I spent a while researching multi-boot programs and gained some wisdom with MBRs. I got myself booting windows from the boot manager, and got a friend to download me the ISOs. I booted it. I installed it. And it detected ALL my hardware including an SBLive and NIC - it took the network and gateway settings and I instantly had network and internet access. And it's still what I have installed right now.
The Moral Of The Story... If you're an experienced Windows user and want to 'start' on linux without much frustration, a GUI and Easy Setup can help immensely in getting you rolling. It's not as educational as doing everything from the shell, but it keeps you interested and coming back to use it. What good is a distro if you won't load it up because you can't (yet)use the command prompt? And as you're ready, you still can open the command prompt and ease yourself into it.
And one other point: If you're going to take the plunge and will not be doing it on a dedicated machine, BACK UP YOUR DATA. You might want to get just another HDD and remove the others for safekeeping. I've been lucky and managed to escape some partition table catastrophes and other totally stupid escapades. But maybe you'll be less lucky. So get another HDD, an ORB Drive, CD-Rw, whatever. You'll feel glad you did.
I run the local LUG here in Orange County Florida, and I have been using Debian all most from the very beggining. I started off with Slackware, tried Debian a year or so after it came out and have been using it ever since.
The number of Debian users I see bashing other distibutions is really depressing. It is enough for me just to use the distro I love, I don't have to make myself feel superior by bashing other distros constantly.
Until recently I didn't see it very much, I hardley ever see it on the Debian mailing lists.
It is such ridiculous elitism. I see many people attacking the security of other distributions (*especially* RedHat). I don't know about you guys, but last time I checked there were alot of security advisories for Debian just like every other distro.
The last install fest we had I installed RedHat on more than 20 boxes, and during every installation it asked to configure a firewall and turn off any services you don't want *during* installation. So, like most other security problems, if you have unnecesary services running it is *your* fault.
As far as being unstable, I agree RedHat should not have used 2.96, however it was blown completely out of proportion by so many people.
2.96 made *C++* incompatible with older versions, that is all. Any C code that did not compile was not a bug, that was broken C code, because version 2.96 and 3.0 refuse to compile many non-standard code that older versions compiled silently.
Now if you where developing C++ and where distributing it in source code and not in a binary package, your code probably wouldn't compile on other distros.
Either way 3.0 will be defualt in all most every distribution in a few months and people are still using 2.96 with it's C++ compatibility issues as a reason for saying an entire distribution "sucks".
I see many people asking us to install many different distributions on many different types of computers, they all seem to work out fine for most people. So I don't know why some people are so immature.
I'd like to congratulate you for making almost as much sense as the original poster. Almost.
I used Slackware before, but now i use Redhat.(Im having trouble downloading cd images though...becase of slow Internet connection and cant download coz the mirror sites dont allow resumes) I find that there are lots of manuals or sites that particularly cater to REDHAT... one that i got was from linuxdoc.org about securing a linux server... it mentioned of REDHAT. So i guess the best distro is the one with most manual or repository of it... though i cannot really quantify as compared with the other distros... hey! any redhat ftp site that is resumption of download enabled?
Another caveat if you've been dumpster diving, Mandrake 8 is a pentium or higher distro, no 3/486 for a default install.
Read my plan to save the Bengals
I agree. If you want a good learning curve and not too many weird bits, go with SuSE. My two gripes with Mandrake are how slowly they release packages (I wound up compiling everything, thus negating the benefits of a package system), and how the had lots of undocumented automated "features", like their menusync system.
That's assuming you want to learn to *use* and *administrate* Linux. For a much higher learning curve and a path towards kernal development and manual dependancy management (which isn't necessary unless you want to make your own distro or develop Linux itself), try Slackware.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
NO, it's you who didn't get it. It was his first post, not the fp on this story.
However, I have found Debian to have one big shortcoming ... you have to know what your hardware is. Not much of a problem if you just bought your computer, but if you're setting it up on an old system that you don't know much about, or something of the like, you can end up having to go through headaches trying to find out which modules you need, etc. Red Hat and Mandrake, in comparison, did a great job of detecting all my hardware, so I could just go at it.
So ... if all you want to do is plug in the CD and have it work, I'd say go with Mandrake. (It was the nicest of the "other distros" that I tried.) But if you're going to want to fiddle around a lot, then get Debian. Oh, it's also the beloved "free as in speech, beer, walnuts, fish, ..." distro of choice, if you find that sort of stuff important :) Just ask vrms.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
I decided to try the same thing a couple years ago on a tired p166 (S series - mind you, no MMX extensions here!) clocked to 200. I also had a couple drives at 1 gig and 540 megs. Not being one to take the easy route, and enjoying "first on the block" DSL download speeds, I grabbed Redhat and Debian, despite hearing that Debian could be, er, less than intuitive to the new user. I did my homework, maintained a good solid pipe to the user materials on both distros, and found that Debian actually provided the best starter platform. It forced me to break with my years of windows complacency and actually learn whatinhell the the OS was going to do and what I'd better do to make it fly. Granted, I'd already suffered through years of Dos, all the Windows os'es (from 2 on, sorry to say...) Mac, Unix and, whatever those trash 80s ran on... Do yourself a favor and get a good (O'Reilly?!? look for recommendations in the archives here) and learn it ground up. If the install is spoon fed to you, you're just another Win NT guy that ran a Linux install app... Like I said, my 2 cents...
STOP. You're being farmed.
That's probably because you didn't know what you were doing.
Have you tried linux from scratch?
Like science? Comics? Wicked...
Funny By Nature
I have a secondary question: I am a longtime Mac user with an interest in learning Linux. As far as I know my options are LinuxPPC, Yellow Dog Linux and SuSe Linux-or really old ones such as MkLinux. Anyone have any suggestions as to which is the best starter for Apple hardware? I'm currently in the process of installing LinuxPPC which has the advantage of being freely downloadable.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
My first Linux distribution was Slackware back around 96-97. I was a newbie in both Unix and Linux at the time. It took me a while to make Slackware work on my 486 but I finally got it. In 1998 I installed Red Hat 5.0 in my AMD K6-2 300Mhz. Once again, I had to do my homework to get all the hardware to work. Later I swithed to Mandrake 5.2. Since then I have always had Linux Mandrake in my PC. I currently have 7.1 and will upgrade to 8.0 in a couple of weeks. I preferred Mandrake because it is BY FAR much easier to install than Slackware or Red Hat. Additionally, the GUIs (KDE,Gnome) are very well integrated. ALL of the applications have been optimized for Pentuim class machines (YES ALL, not just the kernel as Red Hat does). Of course note that this may not necessary increase performance much. Additionally, Mandrake has some very nice GUI tools for system configuration. They have DrakConf is which much easier to use than Linuxconf. It doesn't do all the things that Linuxconf does but it is easier. If you like to highly customize everything by yourself, choose Slackware but it you want somethings that works with much less effort go with Mandrake. You WILL NOT loose performance using it. REALITY is that all distributions will be more or less the same. You can customize Mandrake just as much as you can Slackware. Additionally it you prefer to do all the configuration using the command line with text editor you can do that to. I like Mandrake so much that I will replace Red Hat 6.2 on the computer I use at work and install Mandrake 8.0 instead.
I'm really not qualified to give you a good answer here. I started off with Slackware 2.3 and now, 6 years later, run Slackware 8.0.
I have momentarily tried Redhat, Debian and Mandrake, but all of those installs have not lasted more than a few hours.
By all means give Redhat and Mandrake a try, they're easy starter distributions, but try to graduate to Slackware or Debian once you've got the hang of it. I think this is more importantly so if you want to use learning Linux as a method of learning UNIX.
Learning Linux, however, should, above all, be fun. It's easy to lose sight of that.
I'm sure someone is going to come out of the woodwork here and contest some of the things I say, so before they do, let my stress that this is just my opinion and I'm perfectly entitled to it. I've also held this opinion for years and am unlikely to be chaning it anytime soon.
Why not do yourself and the community a favour and create Debian packages of the software you are installing from source? Then make them available on your web page, or as an apt source? Even better, become an official Debian package maintainer?
That's what I'd do if I still built stuff from source. But I don't have the time for that anymore. Hopefully I will sometime soon.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Why will it contain this crap? Because it really doesn't matter what you use as long as you learn the unix philosophy, so just pick a distro that you like, be it Debian, RedHat, Mandrake, Suse, Caldera or even FreeBSD or something
I agree upto a point, but it's a bit hard to pick a distro if you've never used one
Personally, I recommend Mandrake, but I had high hopes for the second version of Corel.
Perhaps there ought to be a distro-eval HOWTO, giving a brief rundown on the filesystem structure and explaining why you don't have to format the whole disk when you want to reinstall
Hmm... I'm wondering, why would anyone want to learn Linux, other than to learn more about the innards of a computer... I treat Windows, Mac OS, and Linux as desktop operating systems for people who don't know what "compiling a kernel" means. With that said, since when did that kind of audience want to learn an operating system? Isn't an operating system supposed to be about operating your computer right off the bat? And not spending time tinkering with it and making it work?
But anyway, in the case of the guy above, if he wants to "learn Linux" I guess the more popular the distro the better, i.e. RedHat.
Foxman is totally correct! Slackware 3.6 was my first distro and WOW did I learn a whole ton by using it! By just starting with that, in about 3-6 months I was already ahead of a lot of people that had been using RedHat and the likes for a lot longer. I hightly recommend it! I still use Slackware 8.0 as my primary becuase I fell in love with it!
---- Move SIG...For great justice!
I love FreeBSD and Linux...but shut the fuck up.
I personally never tried it, but in my friend's LUG, not one person who tried installing it got it actually running.
I usaly install mandrake for people and then listen to what they like or don't like about it and what they want to do. From there I install the distro that best matches their needs.
Mandrake is the Mac of Linux
Redhat is the MS of Linux
Slackware is the UNIX of Linux
Debian is the Linux of Linux.
Ascii artist &
You should also note that nothing will frustrate you as much as Slackware. Sorry, but Slackware would be the LAST distro I'd suggest for a newbie. Certainly the user knows more about Linux after successfully installing Slackware - if he/she doesn't lose patience halfway through, decide Linux is too much for them, and goes back to the Windows ghetto. Slackware is for that crowd who hack their kernels and remain convinced that vi is all you need for editing. (No flame on vi users intended.)
