Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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.
"I have an odd craving to whisper about those few frightful hours in that ill-rumored and evilly shadowed seaport of dea
The one that is babysitted and administered by an expert.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Why dual boot? It seems so inconvenient to me. Perhaps virtualization would be better?
Step 1: Whatever hardware you get, be sure to make sure that it is compatible. The easiest way to do this is to buy a centrino system, because that means all the major hardware will work properly :)
Step 2: Use Ubuntu. It's the easiest, bar none. It gives you access to gigantic repositories (debian.) It has by far the most support today, meaning that you're more likely to find an install package for software on Ubuntu.
Step 3: Get lots of RAM. This is the most important hardware-related advice I can give any user of any computer :)
As for reading, I suggest The Unix Programming Environment by Kernighan and Pike. It will help you understand Unix, which will help you whether you're using Linux or Slowlaris.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You'll be able to do all your work AND get laid more.
--
Use Windows until you have reason to use Linux. Don't use Linux until it's better for you.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Sound crazy, but with very little work on the part of the guru, it can be set up with something like KDE, and from there they can use the system no problem, however, since it's slackware, when it comes time to fix something or get into the bowelsof the system, the easyness of the internals in slackware should really help the user not only fix the problem, but also learn about Linux system adminstartion due to the fact that Slackware is the least distributiuon specific disitrubtion out there.
Install slack, bump up to a 2.6 kernel (ck preferably), and use either the slack-supplied KDE, or install Dropline Gnome. Flip iniitab to runlevel 4, and your set.
What WOULD make a distro easier? GUI tools? If your telling me netconfig is hard to use, I'll shoot myself in...hmm...the left ankle.
Just download an Ubuntu livecd (I would recommend 6.06, not 6.10) and put it in your current desktop system. Test to see if all the hardware works properly, and then just mess around with the OS. Since you are getting some new hardware, and you want to dual-boot, I would recommend one of the pieces of new hardware be a separate hard drive to put the OS on (you could just partition your first disk, but I find that there are certain advantages to having Windows and Linux on separate hard drives). Nvidia graphics cards generally have better Linux support than ATI cards do, so if you are getting a new graphics card, your best bet would be something from Nvidia. As far as software is concerned, I really don't have any suggestions off the top of my head.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
LFS would be much better for a newbie!
Beer! It's what's for breakfast!
No it didn't, particularly when he's specifically asking for a Linux system.
Forget everything you know about Windows. Linux is not Windows even if some of the GUI environments are starting to resemble aspects of them. Linux is closer to the Unix ideal of MANY MANY MANY tools that do one thing really well and need to be intertwined with other things to do more. As a non-programmer, I find Linux much easier to customize than Windows in terms of actually building new functionality. This is not something easily accomplished on Windows unless you want to get a Devel kit. In Linux it's practically a survival skill. Take a look through some of my Slashdot Journal Entries for examples of how I accomplished some interesting things with Linux that would have been nearly impossible with Windows.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I personally have 2 favorite distro's. First there's Slackware. Its tremendous transparancy has always made it easy to configure, mess around with, and it's versatile. What's more: it makes me feel at home. Yes, lots of things take time to set up, but everything will be just about the way you want them to be.
;)
Then there's Ubuntu. It has impressed me with features that make life on the computer easier. At the same time, I don't know my way around it much and I do not want to HAVE to know my way around it. Behind Ubuntu, I have a completely different mindset than when I'm behind Slackware. When something refuses to work in Ubuntu, I cuss it out: why haven't the developers fixed this yet?! When something refuses to work in Slackware, I seek the configuration files out and edit them as needed. It's what it was made for, as opposed to Ubuntu (in my eyes).
Perhaps you find it odd for a person to completely think differently using 2 different distributions of Linux, but that's how it works in my head. Maybe others share this oddity. Either way: if you want a versatile distribution that you want to get to know and that you want working with you, I'd go for something like Slackware, or Debian or maybe Gentoo. If you want something that works out of the box and starts you off with a set-up desktop, go for Ubuntu or Suse, or maybe Fedora. Of course if it comes down to it you can configure Ubuntu to be exactly as you want it, but then I'd start right at the beginning with Slackware/Debian and build your own system. You learn more that way.
