Ideal Linux System for Newbies?

spiffyman asks: "In the next year, I'll begin advanced work in mathematics, and I'll also be upgrading my desktop box. In light of the advantages of Linux and FOSS in the area of science and mathematics, I want to convert from a Windows system to a dual-boot one with Linux. Primary tasks aside from math/logic activities will include learning intermediate programming, web maintenance, some computational linguistics (in Python), and LOTS of LaTeX work for my publishing activities. What do Slashdot readers recommend in terms of hardware, OS, software, and perhaps reading for a quasi-power Windows user (with no previous Linux experience) to convert to an all-Linux system?"

Comments

No Experience?

[pkcs11]

Most people (myself included) will suggest ubuntu, since it's a great Out Of The Box solution.
But Fedora might be a good fit as well.
Try out 3-4 distros and use what is most comfortable for you.

Re:No Experience?

[Kwiik]

Umm, Ubuntu is based off of Debian.. in addition to that, how is it such a great accomplishment that a distro does a great job of supporting LaTeX? They can all work pretty much the same with it. Save the distro wars for somewhere else..eesh

Anyways, my suggestion is to give a live CD a try. If you want to take your system from computer to computer and have it work flawlessly between boots (plus making it ultra easy to install apps that don't come on the live CD) then give a Live USB a try. There are many distros mostly based off of Debian for this. I recommend to check out linuxonusb.com since they make it easy to choose a distro. DSL-N's homepage is pretty good too - both give you the ability to buy a USB drive preloaded with a bootable linux partition at about the same cost as a regular USB drive, and they both claim to directly support the community.

Good luck to the poster

cygwin

[Lord Bitman]

Use Windows until you have reason to use Linux. Don't use Linux until it's better for you.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Virtualization (IS EASY AND RECOMMENDED)

[dilute]

It is REALLY easy. The easiest thing to do is install VMWare Player under Windows - it is a little simpler to deal with than VMWare server (which is also a free - as in beer - download). Then go to http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/ and pick out any one of the many pre-packaged Linux VMs that they have up there. Just open the VM in VMWare Player and you're off to the races. You mayt want to play around with the screen resolution after you get into your VM, but otherwise, it should be good to go.

The easiest distro to play with is probably a Ubuntu Dapper (6.06) one from this month. After you start it up, you can upgrade it to the latest "Edgy" version of Ubuntu (by changing your repositories in the Synaptic upgrade tool from Dapper to Edgy). You can alos create VMs from scratch (go to www.easyvmx.com)

Other distros you'll find up there include Debian Etch (the latest, still-in-process one), various Fedora Core versions, Knoppix. It is pretty sweat-free (except for the download time and the disk space) to DL a bunch of these and see which one (or ones) you like best. In truth, they are all very similar, except for their upgrade mechanisms and the places they stash system files.

If you go to the Mono web site (a completely separate web site), they have a VM with a recent version of SUSE Linux. Though their version is slanted toward setting up Mono (.NET-style) services), it is very nice.

To do this stuff smoothly you should have at least 1 gig of memory (preferably 2 gigs or more), and a BIG hard drive. Be sure to delete VMs you are not going to use.

After you get used to this, you may indeed want to go to VMWare Server, because it has more opearation options and a very nice snapshotting capability that allows you to make wild experimental changes and easily revert to the last good running state of the server, if things go bad.

Me? - I go the other way, and run Linux on my real hardware, and Windows in a VM (using VMWare Server for Linux). I find I don't need Windows that much, and it runs fine from a VM (you do a full install from a CD, same as with a real machine).

Maybe try the Live CDs first

[bl8n8r]

A nice way to test-drive a distro before installing it. Check out distrowatch.com. Since your inclined to torment yourself with Advanced Math, you might be interested in Scientific Linux.

1) Debian == Knoppix, Ubuntu
2) Redhat == CentOS, Fedora, Mandriva, Scientific Linux
3) Slackware == Slax, Vector Linux
4) SuSE == Microsoft (see: techp.org )