I've tried to get Progeny going on about 6 different systems not one installed. I then took another Debian-based system, Stormix and got it going on the first install. Then I tried "pure" Debian and it installed with not problems as well. I went back to Stormix because I liked it better, sad thing is that they went out of business.
m.kelley
life is like a freeway, if you don't look you could miss it.
I've never tried Mandrake, but seems to be the distro of choice for refugees from Windows; I answer newbie questions over at AskMe.com and I see a tremendous amount of new users saying they are using Mandrake - and liking it.
I'm a bit out of the loop over here - how did it get to be so popuar? Is it the cheapest on the shelf at WalMart or something?
Over here, we get free distros with magazines (Linux Magazine, Linux Business, Nikkei Linux, etc.) But they haven't had Mandrake yet - (Probably has poor I18n support.)
(It's a great feeling to be able to pick up a new distro for ten bucks at a convenience store or magazine stand...)
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
I started with RedHat like most people but SuSE was just easier to setup, update and use. It has more bloat than any ditro out there. More than likely it will have everything you could ever want on the client and server side. It uses RPM's which I like quite a bit, has a great update tool that's free. YaST2 is there setup tool which is great for setting up most of your hardware on you system. Most the people I know that are new or casual users LOVE IT, most the Linux programers I work with that compile the kernel for fun, and write there own drivers for giggles. These type of guys seem to like RedHat or Debian. Basically there all the same I'd play around with them and see what fits you the best, there are Linux so there all good in there own way :)
Undoubtedly the worlds most successful computer virus!!! Or was that html?!
I only actually got started on those because of a course I did as part of a Cert IV in Computer Maintenance on UNIX. We did basic shell stuff with either slack or redhat, really early version with xdm logins and using twm.
Still it blew me away, especially when I started reading on the net about being free and all. I had to get it.
Anyway I use Mandrake now, not because I think it's superiour to others (it's actually pretty bumpy to tell you the truth, but lots of eye candy), but because of the community around it, I quite like the help forums, and the couple of mandrake specific IRC chatrooms. Good people. So I'm comfortable where I am for now. Also Mandrake should have 8.1 out in about two months...
"I'll take the red pill. No! Blue! AAAaaaahhhhhhhhh"
- Monty Python meets the Matrix
Another run-from-cd linux I experimented with is finnix, but it is a little out of date and has no X.
One thing I noticed with finnix is that the RAM disks it creates are small. The demolinux page mentions a warning about the same thing. Has anyone used linux to create RAM disks bigger than 4 MB, and if so did they have to do anything special ?
As a big fan and user of Slackware for years, I am continually pissed off that people consider me a newbie because I use Mandrake on my work machine.
Rubbish. I use Mandrake because it is easiest to accomplish all that I must do immediately in this distribution. Slackware and Debian users typically look down their noses at Mandrake and this bugs me. I find I can do everything in Mandrake that I can do in either Debian or Slackware and not only that, I can find a handy gui app to assist me in getting things done when I am in a hurry, where I am much less likely to do so (IME) in either of these other distros.
I don't have the time to use Slackware or Debian for work purposes. I'm far too busy to waste time figuring out how to use the multitude of commandline switches in a new application at work. I use both Slackware and Debian at home where I have the time and leisure to experiment.
Bzzzzzt..."AAAAaaaaarrrgh!!!" Thud.
If you are wanting to get up and going quickly, I would recommend using Mandrake 8.0.
I'm an NT user at work, Mandrake is quite close to Windows in terms of ease of use. Also if you have some Win32 apps you need to run, the latest wine will run quite nicely on Mandrake.
In the past I've used Yggdrasil, Slackware, RedHat and Mandrake. Mandrake is the best I've found so far in terms of ease of use.
Good Points
Bad points for Mandrake are :-
- Shipped version of GNU Privacy Guard version may be slightly unsafe in this distribution.
- gcc 2.96 version is broken (Mandrake uses the same broken version of gcc that RedHat uses, see comments below on setting up a learning partition)
- If you don't tell the installer you want to develop code, it will just install runtime libraries and it's a matter of searching through the software manager for the development libraries you want and installing them.
Debian perhaps ?? If you want to do development, learn a lot about configuration/system administration and discover the power of a free software project, get hold of Debian. The standard potato distribution is not easy to use, but there are some enhanced easier to install Debian distributions. At home I have a 'learning' partition with Debian on it and then Mandrake where I get things done.Slackware 8.0. I've had this one running through my learning process. Comes with nice stuff, and is fairly secure as far as I can tell. It's not quite as user friendly as a Debian or even a Red Hat, but it's a nice distribution.
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
the way for a linux newbie to go is madrake. They take redhat and refine it a lot. You will get a fully functinaly install with no probs and a lot more user friendly out of mandrake than you do out of redhat. You will not be overwellemed and given time to get a feel for linux. Once you decide that you like linux and have an idea of what you are doing you should go over to debian. Debian is by far and above the best reason to use linux. I started out with mandrake and now i use debian and i am glad that i went that route. I was originaly a mac person so the whole command line thing was entirely new to me. i got a good idea what i was doing with mandrake and then had only minor probs going over to debian. good luck to you. YOu will love linux so much more than windows it is not even funny once you get used to it!
First to Win2K "fans" here. Some people blow up here when /. FUDs M$. Yes, it may suxxx sometimes. But frequently you give a good reason to bash you... The question is about Linux and not what sucks. So stick on it ok?
Second. From the 4-5 distros we use here, Mandrake is surely the most universal and easier. However, I would seriously warn people to avoid sticking their ideas and works over one distro. Madrake is a good desktop system (I personally use it for nearly 2 years). Also it can give a basis for an average server, but not more. If you are in need of serious server deployment then better to loose a bit of your nerves and look at RedHat. But don't stop here. When you get acquainted with it, better to check up old good Slackware and the monstruous Debian. These two is what I would call the Heavy Gear of serious server deployment. Slackware is older but more "complete". Debian is complex but flexible when you know the ends of the web.
Apart of Mandrake there has been some serious publicity about Connectiva. It looks like a good distro for beginners also. Unfortunately I haven't checked it. There is also SuSe but I would call it a distro for advanced desktop users. At least, this is the impression I got from our 3 SuSe users and their lives on it.
The best book I have run into as a Win developer who can and does admin NT/2K is Mark Minasi's Linux for Windows NT/2000 Administrators: The Secret Decoder Ring.
Aside from a dumb title, the book makes Linux make some kind of sense for a person mainly familiar with Windows. If you don't need the concept of Login explained and are really more interested in how Linux handles authentication, for example, this is the book for you. I found it hugely useful to learning something about Linux and giving me a better appreciation of how NT/2K works by comparing it to a different approach to similar problems.
You will quickly outgrow it, as the author indicates, but that is the nature of any attempt to put a beginner's guide to anything *nix between two covers.
Because a small percentage of the people who post to Slashdot are the smartest people with whom I have contact about a particular subject.
Bush's education improvements were
I've tried most of the major distros in the last 2 years. I started out with Red Hat and quickly moved to Mandrake. Used that for a year or so and then tried Suse 'cause Mandrake didn't install on my laptop. Recently my favorite distro is Slackware. The distros have all come a long way in the past 2 years. One of the difficulties when I first started was the X setup, but all four seems to have made that very easy, especially with X 4.x. Anyway, here are my opinion as a fairly recent linux convert. Red Hat is good easy distro. The RPMs make installs of software fairly easy. But if you want to test the bleeding edge, not very suited for that. It has a pretty good set of GUI tools. But if GUI tools are what you're looking for (usually good for windows converts) than Mandrake might be the one for you. Mandrake is a Red Hat derivative. It has a better GUI toolset and in my opinion. A generally better looking all around. Probably the distro most suited for migration from a windows system. Has the same drawbacks as Red Hat, but a good one to learn under. SuSe. Now days rivals Mandrake in the GUI tools and ease of install. It is a slightly different flavor of linux. Has a centralized tool that controls a lot of the system features. Has one centralized RC file that holds the major configs for the system. This is a double-edged nice if this is your first distro and that is what you get used to, but can wreak havoc if you're used to dealing with all the different rc files and try to mess with those... In my opinion, not one to try if you plan on switching distros in the future. Slackware. If you're into tweaking software and like to install from source files, probably the best suited distro. I switched from SuSe because I was tired of all the SuSe-isms. Made it quite difficult to compile software on my own... But probably not for those expecting a lot of GUI tools.
Slackware is bottom of the barrel when it comes to distros. It will not teach you anything about linux as it is not standard, and lacks many useful features such as package managment. It is very much like netBSD is to freeBSD, where the former is no better, but users use it to feel more 'elite' than the users of the latter.
Try debian, if you have problems go to mandrake until you feel more comfortable.
You could try a "one-disk" distro first, you don't have to partition your hard disk, just boot from a floppy and play a bit. A list of mini-distributions to download is Here
True, but make sure you have a very knowledgable Linux/UNIX person to turn to. Otherwise I guarantee you'll be frustrated as hell because Slackware doesn't provide any of the UI amenities you'd find in NT or in other Linux distributions. What this means is that you'll have to compile and configure every piece of software and every part of the system by editing config files. This can get very, very annoying if you don't know what to do.
If you do have someone to help you out then by all means try Slackware. You'll learn more from it than any other Linux distribution. However, if you are trying to learn Linux alone, then I might start with a more user-friendly distribution like Redhat, Mandrake, or Suse. When you feel more comfortable with Linux, then by all means switch to Slackware.
1. chkconfig is IRIX-like. linuxconf is depricated (and is from someone else anyway. rpm is very powerful and good despite its few flaws.
2. The 6.2 installer needed some work -- it was newly re-written in python. The 6.0 installer was a terrible ugly chunk of C code which needed to be rewritten, but which was very solid. If you use 7.1 or the 7.2 beta, you'll find the installer is much more stable. I've never seen netconfig segfault, but I probably haven't seen the situation you're referring to.
3. See http://www.bero.org/gcc296.html for some good information on the GCC issue. Red Hat is a part of the Linux Standard Base project, and makes a very strong effort to be FHS-compliant. Library differences are a fact of Unix -- you can't expect to move binaries between *any* two distributions without some glitches. I'm pretty sure that POSIX doesn't specify init scripts, so I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about there -- care to clarify? And in general, can you point to some evidence of this "deliberate"ness?