Hopefully the rough edges will be shaved off Ubuntu as it is an impressive distro with many a feature that Windows simply doesn't have, or less polished. It also has a large userbase, is supported widely by developers (package-management is good). Of course, the same applies to Fedora and Suse. Try and see for yourself what you like. They can all be installed great with VMWare Server. And speaking of which, Windows runs good in VMWare as well so you won't have to abandon your trusty Windows.
Ubuntu's probably the right answer, but I'm very fond of SuSE. Ask around and see if you can locate a local Linux Users Group (LUG) - they're usually happy to help, can show you various flavors of Linux, and even help you with set-up of the O/S and even installing specialty apps. It is very likely you will need to know how to get around in Linux (or Unix) if you're going into a scientific research field, so my recommendation is to go ahead and learn it sooner rather than later.
I could not agree more! Macbook with Intel Core Duo, 2 GB of RAM, 120 GB harddisk and *Parallels*!!
I can run Windows 98, Windows ME, Ubuntu, OpenSolaris and WindowsXP whenever I want! Shared disks using NFS or SAMBA.
As for my publishing needs, I am writing my thesis in LaTeX, using Xemacs as editor. Xfig, R, OCTAVE, gnuplot etc. to do the research and generate the plots (all under MacOS X, thanks to macports).
It is *so* usable... why would anyone need anything else... and it looks cool too!
Four years ago I would have said that Linux was the desktop of choice... I no longer believe that to be true. The ease of use of MacOS X convinced me, a computer is a tool not a workout station. I still play with Linux and Windows, but rarely boot them anymore... From a user experience MacOS X is sooo much better than Linux (yes my Ubuntu is the most recent), and Windows... nothing compelling there....
I am fairly new to linux myself, (I switched just last April), and I have just a few words to say.
1) Use Ubuntu - It is by far the easiest distribution to get started in, supports most hardware automatically, and has a HUGE range of software available. Plus, the forums are superb and have helped me countless times.
2) Break things - Seriously. This is the best way to learn about how your new system works. I've learned many things from the times I've broken my system, most importantly how not to break my system.
Good luck, and welcome to Linux!
As a newby Linux user, I'd go with the majority and suggest ubuntu - except that the tetex debian package that is available for download onto ubuntu is flawed. Fedora has a better standard load of LaTeX it works better out of the box for LaTex. I really like Kile (GUI front end to LaTeX available in both Fedora and ubuntu) and it is a time-saver that doesn't automagically break things, like most GUI front ends. There are some long-term weirdnesses you should be aware of with Fedora - when you install it, choose as your user some other ID than the one you want to use for yourself - the opposite of the ubuntu advice, where you want to be the install-user.
Another alternative - you're probably a TUG member. You can very easily install LaTex from the TeX Live CD/DVD. It's easier than installing MiKTeX in Windows (from that very confusing PDF) - this gives you the advantage of a dead stable LaTeX set on your computer - rather than one that automatically updates and might become temporarily unstable with respect to your personal custom code.
So, I guess, I'd suggest a best of both worlds approach - installing ubuntu and then installing LaTeX manually. You'll be really happy. It's so simple to do things - such as dvi2pdf - you'll never want to go back to Windows. Which reminds me, do go and get the Acrobat reader for Linux and install it - it works better than the standard app (in Fedora). In ubuntu the standard reader works OK. Drop me a line if you want assistance.
Try vmware first. It will let you run a virtual system in a window on top of windows, so you won't have to reformat your drive, or repartition, or do anything like that. It's a very inobtrusive way to get started.
The virtualization penalty in terms of performance is very slight, and you don't have to worry about drivers at all, which is huge, especially if you're new to linux, and haven't selected your hardware with linux in mind.
