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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.
- 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.
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.)
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'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.
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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.
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!
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.