4. Red Hat's tools aren't proprietary. The installer, anaconda, is GPL'd. So are chkconfig and RPM, and linuxconf is too, although as I said it doesn't really have anything to do with Red Hat per se. netconfig is part of pump, which is released under the MIT license. Your route gripe might be valid, but as far as I know, that's not Red Hat specific.
5. The ps that ships with Red Hat (GPL'd, by the way) will accept either BSD options or SysV flags. So you can do either "ps ax" or "ps -ef".
I've tried all the distros except Mandrake and SuSE is the best as far as getting setup and running smoothly.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
My opinion is that Redhat and Mandrake make the best beginners distributions. Though, since you have slightly older hardware, you might not want to go with so much bloat. I use FreeBSD myself, which is of course not Linux, but a close relative. With the BSD's you get less bloat than one of the aforementioned distros but still maintain adequate ease of use for a beginner. The documentation for BSD systems is also extremely good. If you want to stick with Linux, try Debian, as it is a good distro and won't default to installing extra crap (at least when I tried it which was a long time ago). Of course YMMV, though good luck with whatever you go with.
Though I started out with Caldera, I'm on my third version of SuSE and love it. Great graphical interface, lots of install options and nearly every package you could ever want...
http://www.bbspot.com/News/2000/4/linux_distros.ht ml
You haven't fucking learnt to spell yet, how can you possibly manage Slackware - because you are a slacker ? there's an affinity there ? FYI isn't NOT isnt believe NOT beleive it's NOT its (in this context) they're NOT there (in this context) poor NOT poar Yu poar dislessic innorant b'stard
AOL
buildiner is of course, building. perhaps I shouldn't post on slashdot after helping polish off a 12-pack of corona :-)
S.t.e.v.e.
Buy a book not a distro. Read the book then pick a distro. Actually most books come with a linux CD. I got started with Slackware and currently use both RedHat and Slackware on my network (Slack on the older computers RedHat on the newer b/c all the crap you dont want to install)
Oh, and by the way, welcome to the world of real operating systems. You know you're there once you type "ls" by accident when you sit down at a DOS box. Or when you try to open CONFIG.SYS with vi. :)
You'll never look back. Windows is such a cumbersome toy in comparison.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
For your first Linux distro, I recommend Red Hat Linux. While I think it's unquestionable that it's not the best Linux, especially from a security standpoint, it's very well supported. Almost every Linux FAQ you'll find on the 'Net treats Red Hat as the defacto standard.
Coming from NT/2000, for the first little while, everything is going to feel really foreign and strange. Don't lose your way. Relax and read the docs which are all over the 'Net. And don't be afraid to experiment with the system.
Red Hat has (don't flame me, this is from memory) an installed base of about 50% of the Linux market; you can't beat the support. And even if it's not the most secure or stable Linux, it blows NT/2000 out of the water in security and stability.
Specific version? Find a Red Hat 6.2 distro; make sure you turn off un-needed daemons ("services" in Windows parlance) and do the BIND upgrade, since most older Linux/UNIX distros ship with a fairly dangerous DNS server vulnerability.
I'd stay away from x.0 versions, especially RH 7.0, which, to be blunt, sucked. I like the greater maturity of the 6.2 distro over RH 7.1 because, well, RH 6.1 wasn't nearly as good as 6.2. Note that the kernel that ships with 6.x and 7.0 is a 2.2 series kernel, and a more modern distro has a 2.4 series kernel, which means better built-in firewalling, SMP support and a few other goodies.
Once you're comfy with it, consider moving up to Debian or Slackware - but that's a matter of opinion.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I started on SuSE, then went to RedHat, then Slackware, now I'm back on SuSE- don't know whether i truly prefer it, or whether it's because it was my first. *aww*. anyhow- i love and suggest SuSE
Slackware Ain't Dead!
:-)
Next thing you know, you'll be the troll posting "It doesn't take a Kreskin to know that Slackware is dying"
I'm thinking about Gentoo. It looks nice.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I think SuSE is a great distribution. It is:
If you haven't looked at SuSE for a while, they made a huge progress with their graphical installer. And the ease of graphical administration should appeal to Windows users.
Give it a try!
Michael
SuSE linux is the way to go! SuSE is the best distro that I have used the YaST installer is great and everything works! Plus you get cool dust puppy stickers! Peace, Adam
Supports many different types of hardware and comes with some very useful programs if you select to install them upon setup. Quite easy to use and install.
To start off, I'd first recommend installing Mandrake. Play around with this for a while with it's nice graphical interface and start to get a feel for Linux. Begin to find applications under Linux that replace the common apps that you used under Windows. Oddly, I found this to be the hardest part of switching to Linux.. through the years you build up a group of programs for Windows that will fit all of your needs, but once you switch to Linux, you need to start all over again.
Once you become somewhat familiar with Linux from playing with the Mandrake distro, it's time for some serious learning to begin. Backup any necessary data, reformat and install Slackware. Download the source for all the programs that you liked that came with Mandrake but weren't included with Slackware. Compile and install all of these from the source code (no RPMs). As you go along, write a bash script to do this for you so that next time you reinstall you wont have to go through all the motions of recompiling all of the programs you need, but can rather just type in a single command to do it all.
Since you most likely have some other Windows boxes at home, get the Windows box to be able to connect to the Linux box via Samba. Work out a usable backup scheme (even if you dont have much data on the box) to become familiar with the differences from Windows backup software. If you dont have a spare tape drive laying around, have it back the data up to another server or to a spare hard drive. Hook your printer up to the Linux box and connect to it from your Windows box. Recompile the kernel over and over. Try out differnet settings, read the Help for every item. Think of other little (or big) things you could setup on your Linux box and test them out.
The above will allow you to learn the basics of a Linux setup. Once you get the hang of those, then it's time to dig a little deeper... Check out the Linux From Scratch guide on building your own Linux distro, and then make one for yourself. Granted this takes a very long time, so even if you never quite get it to a usable state, you will have learned a great deal about the bootup process for Linux. On a smaller scale, you could try to make a mini recovery/utility distro and put it on a floppy, zip disk, or cdrom. Also, teach yourself a couple programming languages for writing both scripts and utilities. Also, become familiar with piping ( | ) and redirecting ( ) input and output to and from console programs.
Granted this is still far from a complete list of stuff to teach yourself about Linux, but it's a start.
If you are really serious about learning Linux, try to creating bootdisk from scratch after you are comfortable with whatever distro. http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/howto/Bootdisk-HOWTO /index.html
Personally, my favorite distro is Debian because of its package managing system. What's better than 'apt-get upgrade-distro' to upgrade your distribution?
That's how I started out.
:)
:)
My first attempt at linux was Debian, then in a rather immature state. I tried to put it on my auxiliary box (a 486) from about 6 floppies.
I ended up at that point with a bash prompt, after a successful install, reboot, and login... and I had no clue what to do.
So I gave up on linux, until I tried RedHat 5.0 for the first time (which was my next linux attempt). Lo and behold, I was a hooked linux user from then on (and have stuck to Slackware since around the time of RedHat 6.0).
Like you, I'm a person who came to Linux because I was sick of messing with Windows. I'm _not_ a computer geek in the hacking and coding sense of the word; Red Hat was really remarkably easy to set up, install, and use right out of the box. I started with 6.1, then 6.2, and now I'm using 7.1. All have been fine with my system...HOWEVER, I suspect that you'll have minor quirks and possibly major annoyances that you'll need to figure out--no matter what distro you use. It's easy to kind of overlook something that later turns out to be important. My biggest frustration was that I couldn't find any decent _books_ (yes, real honest to god books!) that answered what I needed to know. Most of the beginner stuff is done in a quick step-by-step, without much depth and background about what's going on. If something goes wrong or you need to tweak something, frequently even simple solutions don't get mentioned. I found (eventually) two books that REALLY would have helped me had I had them right from the start: One is _Running Linux_ by O'Reilly, and the other is _A Practical Guide To Linux_ by Sobell. Both are excellent, and give even a novice reader a nice understanding of how the scripts run, which files to poke around in to find certain info, and which files to leave very much alone. :-)
Linux's biggest strength is also (for the newbie) its biggest weakness: Things don't get fixed by giving it the three-finger-salute. If it's messed up, it stays messed up until you fix it. The nice thing is that someone out there who knows more than you will always be kind enough to point you in the right direction. Generally starting pleas for help with "I'm really sorry to bother you with what's surely a stupid question, but..." has worked well for me. Man pages were (for a LONG time) almost unusable because of the massive vocab and Linux knowledge one needed to know in order to be able to read it.
I haven't messed around with any of the other Linux flavors, but Red Hat has really been great. Buy the CDs once, then use ISO images later on.
Thanks for saying that. I get tired of people calling other people "idiots" and making other disparaging remarks.
Bush's education improvements were
Of course I want to keep my new system clean! Those guys told me how Linux was a cancer and all.. And I don't want my machine to get a virus or anything, so I'll stick to Microsoft!
"You can take our lives, but you can never take our Flerbage!!!!"
If you are feeling really ambitious and would like to learn even more than from slackware, try buildiner your own distribution. Now that would teach you a lot. Perhaps more than you are interested in, but I figure someone out there would be.
S.t.e.v.e.
I think a good question is, What is best for a user from windows to do? learn a distro that is easier to use or to learn the distro that is more hardcore, and shed any windows-likeness in the process?
I look at it this way. We don't want the guy to get discouraged and go back to what seems easy (Windows). And, the way I look at it, Red Hat is a good taste, because it's so well supported. He can get hard core once he's learned how to get the box to do what he wants through the point-and-drool stuff. He's got enough to learn with just the new UNIX terminology and the basic architecture.... ("Where's my C drive? How do I save my work if I don't have a C drive?!").
I'll tell you, I had an e-mail address in 1988. It was a UUCP account, through a dial-up shell on a Sun box, and I was familiar with being a UNIX user back then. I walked away from it, and eventually moved to my Amiga systems, then finally to a 486 with Windows 95. Getting sick of Windows and going back to UNIX (Linux) was tough enough, especially when you've got root access for the first time. :)
Go gently, get a popular distro, and don't get discouraged.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I've tried most of the popular distros. If you're looking to learn Linux and/or use it as a server, I think Debian is the best. If you just want to use it, I think Mandrake and Progeny are excellent client distributions. Debian/Progeny is easy for admin newbies, and Mandrake is great for those who just want some other OS with a decent setup, GUI, and preinstalled apps.
oops, http://www.linuxiso.org/distro-battle.html sorry 'bout that one.