Which distro depends a lot on the specific apps you want to run. As you probably know, linux doesn't have universal installers the way windows does -- packages have to be rolled up for your specific distro. (They don't *have* to be, but it's a lot easier if they are.) I don't use TeX often, but I think it should be pretty widely avaialble on most distros. Python is ubiquitous, you won't have any trouble anywhere.
I tend to think of apt as the "killer app" of linux. You just ask for an applicaiton, and it downloads and installs automatically. Not all distros have it -- it's something that exists in distros that are part of the debian family tree. Ubuntu is a debian based distro, and so it has apt.
So Ubuntu is really the safe answer.
There's a fair amount of stuff that doesn't work out of the box in Ubuntu -- almost always for licensning reasons. Software to play multimedia files often falls into this category, and it's sort of a pain to get all of that set up, and things like flash for your web browser don't work out of the box either.
So my advice to you would be to do virtualization for your math stuff with unbuntu, and to stick to the host layer windows install for multimedia stuff. Once you know your way around linux, you can take the plunge and go all linux. But this way, you never have a machine that won't do whatever you need it to do.
SuSE is in disfavor now for political reasons (fights over licensing, and I'm pretty down on them myself), but if you want a really slick desktop, it's hard to beat. It's better for multimedia after the initial install, and it tends to work better out of the box generally. There are lots of little details that are handled better.
My main problems with SuSE are mostly ideological now, and those problems are severe enough that I wouldn't use it. So I don't want to downlplay the political stuff, it's real, and it's important, and I think that Novell is on the wrong side of it. But one of the reasons the fight with Novell is so painful is that very shortly before the problem emerged, they came out with what were pretty much the most beautiful linux desktops ever.
My other problem is the lack of apt, the package manager, which you really, really want, even if you don't realize it now. Life without apt can't really be called living.
Finally, if you're in a math department somewhere, ask around and see what other people are using. Because the single most valuable thing for you as a new user will be someone you can ask for help.
- a Linux host will perform better, will be more malware resistant and, perhaps, be more robust;
- if you are buying a brand new system, driver support may be better under Windows (Linux in a virtual machine will not care about the host hardware drivers);
- if you go 64-bit, Linux is the best choice of host OS.
As others have suggested, Ubuntu is a sound choice of Linux distribution. I am going to blow my karma by noting that SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop is even better if you are willing to give Novell some money.Hardware:
.deb downloads, so with Fedora you'll be less likely to have to compile software yourself. The downside of Fedora is that older versions aren't supported for very long.
1) A CPU with hardware virtualization will greatly expand your options for using Windows and Linux together on the same box. Any Intel Core chip or AMD Socket AM2 chip will work.
and
2) Anything from a top-tier OEM is going to be much easier to make Linux work on than something you pieced together yourself.
and
3) Spend your money on RAM, not CPU.
Distro:
a) Ubuntu, as it benefits from the vast repositories of Debian software, but is better targeted for your use case.
or
b) Fedora Core, as it benefits from the vast repositories of RPM software. For out-of-distro software, you're more likely to find RPM downloads than
If having to do a major upgrade every year to be able to keep getting updates scares you, use Ubuntu. If having to compile your own software scares you, Fedora might be better, and Gentoo is definitely out.
There are plenty of other perfectly valid choices, but Ubuntu and Fedora Core are the obvious first two to mention for someone who's probably going to be spending a little time searching Google and browsing the user forums.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
I myself started using Linux at the behest of my boyfriend about a week ago, and I would have to say Ubuntu was really easy. He walked me through some stuff, but I am really comfortable with it already. But this is the only thing I have ever looked at, and it may be hard if you don't have someone behind you helping you, but I like it.
Before Ubuntu, I tried Red Hat (this was pre-Fedora), SuSE, Debian, Knoppix, Gentoo (with the help of a friend who knew what he was doing), and Mandrake (as it was then known.) All of them had serious issues--mostly unrecognized hardware, but a couple couldn't even make it through installation (for example, Knoppix would hang no matter what I did.) I was a newbie, but I wasn't utterly helpless... I knew my way around a shell. With each distro, I spent several days troubleshooting the problem and got nowhere. I *wanted* to use Linux, but I simply couldn't afford to invest so much time making the basics work. There's a huge difference between a little tinkering in my spare time (which I was looking forward to) and trying to live without a functional network card.
