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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...
For a less biased review site, check out Distrowatch. They also link to independent reviews.
I dunno... while much of this dude's article seemed accurate, after reading the above, I've come to the conclusion that even after all his years of experience, he's still a newb... or he's just plain smoking crack.
/dev/random
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.
I think he got the order of his debian trees wrong. He had it at stable>>unstable>>testing. It's stable>> testing>> unstable. Testing is to test it before it becomes stable. Unstable is, of course, unstable. Just in case anyone reads this and uses the info. And yes, i'm being pedantic :)
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
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.
The guy's information is a little out of date.... For one, while it isn't a GUI-driven installation, Slack's install *is* menu-driven. If you read what you're presented with when you boot off the install CD, it's pretty obvious, too. It says very clearly, partition the disk, then type "setup". It even suggests using cfdisk to partition the disk if you want a "gui". I'd hardly call it arcane, since the information is given to you without your needing to hunt for it.
/pasture. It's not in -current.
There's some assumption that you know what you're doing, and Slack doesn't set X as the default runlevel, but there's also a really helpful book available for free at Slack's website. About the only thing you really need to know is that RL4 is X, not RL5. That, and that it uses BSD init placement (/etc/rc.d/) instead of SysV (/etc/rc.d/rc.X/). Other than that, it's Linux. What works for one distro will work for Slack. Only there's probably already a package so you don't have to compile from source, just check linuxpackages.net first.
Also, Gnome has been moved to
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
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?
I still just want a distro that works great with my Thinkpad laptop.
I've been through Debian installs so many times, and I get so close, but there's always one thing or another I can't quite get (used to be sound, now I got that working but the darn thing won't sleep anymore)... I tried Kanotix, again the sleeping issue... downloading Ubuntu now. (Yes, in case you can't tell by the list I'm a big Debian fan... but Fedora is next on the torrent list, lousy 2.7GB download though)
Is there a reason laptops are so tricky for linux, and yes I know all about linuxforlaptops.com and the other websites which cater, but still, the installs are frustrating, the wireless has finally gotten to a point where it's ok, but still not great (enabling wep and connecting to a varity of networks etc)...
Does a "for laptops" distro exist?, I'd love it, hell I'd help with it if my skills could be used.
Sidenote: The old debian installer had much better support for laptops than the new one!
Well, I just found another overview of several Linux distros that may add some information to TFA.
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
Although the article mentioned YaST and the overall refinement of Suse, it failed to mention what I think is perhaps the biggest incentive to buying suse for someone new to Linux. The Documentation.
The Manuals that come with Suse are some of the best I've ever seen. Granted by the time I switched to Suse I'd been using Linux for several years and didn't find the user manual all that useful, but the administration manual is still a great reference. In fact I probably refer to it more than my Linux: Complete Reference book.
The author makes quite a point of mentioning that Suse Professional runs about $100, but fails to mention the quality of the manuals you get with it, or that you can buy an "upgrade" version, which is the full version without the printed manuals, for around $40 from Suse's website.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
Which is interesting, given that the SuSE FAQ says otherwise:
Which makes more sense to me given my (limited) knowledge of how to pronounce German words....
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
So, first wow I'm on slashdot. Second, I'm shocked I'm not getting flamed more. Third, sorry I missed so many distros. MEPIS is super and definatly should have been included. It was late and caffine started wearing off. And I'm wrong about SuSE.
It's actually full of errors.
He's already corrected the first one (SUSE, being from Germany, is not pronounced with a silent 'E') but more remain. For instance, he confuses Debian testing and unstable, reversing them.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
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
Funny that the author mentions some Slackers going to Ubuntu, seeing as this slacker just gave it a shot. I haven't installed too many distros after switching to Slackware from Mandrake, but after hearing so much hype I decided to try it. At least for my system, Ubuntu turned out to be too much of a memory hog for my taste. On my laptop I have a gig of memory. With Ubuntu I had close to 600MB free with no apps running (just Gnome), whereas with Slackware I had close to 900MB free (just KDE).
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.
If anyone wants to research which flavor of Linux to get, go to Distrowatch.com and read the reviews by online magazines. They also send out CDs for a small price if you can't download/burn your distro of choice.
My personal suggestion for newbies to get a LiveCD like Knoppix or UbuntuLive. Then move on to an friendly system like Mandriva/Fedora/UbuntuInstall/Mepis, etcetera depending on their specific needs and research (distrowatch again).
If they want to get even more into it, try something like Slackware or Gentoo. Maybe as a final stage of total mastery Linux From Scratch:D
OTOH, if they really have spefic needs, there's no end to distros out there addressing a niche market and not just the desktop.
Oh, and avoid those people who make "their" distro a religious choice and all other nonbelievers infidels.
Too many.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Heh... I must be an old fart at heart, then. Sometimes I certainly feel like one (at 26). I was attracted to Linux mostly because it looked difficult. Now please bear with me, I'll get to my points soon. First a tiny bit of background.
I first tried some version (1.x.y) in '94 but it threw a kernel panic almost instantly (I reasoned it was due to my 540MB Conner harddrive using some kind of "EasyBIOS") and didn't know how to fix it (didn't have the 'net to look to for help either). I put it away, and installed Win95 (alpha :). Years passed.
I've now used Slackware since 7.1, currently running 10.0 on my servers; I'll probably never use anything else on them. However, for my desktop I wanted something pretty with windows and graphics, looking to kill Windows completely. I still haven't :)
I've tried the "graphical" Linuxen since the first Corel. Since then I've been through Mandrake [8-10], SuSe [5-9.2], RedHat [5-7] and Fedora Core [2,3].
My experience is that they're all easy to install (even for a non-techie) and by default boots into a pretty-looking graphical system. But if that was everything that was offered, users with the need for little more than a web browser and word processor would be at a loss. A GUI way of configuring a complete Linux system, and all other apps being a GUI, would be so slow to use (click, click, click, type, click, type, click click) you'd develop RSI in a week. With a casual, non-techie user, fine; but the pros would commit suicude in droves. Or code a GUI app with nothing but a large text window to interface the system using self-invented textual command aliases for the GUI apps ("an atrocity, I tell you! You can't even use the mouse!" -Tilly) :)
Imagine doing a simple search/replace on text in a bunch of files with nothing but a GUI having radio buttons and checkboxen for all possible options... Of course, there would be no regular expression text input available; that would be a too difficult syntax for the user to understand. And to process those results further, you'd have to save the results and start another app to do it.
Unless an app was created specifically to do that chain of tasks. But then we'd end up with a uncomprehensible number of apps tailored to one weird, specific task. The command line just can't go away.
Blogs are mainly just the Geocities homepage of the 2000s.
- j-joshers
Sorry, but Knoppix was not the first Live CD.
The first Live CD was Yggdrasil. You young whippresnappers would do well to learn how to say that word, yo!
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Gentoo for me has never been about performance increases, it's been about packages compiled with the options I wanted, instead of what the maintainer wanted.
No, I didn't want mysql when I installed postfix, no, I didn't really need libjpeg/libtiff/libpng to install samba, no, this box is a server and I don't want X, why is php dependant on X! (and other weird package dependencies I've noticed in various distribs)
The flipside of the coin is that perhaps I want php or something compiled against postgresql or some other combination of modules which, for instance, fedora or debian won't allow me to have? Gentoo gets around this rather well as everything is compiled and you can link packages against the libs that you want. Also since you're compiling it yourself for your system you know it'll work whereas you can't be sure with rpms these days as they can be made for any number of distribs.
Gentoo is for advanced users who don't mind compile times and like having things customized the way they want it. It's not a bad distrib, don't knock it because of some of the users.