Why don't we have this one as a poll?
AND
I've lost the link to the CowboyNeal ISO's, can someone please post the link.
(Actually the short answer is Slackware, but nevermind I'll stop trollin'... :) ).
:) (or another distro that is a self booting "demo" of Linux such as Demo Linux, ZipSlack, WinLinux 2000?, etc).
Check out www.linuxiso.org and grab some CDs to play with :).
First of all, it doesn't matter what distro you start with. You can always jump ship later for whatever your needs are.
Secondly, If you are looking for Linux experience to make you more attractive to businesses, go with a distro very friendly to businesses such as Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake, etc. If you are looking for a distro to really get under the hood and see how everything works (ie. you won't be babied), try Slackware or Debian.
If you have no experience at all, play with a Tom's Boot and Root disk
-Tom
But I am a rabid fan of Debian. Debian is easy to maintain; once a Debian system is working, it is so easy to keep it up-to-date. The Debian volunteers do a great job of putting together the packages, and the apt-get system is just wonderful.
But many folks find Debian hard to install. Thus I recommend you give Progeny Debian a try. Progeny is available for free download, or as a packaged product with support. Be sure to check and see if your hardware is supported, however; if the installer melts down, it isn't any fun.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I doubt there's any practice accepted as legitimate that's more barbaric than circumcision.
I started out with a freebie copy of SuSE 5.2 from a cover disc a couple of years ago. Installed ok, but took 2 months of re-jigging and applying kernel patches to get my sound card to work. Nowadays it's much easier. Mandrake has the best hardware auto-detect on install. SuSE is most complete and flexible. eg. I've just installed SuSE on an old Compaq Contura Aero with no CDROM. SuSE's boot disc's include PCMCIA network drivers and install-over-nfs, so I could mount the actual distro CD from my main PC over the network. Relatively painless as these things go :)
+++ BASELINE REALITY FAILURE+++ +++ PLEASE REBOOT UNIVERSE +++
It really depends on what you consider necessary qualities of a "newbie" distro...
If you want something that's simple to set up and maintain (i.e. short learning curve) then mandrake is probably your best bet.
If you actually want to learn linux and its workings (which I advise) then use something which forces you to read a few faq's once in a while... like debian, or even better, slackware.
Doug
Venn ist das nurnstuck git und Slotermeyer? Ya! Beigerhund das oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
I've tried Debian, and Red Hat, but for me Mandrake was easy to set up, easy to use, and has quite a nice GUI to boot. (It's really a shame i toasted the hard drive it was on) Now, If you're on a mac Mac OS X is my *nix of choice. Yeah, it is BSD (NeXT based) so it doesnt really apply here, but it's quite fun, powerful, good looking, etc
The opinions in this post are ficticious. Any similarity to actual opinions, real or imagined, is purely coincidental.
SuSe is the best. I've had great success installing it on both high end and low end systems. Other distro's that I've tried wouldn't work on all the systems in that same range (includes RedHat, Mandrake, & Caldera).
a real Unix, Solaris 8.
/. like to make out.
Head over to Sun and grab their free binary distro for Solaris 8.
It is four CD's worth if you really want to get going with it, although you can get away with just two (Software 1 and 2 - you can boot the installer off software 1, and even get a GUI installer).
If you want to go the whole hog, get the installer CD, the two software CDs and the Companion software CD that has heaps of goodies precompiled into installer packages, like the Gimp, KDE, Gnome, NextStep etc etc...
Otherwise, just stick with Win2k, like others have mentioned, it's really not as bad as people here on
-- kai
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
SuSE is a good middle-of-the-road distro, imo, providing a pretty easy interface, but alot of customizibility too. I guess it really depends on if you want to LEARN LINUX before you start using it, or the other way around... getting your feet in the water before moving into the more difficult things... Just my opinion...
"Cut word lines. Cut music lines. Smash the control images. Smash the control machine." - William S. Burroughs
If you want to know a popular distribution, then learn both RedHat and Mandrake...which are very similar. If you want to get more into the nitty-gritty, try either Slackware or Debian. I personally like Slackware, and use it most places, but have used RedHat a fair bit as well, since it is popular.
I started using Linux about 9 years ago...so I can probably deal with just about any distro...but Slackware is still my *personal* fav, followed closely, but for different reason, Tom's Ultimate Root/Boot disk.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
I use RedHat on some machines that have weird hardware, because they're just machines that I need to get going and I don't use them that much, and RedHat autodetects the hardware and runs. I use Slackware on all my personal machines. I don't trust binary distros at all, I always compile my own, so Slackware is where it's at for me!
Sure, it's not for everyone. But IMHO, Linux is not for everyone. I like Linux as much as most people, but there have been times when people have asked me about "that Linux thing" and I (knowing something about the person) say "I think you'd better stick to Windows."
I started with Redhat 4.0 or 4.1 (I believe it was the one before Colgate) and I could only stand it for a couple weeks before I got so sick of it trying to do things for me without giving me an option/alternative. The whole reason I converted to linux was because I was so damn sick of Windows doing that to me anyway! Now it's the same deal with Mandrake. Everything is so "let me do it for you since you're probably too stupid to do it yourself" it's sickening. I know it's useful for many linux newbies, but I think if they don't want to *stay* as newbies and actually get to know what they can do using the command line themselves, they will not be bound by the limits of the GUI apps. There are a million ways to do things and as long as you don't explore you will have no idea they are there.
My boss at work is a linux newbie. He immediately says "where do i get the rpm" when i use the word install. Last week I sat with him and installed Slackware on his machine, to replace his old RedHat. He had a huge prejudice against Slackware and it took about 10 minutes before he started liking it. I showed him how to get sources, untar, compile yourself and get them running. Up until then, if an rpm was broken, he was done for, he couldn't install it, because it's ALL his distribution got him used to. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against any particular distribution, and I'm not rooting for Slackware here, even though it definately is my distro of choice. I am against distributions that treat users like they're idiots and not give them a chance to become power users.
I guess I just don't want to end up with a mainstream distro which has a 'registry'.
As I said, I am not attacking a certain distro or praising another, so don't flame me. I just hate to hear people talking about using linux when all they know is how to click on the applications menu stuff in gnome -- and they have no *clue* why something doesn't work if there is a problem.
My recommendation to linux newbies: Use linux to its full extent and don't be bound by your distro. No matter how badly a distro wants to hold your hand through everything and how much it wants to hide the inner workings of the system you can find a way around it. If you can't, well, then use Slackware. Because if I wanted an OS that will do stuff itself without telling me I'd be using Windows.
---
Many agree that Mandrake is the distro of choice for ease of use and for those who wish to use it as a home OS.
Redhat is quite good for use as a server. They have excellent support for this.
Debian and Slackware are touted as being the purest forms of linux, so you have to do all the configurations yourself. Slower learning curve, but more to learn because youhave to know what you are doing.
Freesco is a nifty little no frills version of linux that will turn an old 486 into a firewall/router for you.
You should really check out demolinux. It runs totally off a CD. You don't even need a hard drive, so you don't have to install it. But you can check out what linux does in a consequence free environment. (It's the Debian edition)
It probably isn't the best distribution out there, but it has a lot of advantages. It's the most popular and best supported. It is easy to use and install, and has excellent support available. It comes with everything, but is still reasonably secure out of the box. Plus, it's the one that's easiest to convince management types to allow. I'm not sure how important that is to you, but it could be decisive.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
Learn to crawl before you can stumble. Slack is the most UNIX like. Learn Linux as it was meant to be! Hard! But fun!
Red Hat is perfect for an admin moving from NT/2000, they will feel right at home with all the security patches and such....
On real big difference with Mandrake is that all the programs are polished for the distribution. Most RPMs have a "mdk" designator, and should be replaced by updates from Mandrake.
Suse on the other hand uses the native programs, no special modifing.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
I use Red Hat, but have my own set of web server tarballs for running Apache that are precompiled for what I need. Since I don't use Linux for desktops, I'm not concerned about the Gnome-KDE-whatever desktop du jour.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
...-
42 posts saying debian is the best
- 27 posts saying mandrake is the best
...
Winner: DebianThe only advantage there was to the trouble of a MS install was some hardware reporting from the system properties and DOS utilities. I could get an idea of how much video ram I had. This was often misleading and better information can be had from modprobe and online today. Setting old ISA cards, such as 3com 509b network cards, with the DOS utility was useful and you might want to make and install a small DOS partition before you install Linux.
Do check hardware compatibility as many above have suggested. MS is constantly encouraging new dumb devices, such as WinModems, that are brain dead and not worth buying or writing device drivers for. Also of particular heartbreak are nicer devices like many parallel scanners and some digital cameras.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Why not give Free BSD a try? I installed it about a year ago, and it runs great! Very solid, very stable. Much better than Red Hat did on my box. It's not all that difficult to get, and it comes with tripwire, ipchaines, and loads of other security goodies.
I'm a repairman in an imperfect world.
And herein lies a problem for the Linux community. It doesn't take too many arrogant jerks like you to give Linux geeks a reputation for being unhelpful elitists (even though the vast majority *are* helpful). Go ahead, just push everyone back to Windows, because you don't remember what it was like to not know anything.
Robotiq.com is heavily tested on animals
Debian is definately NOT a starter distro. I would personally go Mandrake, very clean install, can get into X with next to no work (which I'm sure is comforting to first timers). Mandrake is also more well-rounded on install features than RedHat is in my experience I would recommend Mandrake to ANYONE who is just starting out
rr
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
FreeBSD!
All the way, Mandrake 8... Easiest installation IMHO, which is where most problems exist for newer users.
If you are serious abot trying to "learn" linux - then nothing will teach you as much as slackware. Check it out at slackware.com. It might not be the easiest, but you will know a hell of a lot more about the way linux works after installing slackware, rather than redhat or mandrake.
S.t.e.v.e.
I think that the best starter dist of linux is Red Hat, that is what I started out with and that is what all of my friends that use linux use is Red Hat 7.1. I also think that it is worth trying the other dist's that is the only way to realy find out what one's that you like:)
"Yes, my distro is better that yours"
It seems that, when not busy flaming M$ Windows, the average Linux user spends its time arguing about the merits of one or other Linux distribution. I am a Linux user, too. For more than four years I've been using Red Hat releases and I am quite happy with them. Recently, I tried other distros, but I wasn't satisfied so I returned to RedHat. This is mainly because I am used with its configuration tools.