And then, along came Ubuntu and EVERYTHING JUST WORKED. Obviously, your millage my vary (some people say that Ubuntu has given them nothing but headaches yet e.g. MEPIS is a dream) and I'm sure Ubuntu's improvements have since been incorporated in all of those other distros I tried, but Ubuntu's philosophy and their large community of helpful users has me sold. Virtually every single niggling little problem I had in 5.04 (the first Ubuntu release) has been resolved. I've installed Xubuntu on my mom's old laptop and she loves it (and unlike Windows, it's virtually maintainance-free.)
If you do encounter problems after installing Ubuntu, just check out ubuntuforums.org--I've installed it in half a dozen computers now, and virtually every problem I've ever encountered has been easily solved by following a step-by-step guide some kind soul has posted.
Ubuntu really is "Linux for Human Beings."
I think the KDE interface makes more sense for the Linux newbie, and the Kubuntu distribution has many advantages as well. As mentioned above, tremendous online resources and a very active community for advice and support are substantial advantages.
For LaTeX, I suggest Lyx...available for your Windows side as well as in Linux. See http://www.lyx.org/
I would also create a separate partition for those things you will need to share between both windows and Linux. I'd probably format this as a fat32 partition, since that is somewhat simpler to use for Linux and will appear transparent to Windows. The occasional glitch in the handling of NTFS partitions is not worth the hassle, yet you are bound to have a fair amount of information that it would be helpful to have available in either side.
David
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).
Most of the comments here seem to be more about the Linux distro than Spiffyman's domain-specific requirements. Speaking from that perspective, I'd check out the Quantian Scientific Computing Environment (http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian.html). It's a complete Knoppix LiveCD distro, pre-loaded with every FOSS math and science app around, including a fairly comprehensive TeX/LaTeX set of tools, IDE's, etc. The best part about Quantian is that you can run it as a LiveCD, boot it on an existing Windows system while you get up to speed and learn the toolset, and you don't have to immediately reformat/repartition/dual-boot your existing box. Personally I'm a big fan of Ubuntu, and especially Edgy Eft, but I still boot up a Quantian VM anytime I'm sitting on Windows or Mac and need to use R for stats, or use some math libraries. Hope this helps. Good luck!
It may not quite be a OSX killer, but it really is easier to set up, easier to use, easier to administer, more consistent and prettier than Windows. It's an elegant desktop.
It simply works out of the box and has 20,000 packages available at the click of Applications -> Add/Remove.
Deleted
Heck, mod parent up! It's a simple answer for a simple question. RedHat always catered to advanced users, Suse went evil recently, Fedora rocks in may ways but is highly unstable and in the end not quite as easy as ... Ubuntu. Did I read someone pushing Slackware?!? Great distro, but no way for the noob. Debian rocks, but again, for the noob... Ubuntu.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
This answer shows why the question is nonsensical on its face. No one can tell you what distro is best for you. Everyone has a different personality. For me, Slackware is the ideal distro for a newbie. But then, I like to read up on any product before I use it. So I thought it was easy to install and now it is very easy to administrate. It has lower overhead from all of the bells and whistles that some of the other distros have included. There is no dependency hell that can be so frustrating to a newbie. If you stay away from the auto updaters and read the changelogs, you will never have a broken system. If you are like a lot of the Windows users that come over to Linux, however, you will probably be better served by one of the other distros. The majority of them want to run the installer CD and then just have everything be set up and work. Of course some of them become so frustrated the first time they run into a problem and have no idea on how to fix it, they run back to Windows. But good luck to you.
