Slashdot Mirror
Beginner's Guide to Linux Distros
Martin writes "TipMonkies has a nice overview of various Linux distros for those of you with little time to research each distro yourself. The article also discusses some of the advantages/disadvantages of each distro." From the article: "SUSE- The 'U' is hard and the 'E' is soft. Almost like the word sue with an S on the end. SUSE is the other big commercial distro. It was when it was still it's own company in Germany, and now even bigger since being purchased by Novell."
Pronounceable... interesting concept that. One would think that if pronounceability was a major concern then one would choose a slashdot ident with that property...
Learn to do things without pretty GUIs . That's the best way to learn
I'm still learning when using a GUI, I'm just learning how to do a task without reading a manpage.
-- "of course thats just my opinion, I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
Most people aren't interested in learning how to not use a GUI. They want to check their email. They want to browse the web. They want to pay their bills online. They want to track their spreadsheet. But most of all, they want to do such things easily and efficiently. That's why GUI-based systems like Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows are so popular.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Do "newbs" know what HAL or curses are or even necessarily the differences between KDE and GNOME? His use of terminology would be baffling if I didn't know a fair amount about Linux.
U.S. War Crimes blog. Email for free Mandriva support.
Why?
I can't wait for your reply...
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
This guide is for beginners. How many beginners do you know that are going to be setting up servers?
Not all people need servers either...
If you RTFM, it sounds like this is more geared towards people using it on a desktop.
And it's that kind of zealotry that puts people off trying linux. You may be thinking you're helping, but what the average non-tech geek hears from a statement is this:
"Learn to do it without a GUI. Only stupid people need GUIs"
Now, like I say, that's not what you mean to say, but that's how "Learn to do things without pretty GUIs. That's the best way to learn." will be interpreted by a fair percentage of non tech people.
I'll tell you why I like the commandline: I can copy lines of commands that I don't understand off webpages and fix problems in Linux without having to read a bunch of GUIs.
I yeah....I guess I don't learn anything. You're right!
Open Source Sushi
Do "newbs" know what HAL or curses are or even necessarily the differences between KDE and GNOME? His use of terminology would be baffling if I didn't know a fair amount about Linux.
I agree. At the very least, he could have provided links to pages describing what these terms mean, or even a short blurb at the beginning of the article. There is much more to Linux than the distro, even for people that do not stray from the confines of the installation CDs. For example, I use Mandriva 2005. Just off the CDs, I have a choice between 8 or 9 desktops, at least 4 email clients, several web browsers, and of course the choice to run in X or the CLI where ncurses becomes an important term to know.
However, I still think this article does a good job. It talks in more abstract terms that do not overwhelm the new Linux user, while providing enough guidance that the user can narrow his search to two or three distributions. This is essential given that too many choices can overwhelm users, and most new users are used to having only one or two choices (e.g. Windows or MacOS).
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
But he fails to mention where those "advanced" users went and why it would make sense to recommend a potentially more complex distro to new non-Linux savvy users.
Being a Gentoo user myself, I agree that Gentoo is not a dpkg/rpm-based distro, and that it can take ages to compile stuff, but this blatant bias is just completely partial. He was somewhat neutral on other distros (the ones he mentioned, never mind the ones he just ignored, like Mepis), he even showed some ignorance on Slack, but Gentoo did not deserve those lines, imho!
Many people who have extensive experience at a command line happily started using GUIs when decent ones came out. Even the early textmode ones. The concept of partitioning tasks into parts of the screen and seeing your work "all on one screen" is powerful. Not to mention WYSIWYG and font and color cues on webpages.
I still use the command line a good chunk of the day - discarding web browsing or movie watching, I'm on a prompt the majority of the time. It just happens to be a konsole with a screen session on each computer.
Being good on a command line doesn't make you "better" or "more in tune" with a machine. It just means you are good on a command line.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
What if there is no GUI? Not all servers have a 'Start' button...
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy is complicated.
While I agree Linux/UNIX/Windows sysadmins (me) need to use a CLI for many tasks, my grandmother doesn't. She is never going to administer a server.
The concept of a CLI is hard for some people to grasp, even though it is primative when compared to a GUI. When my mom or grandmother wants to open a disk, she double clicks a pretty icon. Simple enough. Typing mount
what's this obsession with having people learn something? I just want to do what I need to do and the rest I'm not interested in. Si when I installed Suse and my nvidia card did't work I learned what to do to get it working and that's about it. Maybe the CLI is usedfull for setting up servers but maybe.....just maybe, a gui is apreciated so much by people because it is a damned good way of doing things. It's easier to learn how to use a gui so taht's what I want. I installed webmin and haven't looked back since. Got mysql and apache running like a dream and both are administered thruegh webmin.
Also, suse was never based on Redhat. It was based on Slackware, but now uses rpm.
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.