But my point is another: we are spending more time with our OS/Distro than with our applications. The main task of an OS (and a distribution's system maintenance tools) is to serve the user when he/she is doing work on the computer.
Let's focus on the functionality of applications and not on how to change settings for a daemon or upgrading packages and Linux will receive even more good reviews from PC users.
For alen: use a distro that will give you the most functionality and don't waste time with settings on your operating system. Knowledge on Linux's inner workings will come with time and not by installing a hardcore Linux user distribution.
This sentence marks the end of the text.
- 27 posts saying mandrake is the best
- 15 posts saying mandrake is lame
- 42 posts saying debian is the best
- 11 posts praising SUSE
- 20 posts flaming redhat
- 12 posts saying you should use *BSD instead
- 75 posts with no identifiable content
- 0 informative, well-reasoned posts
Why will it contain this crap? Because it really doesn't matter what you use as long as you learn the unix philosophy, so just pick a distro that you like, be it Debian, RedHat, Mandrake, Suse, Caldera or even FreeBSD or something.What really matters is that you realize that your choice isn't the only choice. Make one, explore it, learn about it for a few months, then try another one and learn the differences. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
They don't say whether it comes with source code or, if it doesn't, what is the source distribution.
As a Delphi programmer I now work with Kylix on a SuSE distro. It's good you know... And quiet easy to install (much more that 'quiet' in fact)
It's one of the major distros (esp. here in Europe) and the 7.2 release is very easy to install, yet very powerful if you like do tweak and configure a lot.
[--- PGP key and more on http://www.root42.de ---]
Having used all 5.*, 6.* and 7.* (now 7.2beta mixed with Rawhide stuff) I have to say that for any new-2-linux guy, especially if we're set on RedHat, I'd absolutely go with 7.1 right now. The following is a short list why :
One could argue that the 2.96 gcc can be a burden if you're a developer, but I cannot understand what kind of a developer wouldn't have a large variety of compilers anyway. Installing gcc 3.x (or 2.95.x) is a lot more fun than code documentation anyway.
Oh and one more thing. One really good thing about RedHat is the thick book you get with it if you buy it. I know it's a tad expensive, but if you're migrating from Windoze it's really worth it (atleast so I hear, few friends of mine have migrated and haven't needed my help there at all).
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
There are several Linux distros for beginners.
Several of them do not even require you to re-format (or re-partition) your Winblows partition.
And if you want to re-partition your harddisk anyway, there are several to choose from.
Nowadays, with the GUI and all other things in ample supply, it's a tose-up on RedHat, Suse and Mandrake.
However, if your harddisk is pretty much beatup, I'd advice you to go with Mandrake because of their powerful disk management software.
This is just my two cents, and YMMV.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
...is the one your friend uses.
(Unless your friend is me - I wouldn't suggest anybody start with http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ !)
Software Wars
However, if you're focused on being able to get your apps running, and don't want to spend your time playing with the OS, then you might want to stick with RedHat.
I played around with a few distros when I started out with Linux. But as I was already working plenty of hours at my job as a Unix sysadmin, I really didn't want to play around with the OS much on my home system. Also, I needed a system that I'd be able to try and use a variety of apps on without spending a lot of time on installation. While RPM sure has its flaws, it does work most of the time, and it's nice to be able to try an app by installing an RPM, rather than spending the time compiling it only to find out it wasn't going to do the job for me. (Which happens plenty anyway since there's still plenty that *does* need to be compiled from source.) Many more apps have RPM's available than have .debs, or maybe that's just the esoteric ones I use. Also, as mentioned elsewhere in a slightly different context: the support is great for RedHat just because of its popularity. If I have problems getting a piece of software to work under RedHat and need to ask the author or on a listserv, it's a pretty sure bet that they've dealt with it under RedHat - other
distros maybe not.
As to the argument that you don't really learn the workings if the OS is too "do it yourself:" again, I came at it as a UNIX admin, so not a perfect analogy, but, I just ignore the GUI tools most of the time and I use the shell as I always did in other unices. True, a newbie might be tempted to stick with the GUI, but I think the situation is not so bad - I used the GUI a bit at first when learning my first UNIX (IRIX) and pretty smoothly weaned away from it. I think this will happen to any moderately motivated user as long as the GUIs continue to be not-so-hot in the UNIX and Linux distros - you quickly realize that there must be a better way, and that better way is the command line. But having gotten your feet wet in the GUI, you at least have some idea of what is going on and aren't as daunted as you might be diving right in on the command line. (I think this doesn't happen much when people use Windows because the command line shell is pretty bad in Windows as compared to the GUI - in unices it's generally the other way around.)
As far as Mandrake vs. RedHat: I've used Mandrake 6(.0?) and 7.0, and run into problems with both, in terms of parts of it not working out of the box. In 7.0, there were configurations that had to be done to get postfix to work, and they didn't seem to be documented anywhere in the Mandrake release notes - I finally found the info on a newsgroup, but it was kind of disturbing not having working mail til then. Also, wu-ftpd didn't work, so I replaced it with pro-ftpd (sure, I woulda had to at least upgrade it eventually anyway, but... ) ... in Mandrake 6, lynx didn't work, and something else didn't work which I forget now... so I was always a little nervous about Mandrake - seems if it's recommended as a newbie distro, it would be good if the major software apps worked when installed. CAVEAT: Haven't tried Mandrake 8 yet - hopefully that one's pretty smooth. Also, I have run into some apps that wouldn't compile or wouldn't run under Mandrake that I couldn't figure out why, so again, if knowing your apps will work is critical, I'd still stick with RedHat. It's not perfect, especially RPM, but then again, the shells are still there, you can still compile from source when you need to, and you can be pretty sure you'll get whatever you need working on it. Maybe in the future they'll switch over to apt-get. :-)
Personally, I can't stand Linux distro's that are over friendly to windows users (e.g those god-awful Win95 lookie-likey windowmanagers).
I've found SuSE to be just different enough to make you feel like you've completely changed to a bill-free zone, yet not completely alien. I've personally found the boxed distribution of 7.1 an absolute godsend, and you don't need to spend hours downloading everything again.
On the other hand if you really want to 'learn' linux, download a copy of slackware, but be prepared to play with it for a few weeks before you actually start using it in anger.
Whatever you do, get a boxed set for your first distro (otherwise you'll get stuck at the first hurdle and the CD will just end up on the shelf with all those AOL free trials). Spending a little money on it will also help to convince you to give it a fair go, so you'll get beyond swearing at the screen when it doesn't go quite right. It's also well worth having a spare machine that you can surf the net on while you're preparing the linux box (dual booting isn't really a good option!)
You fool! You've given cheese to a lactose intolerant volcano god! Do you know what that means?
Hands down, I have to say it's SuSE. I've been with it since 6.0 and I've tried others in the meantime, and I always go *back* to whatever is current with SuSE. Why? It's probably the most *organized* distribution out there, plus it has the best documentation *bar none*. I tried Mandrake 7.2 and Debian. Talk about polar opposites, Mandrake was insanely easy to install, but chaotic once I started poking around in the guts (lots of "standard" stuff was just simply *missing*) and Debian, well, let's just say at the time the install was needlessly complicated for no reason whatsoever. (To be more specific, Debian pissed me off because I thought we had evolved since the first edition of Slackware, which was *simpler* to install than Debian. I was appalled at Debian's obfuscation of the install process. YMMV)
I installed SuSE 7.2 the other day, and it was well laid out and simple to install. It wasn't as automagic as Mandrake's install, but it's pretty close. I got Personal Edition this time around because I was looking for a more lightweight version that was better edited, and I'm pretty happy with it. They didn't leave out any of the essentials for a workstation, while making it lighter than the 7 cd/ 1 dvd Pro Edition.
Gawd, I sound like a commercial.
Anyway, that's my view. All flames will be printed out on TP and used to wipe my butt.
Oh, and one other thing...if any SuSE guys are out there, please PLEASE keep YaST2 as a separate program! In 7.2 the modules for it are integratable into KDE's Control Center. While this is more consistent and convenient, it screws with my ability to update KDE from source code.
Is it just me that took that the wrong way at first glance?
No sig for you!!
Go to www.sunfreeware.com, download and install with pkgadd. Takes about five minutes (plus download time).
I have great faith in fools - self confidence my friends call it. - Edgar Allan Poe
Even better for a linux newbie who just wants to learn; LinuxOne!
What? Don't tell me everybody has forgotten LinuxOne already. OK, there is the slight problem of actually FINDING LinuxOne, but hey! Isn't that part of your introduction to Linux?
Look at the educational advantages of LinuxOne:
1. Familiarize yourself with search engines trying to find it.
2. Experience first hand the agony of trying to maintain an abandoned distribution.
3. Enjoy the thrill of discovering it's really a copy of an old Red Hat distribution and you actually have support.
Oh, and 4. Learn to read stock IPO material carefully.
My metamoderation cancels your moderation
If you want to learn linux.. ie, you want to be able to fix things when they break, go with slackware. It's a pretty easy install, and a nice clean distro. To get it the way you want it, you'll end up editing a lot of config files, but I think it's better that way. You actually know what is going on. Go all out and play with everything you can on your first install. It's the best way to learn. If you screw it up, you can always install again. I think it's better to learn this way rather than learning one distro's graphical tools, this way you have a base knowledge that will help you to run any linux distro should you have to.
You gotta love that Geeko (the mascot)!
I've been running it for over a year now, very few complaints. 7.2 is definitely worth it. Another plus is, it comes in i386, PowerPC, Alpha and SPARC varieties.
My sig is too lon
Linuxconf is ruining our children! Quick! Send out the fleet!
my first ever!
some people prefer redhat but it does a lot of stuff for you automatically like windows would
slackware isnt the easiest to learn, but i beleive its the most beneficial in the end. it requires you to do more work on install, but once you get it were you like it, it stays that way :)
-- botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount}
I agree
But I suspect that a lot of people who try Linux are using an older PC that they got from the trash heap at work. That way they can experiment on a 2nd system and keep their precious new systems "clean".
m.kelley
life is like a freeway, if you don't look you could miss it.
Wow, I'm not sure what's going on here, but I use Redhat and I've *never* had a problem with 4 totally diff hardware setups unless I inadvertantly caused 'em myself.