Which distro to adopt if you are a newbie really depends on what you want to achieve or learn by installing Linux. If you want an alternate desktop system you could go for Ubuntu, Linspire, Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop distro where you get lots of user friendly GUI tools to solve your configuration problems. If your ambition is to become a corporate Linux admin or a developer and you want to build a server system to cut your teeth on I would recommend something like Centos because it is a free-of-charge binary 'clone' of Red Hat ES/AS which along with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is the standard for anybody who runs enterprise quality software including the ubiquitous Oracle Databases. Slackware on the other hand is only for you if you are a for true nerd, developer, comp-sci/engineering student or some such eccentric who want to find out the old fashioned way how a modern *NIX system is put together. Basically I'd say that if you are a complete Linux newbie, say... an experienced Windows XP user, you should definitely start with one of the ultra user friendly Linux desktop distributions and proceed from there. If you want to become a professional Linux admin you should also get over any fear you may have of command-line interfaces and doubly so if you have any ambition to do any serious development on a Linux system.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Reasons not to buy a Mac:
- already have a PC and don't want to go through the nuisance / expense of selling it and buying a Mac
- want/need a form-factor Apple doesnt make, e.g., subnotebook sans optical drive or a pen-system w/ integrated graphics digitizer (Tablet PC)
- no single vendor clause / requirement to purchase a supported configuration
Which is why I wish Apple would license Mac OS X or build a pen slate.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Argh, I wrote the above, did not intend for it to be posted as anonymous coward.
If you wanna learn how Linux works, I'd suggest Gentoo. Read the handbooks while installing and try to understand what you are doing. Do it from Stage 1. It'll help you to have a good understanding on how Linux works. And patience. Lots of patience. It may take a full week to get everything working properly. And you may need to install it more than once :-) When we are starting, it's easy to mess everything up.
If you just want a box up and running, Ubuntu or Fedora will work. I'd suggest Ubuntu, but Fedora is OK. Both have tons of customizations to make it easier for a newbie, both have a great community, both have pre-scheduled releases and both have "install from repository" softwares (but I prefer Ubuntu's one).
Good luck!
ilex paraguariensis for all
Debian really isn't that hard - even the install. Ubuntu's main advantage that I can see is newer and more frequent stable releases. I had a serious upgrade issue with Ubuntu (freezing gui) that I eventually reinstalled over. This was after attempting to avoid known upgrade errata. Running Debian unstable I only had a minor upgrade/dependency issue that was solved with a peek at the bboards, requiring only about three "apt-get" commands from the prompt. (iirc, "remove a", "upgrade b", "install a"). Heck, even the X11 to X.org switch was relatively simple. Not that ubuntu is bad, but I think there is a trade-off between usability and "stability" (in multiple senses of the word).
"Any app that runs on Linux can also be downloaded for the Mac. "
/. ID at the door.
100% Wrong! Please turn in your
*If* the source code is available you may be able to port it to OSX, but native Linux binaries will not run on OSX. Keep in mind that while the userland tools are similar/identical in many ways, you are still dealing with 2 completely different kernels.
Many software packages written for BSD or Linux may be recompiled to run under Mac OS X; such software is often distributed precompiled for Mac OS X in the form of Mac OS X packages. -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
Sometime during late 2000, I started my gradual switch to the free unixes. I began with Zipslack, a part of the Slackware project, because I could install it on my fat32 partition without needing to repartition. At the time, working off of a 7GB harddrive, I wanted to avoid splitting the partition, as I had so little to work with.
Over the years, I've distro hopped probably two dozen times, both linuxes and bsds, but ultimately it's all come down to two things: efficiency and ease of use. That being said, Gentoo wins in my book by a wide margin when it comes to efficiency. It's _ALMOST_ as good as Linus From Scratch, but the sheer amount of work saved by using portage (for me at least) wins over the slightly even more optimized results from Linux From Scratch. That being said, I don't use Gentoo on my desktop. Portage (gentoo's package manager) downloads source and compiles it--a rather time consuming process for one who doesn't have distcc installed on several networked computers to speed things up. Because of this, I'm currently working off of Kubuntu (though any Ubuntu version is more than adequate in my opinion) because it is the fastest of the easily updateable distributions I have used. I'm honestly not just jumping on the ubuntu train here--I honestly disliked the distribution until about Knot 6 of the testing stage for Dapper, where I came to realize that it was approaching the speed my gentoo install had achieved at the time, but without the need for long compilations every update.
In summary: I would have to say Ubuntu is best if you're new to things, don't know every minute detail of your machine inside and out, or want things to be mindless to maintain. If you're a performance junky, Gentoo is best IMHO because of how easily you can create a highly optimized system--and in the long run this may be better for what you're describing, particularly if the software you'll be using or writing need not update more than once a week or so and involves a lot of number crunching.
Gentoo is however quite a bit more difficult to install on it's own right, I would suggest starting off using one of the derivative distributions, such as Vida Linux or Sabayon. I myself prefer Sabayon out of the two, once the ridiculous amounts of orange and red are taken out of the theme. Much like Ubuntu in it's default install, Sabayon is almost painful to look at if you don't absolutely love orange and red.
As far as virtualization goes, I would say this: virtualization is a great thing, but I myself think it's nowhere NEAR at a state that it can even attempt to replace a native install. There's just too much of a performance handicap with so much overhead still, in my opinion, to warrant regular use. It's a great way to test out a distro before deciding to burn a cd/dvd of it and install, or running the occasional application which only works on Windows, cannot run through Wine, and doesn't warrant a full install.
Me too. I am getting suspicious of the ubuntu cheerleading going on here. It sounds a bit too much like other 'distro du jour' cheerleading we have seen previously, particularly the gentoo stuff.
/etc/apt/sources.list)
/boot partition, 2 6Gb partitions for two system install root directories, possibly a 10Gb /usr/local partition, and a /home partition. Then you can install 2 distros and compare them, I would select Mandriva 2007 and Ubuntu 6.06 for the tests. Install Mandriva first, its partition manager is best. If you decide to go to a single distro, use the other 6Gb partition as a backup.
Suse has great hardware support, a reasonable install, a good system configuration tool, and a nice enough desktop. Its let down by an enterprise focused package selection, and poor network based repositories.
Mandriva has good hardware support, excellent installer, a good system configuration tool and a good desktop. Its let down by rushed testing before major releases (2007 is OK, but 2006 had several flaws), and a weak website. You can subscribe (I.e. pay money) to Mandriva to get access to a distro with alot of free-but-commercial distro. It installs acrobat, realplayer, flash, nvidia drivers, and other software. Also check out Easyurpmi, a website that points you at the urpmi repositories for community packages.
I found ubuntu had good hardware support, but the installer was limited, the configuration tool poor, and the desktop came with a very limited set of default options. Online support is excellent. The basics (OOo, The GIMP, etc) were intalled by the installer, but stuff like Inkscape and games had to be installed from the command line. Before installing, check the web for tips, as there are some packages and things to do that make things alot easier (such as setting up big list of repostories in
I havent used redhat, but I understand its very much like SuSe.
What I would do is create a tri-boot system. Put windows in a partition, and then create a 50Mb
Anyone suggesting you try gentoo, debian or slackware is , quite frankly, an idiot.
**TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
I am an aged retired professor of EE, who started using Linux about a year and a half ago. In my considered opinion the best Linux system for a rank newbie, in Linux, to start is to download Knoppix, any version later than 3.0 will 'find' all the hardware on most, if not all, PC systems (yes! no downloading drivers). Put Knoppix on your hard drive, leaving windoze there, use either GRUB or LILO as a boot-operating-system selector (search the Internet using how-to 'task', but be careful not all Internet articles are cool). You are smart to keep your windoze system running until you can safely shift completely to Linux. Use the Internet for any questions (feel free to ask questions of any tested Linux user). A single source of information which helped get me started was Carla Schroder's 'LINUX Cookbook', O'Reilly, isbn: 0-596-00640-3, which may be a bit dated by now, but a very good source of Linux 'how-to' information. (There are several articles on the Internet by this author which you will find very helpful, also O'Reilly books has a cool on-line service.) I started with Knoppix went to Slackware, then to Mandrake, Mepis, then Ubuntu, (to name only a few) finally shifted to just plain good old Debain Linux. Debian, in my considered opinion is the very best of all Linux operating systems which I have tried. Its 'apt-get' and "aptitude" operated from the console (command line) give you the best selection of free software available for Linux operating systems. This software is free for the download, and these two commands, see'~$ man', will connect, using sources.list (/etc/apt/sources.list), then download any or all software for you. Linux operating systems always have manual (~$ man 'command-name') avaiable to help us newbies learn to speak Linux. (There are also 'alien' to convert pkg.tgz to pkg.deb, and '~# dpkg -i pkg.deb' to install non-debian software packages on Debian.) (note: 'aptitude' and 'apt-get' both use 'dpkg' to complete their work, I am told.) Slackware is my, kind of, second choice Linux operating system, however, it tends to maintain some of the older Unix tradition. I have 'tailored' my Debian Linux systems to suite my needs, keeping my home directory separate (on a not-to-be formatted partition but use as /home/kb6vdo, for example) so that all my favorite settings are not disturbed when the urge strikes me to add a later or different version of Debian, or any other, Linux operating system to my collection of running operating systems on this box. Mix other Linux distros with care! If worried use a new alias user name instead of your choice a redo all your gui settings.