/etc setup? There's a few files there, but if you actually look at 'em, about %95 of the files are apparent as to what part of the system your dealing with, etc. (hard to articulate right now, I'm horribly tired. lol)
Also, I haven't really played around with many other flavours of linux, but what's wrong with the
Hrm, and while I'm fairly new to linux, once I figured out that that version of gcc was a bit off, I simply worked around it and I've had everyting compiling fine. (not counting people that can't package stuff right, one or two out there *grin*)
And really... I don't know why people gripe about RPM, it's got options from hell that can confuse newbies, but once you figure out the difference between -i -U and -F, you're basically on easy street. *shrug*
I learned off of RedHat, I can go "under the hood" on about 90% of the system without much effort and could do the rest with a little time and reading. If you don't have 5 hours every night to read and experiment with your system just to get something working, RedHat is the way to go.
I'd disagree with that. Linux tends to be as secure as the versions of the daemons you have running on it. Having done lots of installs of different distributions, if you ask to install a service it will be installed and run. I do RedHat installs and have only what I want running, I know people who do Debian installs and end up with things like discard, daytime, samba, etc running and not realising it. Does this mean Debian is less secure than RedHat? Of course not - it just means I know what things to select (or not) and how to check what's been installed and what's running... and my friend doesn't.
I suspect that part of RedHat's reputation comes from the fact that it's very easy to select an "install everything" option whcih does result in lots of unecessary services running. As you say yourself, it's one of the most popular distros - it's also one of the most well known. Hence you get lots of newbies who choose RedHat as their first choice and end up doing just that because they don't know any better. Recent versions of RedHat combat this in two ways. Firstly, there's up2date which is nice. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, during the install you can setup a firewall.
All that aside, the real answer is not that one distribution is better than another, it's that new people to Linux should RTFM. The same is true with most OSes, programs, etc. There are a large number of people who have very little clue, and some of them try to use Linux when they really shouldn't.
If it's for someone new to Linux, and it's for a desktop machine then I'd definitely recommend 7.1 over 6.2. Or 7.2 when that's out (a beta of it was released a little while ago). The 7 series has the features I noted above, much more recent versions of software (nice for playing around and getting a better idea of how good things are), better hardware support (2.4 kernel, XFree 4).
Start with the best..Debian.
You will eventually use it if you mess with linux very long.
The rpm hell is not worth the upfront "easy install".
Try progeny if you find debian too hard to install.
in regard to ls, alas, no, it doesn't seem to. but that doesn't impact windows 2000's status as the finest desktop operating system on the market today.
Hi, I'm a pretentious cock who will make some gay comment about ignoring AC posts here.
I've used Redhat from version 5 to the most recent, the last 3 or 4 versions of Suse, and the last couple of Mandrake distros, every time they've been my 'secondary OS' to Windows, but I put Mandrake 8 on a few weeks ago and Windows came off the same day - Mandrake 8 is IMO the most convincing case for Linux as a desktop OS I've seen to date, only problem is it's a but fux0red with the iFeel mouse and GeForce 2 'out of the box', but that's nothing that can't be fixed with a bit of patching and a kernel upgrade.
--
http://www.jado.org
I also started out with Caldera OpenLinux, then eDesktop 2.4, but after a while it seemed to be lagging behind everything else. It was great to work with, and several of my machines still run it, but SuSE 7.x has found a new place in my heart. :)
Yes, that sounds cheesy, but I have been *very* happy with the new SuSE offerings. Fry's had the Personal and Professional packages of SuSE 7.2 on sale, and I picked up Pro for me and Personal for a friend of mine.
Well, I started with Slackware and have stuck with it since then, but it's not the easiest. IIRC it's designed to be the more Unix-like than most distros. I already had some *nix experience, and I'm a geek, so I was willing to deal with it.
If you want more of a no-brainer install, try SuSE (the fav of one of the grad students I work with, who's german, so he's biased toward SuSE) or Redhat (probably the easiest install I've seen).
Don't know much about Mandrake/Debian.
Tastes like burning! - Ralph Wiggum
As for distribution, I have used only Debian and RedHat. Both are fine systems but have their differences. Debian tends to be a rock solid, has several thousand packages in it, easy to update, etc. However, the release cycle is very slow. For example the current Debian stable, mostly has more than a year old software in it.
On the other hand, RedHat has a faster release schedule. It has less packages than Debian but they are much more up to date than in Debian. The RedHat releases that end on 7.0 tend to be buggier than .1 releases, and .2 releases tend to be bugger than the .2 releases.
For the reasons above, I tend to stay away from RedHat versions that end on .0 and prefer to use them only on the desktop systems. On the critical servers I prefer to use Debian because of stability and because I don't really care about "coolness" features like gnome, etc for server use.
Been using slak for a LONG TIME. SUSE is the only other one I would consider trying. I have converted a TON of people to Slak. THE BEST>
It just so happens that I spent this last weekend trying to answer this very question. While I'm pretty comfortable with a low-level Linux distro (I use Debian 2.2r3), I have some potential clients who have older machines and far less technical knowledge.
So I took an old box (233Mhz Pentium-MMX, 160MB, 4.3GB HD, SoundBlaster 128 PCI, S3/VirgeGX, non-name MB) and tried several different non-commercial distros. The candidates were: Slackware 8.0, Mandrake 8.0, Debian 2.2r3.
Note that my analysis was from the standpoint of giving a distro to an uninitiated user -- someone who can drop Windows ME onto a machine with ease, but who has never installed Linux. The results were disturbing.
To begin with, *none* of the distros could automatically install my 4.3GB HD at its full capacity. In every case, no matter what the BIOS settings, I was forced to edit configuration files to get the "whole" drive. Such behavior isn't acceptable for a newbie (or even an expert in a hurry) -- especially since WinDoze has no trouble installing the drive as 4.3GB.
Mandrake had the prettiest installation of the three, and probably the easiest, with two exceptions: DrakX locked up when it tried to start configuring X, and it couldn't seem to install my network properly. I solved the X problme by booting from the HD and manually installing X. As for the network -- well, I can ping the router, I can ping Slashdot, but it won't ping any other systems on my LAN. Apache and FTP daemons won't load for some reason, and I have no clue... yes, it did find my RealTek 8029 (ne2k-pci driver) network card, and I can get to the web via Mozilla. Mandrake is still on the machine, so I'll try to figure things out again tonight. Just plain bizarre.
Next up was Slackware, which seemed to install simply before refusing to boot. I get the "LI" half of lilo, and the machine is dead. The docs suggest that such problems stem from the default kernels, which are compiled with lots of "stuff". So I tried reinstalling with different options, and I tried recompiling the kernel (2.2.19 (?) and 2.4.5) several ways, and I tried using the kernel Slackware employs in its setup (bare.i and bare245.i). No go; always the same result.And yes, I've recompiled more kernels than I care to remember; I know all about running lilo and such. Even if the recompiled kernel *had* worked, such technical wizardry is not acceptable for someone used to the ease of Windows.
If I booted from the CD and mounted my root on the HD, Slackware looked pretty good. The network worked; X worked. But I have no idea how to install it so it will boot from the HD directly.
Debian worked quite well, installing a small base system. I needed to make a minor change to the modules configuration to load the driver for the network card; otherwise, I had a simple, working Linux system on tap in less than 45 minutes, including X. The problem with Debian: The release distro (2.2r3) is a bit old and behind the times. On the other hand, so is my test machine, so maybe that's why they get along (grumpy old hardware?)
For my own workstations, I'll stick with Debian and my tried-and-true system of using it to provide a base install that I then upgrade manually as needed.
Some final thoughts:
Debian is great for those of us in the "know". Love my Debian. It installs small, has a simple and elegant package management scheme, and it expects me to know what I'm doing.
For "normal" folk, though, *none* of these distros would be adequate. Windows is such a joy to install -- you put the disk in, you answer a few questions, and you have a working computer. While Mandrake's install is very nice, it still requires technical expertise beyond the desire of most "users".
You might want to look at SuSE or Red Hat; perhaps they're better-suited to the beginner. I have both distros, but they're old copies (v6.2 for both). Red Hat pissed me off by using the 2.96 snapshot of the GCC package; I didn't have time to download and burn SuSE CDs.
In the end, I still don't see Linux as ready for the desktop or the "user" community. It still needs to mature a bit -- and as an "expert" (note the quotes), I'll stick with Debian for now. It has worked on *every* machine I've installed it on; I can't even say that of WinDoze.
All about me
Using Slack *forces* you to know how the system works. It's just you, a text editor, and the config files.
If you want to take this to the extreme, go with linux from scratch (www.linuxfromscratch.org).
I twiddled with RedHat and Mandrake for a month and the learning process was very slow, and for some reason the rpm system made me apprehensive of installing things from source.
Then I found linux from scratch which takes you through compiling you're whole system. The lerning curve was pretty huge, but not necissarily difficult, becuase the nature of the process just helps you to absorb how the system works.
Once you have your basic system there's heaps of hints on the site for most of the major software you'd want to install.
Six months later I now have my router, and two other computers running that way and I wouldn't have it any other way.
The only disadvantage is that there's no package management. I've heard that other people with this setup have installed rpm on the machine, but I don't know how successful they'be been in getting rpm's to work on the system.
The default installer can squeeze down windows partitions (if they aren't full) and fit Linux in. I don't know of any other distro that does this. And I doubt a newbie will buy a second disk or know how to backup, repartition, and restore his windows system.
Seriously, though, why do people have an issue with a distro that focuses on ease of use? I thought the whole idea of technology was to make life easier--make the machine work for us, not the other way around.
Now, I know, once you've got the hang of it, the command line actually speeds things up, and I've fiddled with--and broke--my hardware as well, but the whole notion of a newbie distro is to get it up and running with minimum effort. As long as it doesn't interfere with learning more advanced methods, why the hostility?
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
Make sure your network adapter is supported, or you will have to bring all the files to support it from a diffrent machine, which can be a real pain! For example Linksys LNE100TX isn't supported by versions older then 7.1 , you will need to download and compile the tulip drivers yourself, not a very simple task!
Sig this.
If you want to be able to change from Windows to a Linux and have X running within 1 day, I recommend (from personal experience) Mandrake 8. I believe just about anyone can have it up and runnig with very little difficulty.
If you are going to just be installing Linux on a second/third box, and will continue to run Windows while you get used to it, and have lots of patience and don't mind redoing your machine a few times after you totally FUBAR it, then I would choose Slackware (again from personal experience).
Of course, be sure to not overestimate your patience level. Its important not to think you have infinite patience, and get turned off to linux because you want a Windows like desktop in under a day, and try to install Slackware or Debian, and don't have a clue what you're doing.
My 2 Cents
You obviously don't know what the hell you're talking about. The only reason anyone would prefer Linux or some such over a real, big-iron UNIX is because they've never had a chance to try IRIX or Solaris on their native hardware.
Of course RedHat, SuSe and Mandrake are great starter distros and if you want to, you can install them without thinking of partitioning, package selcetion and network configuration etc.
My Tip for all the newbies out there is, always to chose the Expert/Advanced/Custom Installation and work through it, so that you get a first look "insinde" Linux. You learn how to partition your Hard Disk, basic things about network configuration, the system start, X Configuration.
In fact that gives you a much better look inside Linux as the coomon/beginner/easy installations. I love the Expert Installation of Mandrake...
X
=========
So Long And Thanks for All The Trolls
Boycot? Blackout? Subscriptions?
I don't care!
I'd recommend you take a good look at FreeBSD. Hop over to http://www.freebsd.org/ and take a look around. In most cases, all you need to get going is a couple of floppy disks and the instructions found here. The installation disks will automagically download the entire distribution via the net.
I don't want to start a FreeBSD vs. Linux war, but if you're looking for a server replacement, FreeBSD is a great choice. If you are wanting to use it on your desktop as a workstation, then perhaps Linux is the better choice, although I still wouldn't discount FreeBSD 100%.
fairly sure NetBSD supports the sound and floppy controller...haven't looked much into AppleTalk yet.
As far as I recall from running NetBSD on a Quadra 700, the sound was limited to occasional beeping but Netatalk installed and ran like a champ; ran it with Samba to share files to all my and my old roommate's machines.
--saintAnything by O'Reilly is good, especially Running Linux and Linux in a nutshell. An excellent book aimed a competent users converting to unix is Jon Lassers' Think Unix.
if you're coming from NT, you don't know enough to see the technical differences between red hat, mandrake, and debian. you need to learn how and why unix (and unix-like) systems do things the way they do.
Karma only matters to me now and zen.
"Redundant"?! That's frickin funny.
I started getting into Linux because of what I read about XP. Scared the crap out of me so I loaded a Mandrake partition on my machine. I had no Linux experience and I found it incredibly easy to install. But, I found it buggy with my machine which seems to come from my hardware (Toshiba DVD player, Voodoo 5 5500 card; damn xine will not run), although this is just speculation (I'm a Linux newbie, duh). I think I'm going to try RedHat. Thanks...
-----
"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
A Comparative Review of 5 Linux Distributions
SuSE is a good first distribution because it lets you work at whatever your level is. It has setup tools named YaST (Yet another Setup Tool) and YaST2 for general system work (adding a printer, etc.) and SaX (SuSE advanced XConfigurator) or SaX2 for setting up X (the base on which you run a GUI). As you learn more about Linux, you can rely less on the setup tools and begin to do stuff by hand, but the setup tools will still be there to use for the harder stuff and (here's what makes it different) the tools will continue to work despite (almost) any changes you have made without using the tools. This way if you feel like experimenting with something and the experiment goes wrong, you can use the tools to bail you out.
Another advantage of SuSE is that YaST/YaST2 work without X, which means that if something goes wrong and keeps you from running X you can still use the tools in case you need them to fix the problem. Since you've got an older computer, you will probably be glad the config tools don't use X just because of the increased speed.
Whatever you choose, have fun. Linux is Linux no matter what distro you use.
A couple sites that might be helpful with any distro: The Linux hardware compatibility database (http://lhd.datapower.com) and linmodems.org (http://www.linmodems.org). Often first-time Linux users will have winmodems, and win-just-about-every-thing-else. These sites can help get win-crap^h^h^h^hhardware working under Linux.
______________________________________
Ever notice how fast Windows runs? Neither did I...
e-smith makes a great distro for those who need a simple, easy to install Linux.
I have several different distributions at home (Debian 2.2r3, RedHat 6.2-7.1, Mandrake 6.1-8, Stormix, etc...) . Of all of them, Mandrake stands out as the easiest to learn with and install. I started out with Mandrake 6.1 and went from there. I totally recommend it to the complete linux newbie. I still use Mandrake today for servers and networked workstations, I have a machine with Debian installed on it and I use it for tinkering with applications and the kernel, but my main computer at home boots to Mandrake and Win98.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
I have to disagree with drudd - don't go with debian for your first Linux test. It took me 3 tries to get through the installer, a whole weekend to get networking working, and I still haven't made the progress I'd like. It seems to be the linux distro for folks who know what they are doing, because there is very little documentation. It's not discussed in the newsgroups that I could search with Google, very few people have information on webpages, and very few HOWTOs include debian-specific steps.
Perhaps I'm not experienced enough- but that's the point. If you are pretty comfortable in the Windows world, then move to debian, you'll feel somone is playing a trick on you. Like when I was first learning Linux, and I was tearing my hair out trying to figure out how to delete a file under Linux - "apropos delete" got me nowhere, of course. I knew about building kernels, installing and getting X working, leaf-level networking, and a few other things, but it still took several weeks of my life away to turn a Win95 box into a debian router, and I'm still not sure I got it right.
Go with Mandrake or Red Hat - or, better yet, whatever version comes with the 800-page book you buy to help you learn. Now, that would have been a useful discussion - what's a good book to learn Linux with (I haven't found it).
Stupidity aside I recently got a fancy new system, so I figured it would be a good time to jump into the thick of Linux with Debian. I download the three CDs to Debian 2.2 r3, throw them on some rewritables, and proceed to install.
First time around my system was unstable. The one thing that I didn't explicitly choose was at fault, cheapo slow RAM does not make a happy Athlon, in turn making a mess of the install.
I fix that, try again. Okay, at the end of it all I have a prompt. X won't come up and I can't get my ethernet cards recognized. Great, the two things that would be my foothold into getting into Linux have blown up at me.
Lots of tinkering later I decide to reinstall again. But I'm not getting past the install now.
Any Debian gods or sircam virii that want to help me out can contact me at the above address. (I suppose even if the virii don't want to help they'll message me though)
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
Yup, got Slaskware running finally. It was the dammed MBR; killed it from a DOS boot, set LILO to boot from /dev/hda1, and away Tesla (the computer) went.
Now that I have Slaskware 8 running, I'm pleased. It came with gcc-3.0 as an optional install, saving me from installing manually. Runs quick; once I get X configured the way I like, Slackware may stay on that old box.
All about me
I installed Mandrake 8.0 last week, in the same time I was doing a major upgrade/repair on a Dell with Win98 on it. Mandrake installed in one hour and I was on the net in two. I am still not completely finished with the WinderZ box(Hardware problems from a lightning pinch...). I am having the time of my life learning all the ins and outs, I am finding new "goodies", every day, in the distro and on the net, and I compiled and installed my first stuff 3 days after I installed the distro, drivers for my Aureal Vortex 1. Needless to say, my friend Murph, a Linux teacher, gets a lot of credit for his tips and pointers, but I did it on my own. Now, will your experience be the same? How the hell should I know? I have a lot of computer experience, going back to C=64s and Amigas(Still own 3, including a 3000+). I might have a few legs up on Linux, due to certain similarities between Linux and the Amiga. But don't be daunted. One thing I *WOULD* suggest is that you get a seperate HDD for your Linux partition. Somehow, I would consider that move prudent, but that's just me. Don't be scared off by the M$ FUD. Mandrake is easy-peasy to install, especially if you have common hardware, it gives new life to old machines left gasping and wheezing by that bag o' bugs from Redmond, and Linux is readier for primetime, far more than any pile o' merde from them trollish pirates. Get a mitt and get in the game. You'll be glad you did. -skal
Twenty to thirty dollars will get you a nice boxed copy (maybe less online). I definitely recommend this, based on what I witnessed a few weeks ago.
I was at a Fry's, picking up some RAM (another ugly story), when I met a friend I hadn't seen in about a year or so. I got to talking to him, and he mentioned wanting to try Linux again, after trying something like RedHat 4.2 or something a long time ago, and giving up when the installer didn't work for him (text mode, needed a lot of nudging on what vid card, etc he hard, etc). I told him to give SuSE 7.2 Personal a try (because I had recently updated my 6.3 version using 7.2 personal, and it went very smooth for me, less problems than I thought I would have). He has a new computer repair shop here in Phoenix, and wanted something to put on people's machines (for the few new ones he builds), rather than buying Windows licenses up the wazoo. He left the store about a half hour before me.
I left the store, intending to check out his new shop - find out where it was (so I could go back later - I figured he went home, being it was 6pm on a Sunday - he shouldn't have been open). Lo and behold, the door to the shop is open - I hollered "Hello" - and there he is in the back. He invited me back, telling me he just couldn't wait to get home to try the installer of SuSE 7.2.
When I got to the back, it was done and installed - he said it was the smoothest thing he had ever tried - as smooth or smoother than Windows. I stayed a little while longer (it was having a bit of trouble with the on-board sound and an external modem), but we got it ironed out mostly. I deemed it a success. He was very pleased (and this guy is a big Windows fan, BTW) with it, and was going to play with it more (he didn't like Netscape, but I told him about Konquerer, and others), wanted to try out StarOffice, etc.
Give it a shot - you will be pleased...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Mandrake 6.0-8.0 for best install, bleeding edge
Redhat 6.0-7.1, for volume of software and (somewhat..almost) leading edge
Debian for solid super update/package handling
Corel for the hell of it
FreeBSD for the pain
Peanut for the sparsity
and then Conectiva.
It's got almost as good an install as Mandrake, not as flashy but pretty solid, and it will install on less than a P-II.
Lesson 1 for NEWBIE "Customize and install an optimized Kernel." It'll teach a LOT.
There is an rpm based version of Debians APT.
(apt is best install structure, rpm has the most in available software) !!!
It installs leading edge (not bleeding edge) and sets up the system reasonably well for someone to learn on.
Well done intuitive packaging (I don't need no stinking manuals... good thing, they're currently only available in Portugese)
When the English box set is out, get it. In the meantime get the ISO CDkit (only need CD #1 & 2 for all the binaries, #1 only for a reasonable install).