Knoppix, Ubuntu, and Mepis, when I used them, were all three based on Debian Linux, but tend to modify the source code to suite their own needs, not mine. This source code change makes distribution upgrades dangerous for newbie linux folks.
Linux is wonderful, it has more and better free scientific software as well as highly specialized free publishing software avaialble, I dare say, than you can even purchase for windoze. Linux is virtually unlimited in its scope of useful possiblities; it is, practically, the modern day Unix which was and is designed for both academic and research use. As far as I know the only area where windoze out shines Linux is in its graphical interface, in that higher optical resolutions are atainable in windoze. This does not matter to most of us, but to gamers this is very important.
I keep Knoppix 'run-from-cd' Linux on hand to help me get out of trouble or fix some friend's computer software problem. Knoppix is probably the best Linux of this variety ever and gives quarter to none, to the best of my knowledge.
About the PC system, it really does not matter until you get into areas such as wireless Internet, sound and such. Any old or new PC works well, at least for me, with Linux of any variety which I have tried. Thus, what ever PC or laptop you have will accept Knoppix Linux. Most, if not all, will run faster as well. Just remember, as my freind Jerry Sharp used to say: "Linux does not have its 'hood' welded shut", a mechanic can fix it, more than can be said for windoze.
God bless, best of 73s, de kb6vdo, jim
I did an experiment recently. Someone I vaguely knew through a friend had come across a laptop that he thought was "hot". As the only nerd he knew, he wanted me to wipe off anything that the hard disk might have had on it. I was amused and thought he was just paranoid, but I humored him.
To be honest, I was the one that alerted him to the existence of programs that phone home when the laptop is stolen. I don't think any normal user ever uses these, but they exist. However, the license number on the pre-existing XP install could probably be matched to the computer it was sold on and maybe to its rightful owner.
The computer looked like a fresh install, complete with with all the worthless bullshit that big-name PC laptop manufacturers bundle with their machines. The goddamned system tray must have had 15 icons in it when expanded, and they all were about to expire. It was 15 or so inches, a widescreen, some year- or two-year old middle of the line model. Nothing to sneeze at.
I told him that I had no version of Windows that predates XP, and the ones I have are legally licensed to me (thank you $5 University copy, it's almost worth it). So he had two options: I could blank the hard disk until he could scare up a copy of XP (he won't, not for normal prices), or I could install Linux. After some explaining, he chose Linux.
I don't think he's ever owned a computer or had access to a family machine, so I figure KDE should be just as easy to learn as Explorer for a first timer. He only wanted to get on the web and play DVDs. The only modern implementation of Linux I've used has been Gentoo, and it has always worked flawlessly, once you get it set up. Portage is amazing, and if things compile, they'll work. Before that I had used Redhat 5, but the RPM system annoyed me to the point that I switched back to Windows for years. It could be because I was using it on an old laptop from 1996 that had a winmodem, but it was a pain in the ass.