---- The world is a network, just some people are still using 300 baud dialup. ---
go ahead and use woody (it's testing now) or even sid (unstable) if you like - they're nothing to be afraid of, and tend to be pretty "stable" - suitable for everything but a critical server perhaps.
I know it's probably been said, but check out FreeBSD. Good crowd, standards, and lots of documentation that's well written. Apps are easy to install/deinstall/upgrade via the ports. I took my mom from Win2K -> FreeBSD over the phone a year or so back and she hasn't looked back since (and she's not technical, FWIW). -sc
-- Sean Chittenden
I've tried quite a few distro's and I've stuck to Redhat and Mandrake because:
-lots of Deja.com questions
-lots of hardcopy books
You're trying to satisfy two of the Linux newbie's objectives. Objective A is to get a working Linux system going and start discovering what you can do it with it. Objective B is to figure out all the complicated configuration and integration details of Linux and Unix. Both objectives are important, but I think it's a mistake to try to satisfy both at once. You're making the learning curve unnecessarily steep. And you're still insulating yourself from important details.
The best way is to do it in two stages. In stage one, you concentrate on Objective A. That means finding a distro that's easy to install and maintain. The two leaders in this area are SuSE and Red Hat. I find SuSE's total rewiring of system configuration a pain, so I prefer Red Hat.
Eventually you'll be comfortable with the shell, a text editor, and other basic Linux/Unix tools. (Damned important if you're used to Windows or MacOS.) And you'll know how to use the GNU compilers, libraries, and other development tools. That's when you're ready to attack Objective B -- by creating your own personal distro.
Gerard Beekmans has taken the concept of an Open Source OS to its logical conclustion with his Linux From Scratch writings. He shows you how to build a Linux system entirely from source code. (Of course, you need an existing Linux system with a spare partition.) This strikes me as the best way to learn all the obscure little details a pre-packaged system hides from you.
I started off with Linux by trying out Red Hat 6.2. It seemed okay, it didn't give me headaches on installing... same with 7.0, no problems.
:) ) and games (natch). So until Woody reaches stable, I'll have to pick another one.
But I felt bad about using non-free, so I nuked it and went to Debian. Ouch.
Potato's xfree86 didn't support my GeForce 2, so I went looking for a way to hack xf86 4 into it. In retrospect, I probably should have tried out Woody, but I didn't like the idea that Woody was "unstable" and balked at it.
I then decided to wait until Woody was frozen and released as stable. Still waiting...
When it comes down to it, all I'm after is a few basic things - Perl, Python (cos I want to learn it), PHP (ditto), Apache (know a bit, must learn more), MySQL (know much, want much more), a GUI (cos going to a commandline feels like a step backward - several terms at once please
I think I'm leaning toward Mandrake; sounds easy enough to use, and I probably won't have enough on it to worry about nuking it when the time comes. Then I can finally have a Debian system.
By then, I may even be ready for it. =)
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. Always boom tomorrow. BOOM!
Whatever distro you choose, a very helpful thing is to have people around familiar enough with it (and friendly enough) to give you advice when you need it. Of course, the Net gives you all the answers, but having someone around is faster and more reassuring. I have been using Debian from the start, mainly because I could ask things to a friend who had been using it for years. Despite the fact that Debian is usually considered to be one of the esoteric distros, I've never looked back. So, I wouldn't blame anyone who chose her initial distro on the basis of the people she hangs out with. Later, when you're comfortable with Linux, you can make your own choice.
Ignore all the 31337 h4xx0r5 looking for recognition because they use Debian (what's so hard about Debian anyway?) or Slackware. There's simply nothing that special about either, and really the only thing that seperates them from the more mainstream Linux distros (Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE) is their lack of graphical installer, and different package formats.
There is nothing in Mandrake, Red Hat, et al to prevent you from configuing eveything by hand and using only the command line, if thats how youo get off. Me, I prefer KDE 2 (and konsole is a damn nice app). This probably makes some of those l337 d00dz mad, but whatever.
And don't think Linux is the be-all, end-all of free Unix. OpenBSD is quite nice (I'm using 2.9 right now), and one of the things I like about it is the ease with which you can install it over the internet (one of the major reasons I'm using it on this machine), not to mention security, correctness, etc which don't matter so much to me anyway.
... of what Linux looks and feels like, then DemoLinux will give you the most bang for the least effort. Basically you burn the image to a cd, set the bios to boot off the CD and you're pretty much up and running. It comes with a descent ammount of programs installed (unfortunatelt Star Office is the French version even on the English distro). This is not intended to be a permanent desktop environment and it's not the "full" linux experience. But it also requiers almost no effort or dedicated hardware. It's easier to run than windows! I've found it to be the best distro to get a Linux newbie interest and hooked on this incredible OS.
It depends a bit on your hardware. I found Mandrake to be easy to install and had lots of options in install that I liked. Unfortunately, the machine would hang whenever I would try to read a CD which had been created from a Windows-based CD burner. I also had some other hardware-related problems. I dumped Mandrake and installed Red Hat. Although the installation wasn't perfect (it didn't set up networking correctly), it seems more stable in general.
Redhat for another reason. It has the largest installed base. Therefore it has the most people to ask for help when needed.
How can this post have been modded as redundant?!?? Its the THIRD POST in the thread, and none of the two that preceded it were saying the same thing? Come on moderators, THINK.
The most important factor in learning linux seems to be not what distro you start with, but whether you can stomach thrashing, crashing, wiping, and abusing your box. I personally used an old Pentium I box and slackware...nothing comes up pretty, and everything's a lot of work. Don't tie up your linux box with data you can't stand to lose. The important thing for the first six months is discovery. "What does 'everything is a file' actually mean?" What happens if I "rm -fR .*" (bad things....) I think maybe you might try running one of the slick three (Mandrake-Redhat-Suse) on one partition, so you can see your eventual goal. Run slack on another partition, as it will give you a much better idea what's going on. Get everything configured in slack, and you will have earned your first badge of honor.
"The true Way to the Knowledge of the Source is not the timid and footling way of the Student, but the Divine Foolery of the Hacker. Hack, then; strive against Mighty Problems, have joy in thy Striving, and let the Crashes fall where they may (maintaining the while, for the Good of thy Karma, a Rigorous Backup Policy)."
Eric Raymond from 'The Logitanaka' Truer words were never spoken....read it!
Debian - It's an open source community, why are you still in your closet hacking on that slack-box, kid? Come out and
Point number 1: is a very active and helpfull set of forums on www.slackware.com. And since Slack is a "do-it-yourself" distro, the people who read the Slackware forums are VERY knowledgable and helpfull.
Point number 2: is that it works. Perhaps moot, but it's worth mentioning. I've had slack machines running with 1 year uptime. It's on my laptop, desktop, firewall, and I use it at work as a terminal server.
Point number 3: is that it is a do it yourself distro. You may not like it at first. But sooner or later you'll want a CVS version of something, or a binary with non-standard options compiled in, or a program for which an RPM is not available and you are going to have to compile and manage that package yourself. In the mean time you can find lots of slackware packages at linuxmafia.org if you really need them.
I have tried the following distro's (multiple versions of most): Mandrake, Debian, Red Hat, SuSE, TurboLinux, Corel, Storm, and probably some others I'm forgetting. Personally, out of these, I prefer Slackware.
Anyway, it seems your move to Linux is more a move away from NT. Why to Linux specifically?
-... ---
You've been 'working' with NT for a year and now it's time to 'update'. What were you working with before NT?
If you've been doing VB or Access or any of those, take a look at Borland Kylix - They've made a free version available for writing GPL apps, so you can get your hands dirty with it.h tml
It has a lot of the nice features of developing in VB - a great IDE, etc.
Slashdot ad a story on it if you missed it: http://slashdot.org/developers/01/07/25/1146211.s
Cheers,
Jim
-- My Weblog.
I was on summer vacation in high school with nothing to do for months. So, I was able to download massive documents like the Linux HOWTO's and use them to learn how to do things. I learned how to recompile my kernel within the first few days. I was playing mp3's before I had a GUI. I installed X manually (albeit from binary packages).
It took a few weeks of playing around, but it was fun, and I quickly learned more about Linux that most Linux users ever do. Later, when I switched to Red Hat, it was a piece of cake to use. Later still, I switch distros a few times -- basically, I would stick with a distro until it did something that pissed me off (like Debian automagically upgrading me to versions of my software that didn't work).
I have used Linux for three years. It has been my primary OS for the later two. I was a Linux zealot for the first two (how embarassing!).
I have now decided that I am sick of Linux, and I am in the process of converting over to Win2k. It was fun for awhile, but I've had enough. But, then, that's just me. You may come to a different conclusion.
If you have the free time, I strongly recommend diving into the deep end and doing stuff manually. An easy way to do this is to install a skeleton Debian system and then pretend the package manager doesn't exist.
If you don't have that much free time, though, go for Red Hat. It's easy, and it really isn't as bad as people say it is.
And if you have no time at all, stick with Win2k. Despite what people who have never used it say, it really isn't a bad OS at all.
After reading this post I decided to go buy a copy of the Mandrake PowerPack, but it was a little bit too expensive for me:
Product: $69.00
Shipping: $20.00
Total: $890089.00 $USD
Maybe when they sort out their online store I will feel more comfortable giving them my credit card number.
- xtian
Budapest, Hungary
"What's that watermelon doing there?" - Jersey
I personally don't use RedHat (being a seasoned linux user, I have been using Slackware exclusively for a few years) but I have installed it on occasion, and find it to be relatively easy to use in its newest incarnations.
That is what I would suggest for any new linux user, especially coming from Windows.
So then I tried FreeBSD 4.3. My god have I seen the light. Instead of spending an hour and a half installing some bloated OS that didn't recognize my hardware properly, I was up and running Lynx in under an hour! A few hours later I had finagled some config files with only a couple commands in Vi to learn how to switch window managers. And the next day I recompiled my kernel to get rid of unnecessary drivers. And all my software is easy to find. If I want anything, I look on my CD-Rom for the package, or the FreeBSD site. Though I can compile other stuff if I want, and run Linux binaries. Such flexibility.
Anyway, that's my experience. BSD is good at supporting older hardware, while Linux tends more to support the latest and greatest stuff. I'd definitely recommend a BSD as an alternative or addition to Linux, though everyone's experience will vary.