I wanted to see if a normal person, a Kaspar Hauser of computing, would pick up on KDE. But not bad enough that I want to toil for days making Gentoo work on his machine. I opted for a precompiled distribution, instead.
I'd heard good things about Ubuntu, but I hate Gnome. So I got Kubuntu. It installed out of a LiveCD, which is much slicker than Windows XPs primitive installation process. Wireless seemed to work, but I wasn't letting this guy on my network and I live in the only complex in the world where everyone has renamed their routers, changed the channels, encrypted, and MAC filtered their wireless. The laptop picked up the neighbors, though, and it sure seemed to be working. DVDs kicked up some error about a decss library and quit after the FBI warning. I tried to install the required library through the graphical upgrade interface, but it didn't work. Very annoying.
So I gave him the laptop and he didn't figure out that its functionality had been severely decreased since recently, when I was out of town. I heard that he was having trouble watching his movies and needed help, but I'm rarely home and he doesn't, and won't, have my numbers. Also, he moved to another complex while I was away, so he's pretty much on his own.
Will he sink or swim? He'll have to hit up the message boards to get things to work, and I think Kubuntu left a way to get there from the desktop or K menu. He's a smart guy in fields outside of computing, and he could learn Linux the hard way and become the greatest programmer ever. Or he could hock it for a few ounces of dirt weed.
Why on earth would you ever want to run Windows ME? I'd rather pay somebody 5 bucks to kick me in the jimmy than put that lump of catshit on my computer.
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 )
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
I can tell that most of those words in your post must mean something because they seem to make sense, in a sentence construction sort of way. But I'll be honest that my eyes just glazed over when I hit by changing your repositories in the Synaptic upgrade tool from Dapper to Edgy. It didn't get much better after that.
This is a big problem for those that may not have oodles of free time; maybe the OP does. I have tried (and, I admit) given up on several packages, including RedHat (before the break), Ubuntu and Knoppix (both LiveCDs, admittedly), and Slackware.
What I've learned in the process is that
1. I don't run much server stuff.
2. I can't afford te time to "mess" at the office - real work still has to get done
3. Everything at home is multimedia, and practically no server stuff exists
4. Server stuff at home is so simple that peer shares are more than adequate
5. There's nothing _I_ do that requires the "cool" stuff in linux, unless you count TiVo hacking, and I don't do enough to justify a whole box
6. There is just too much technical software in my field (structural engineering) for Win only
I will happily admit that when I have to mess with my TiVo I get my nipples get hard when I work from the command line in a telnet session. There's just something "right" and "pure" about it that takes me back to my roots. But I've learned the dirty little secret of MS, which is not really a secret to anyone. Using MS day in and day out, you pick up the OS operations and gather your personal favorite apps - and how to use them - in the course of business. At nearly 40, I've got well over 25 years of tweaks and standards and process and training built up. Even worse, it's been 10-15 years since I've really had the free time to play with OS components and know the ins and outs. I came of age before the internet "existed" - and there has been so much that has gone by since that gaining a comfort level in a new OS is truly a daunting task. Gaining that knowledge without a manual is even worse. In defense of Linux, I would be loathe to switch to MS if it weren't my current platform of comfort, and OSX, I'm certain, would be little better.
Anyway, for good or ill, it's posts like your that remind me just how much I'd have to learn to switch. Maybe most people aren't as bubsy as I am, but I'm not sure where I'd find the time to learn everything I would need to to be comfortable, much less "productive".
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I'm developing a Kubuntu-based distro, XPresslinux, designed for Windows switchers. We pre-install WINE, VLC Media Player, Firefox with MPlayer plugin, and Java (free GCJ), so users can play most common media files and run many Windows applications. OpenOffice, which is included in Kubuntu, already takes care of MS Office documents.
I've tried four or five distros myself, on multiple occassions. Mandriva and K/Ubuntu tend to have the most success discovering all the system components. That is, of course, not including Knoppix.
... as with any Linux distro if you're not using pre-built packages for everything.
I wouldn't recommend Knoppix for your situation, although it's definitely worth keeping on a thumbdrive as a recovery tool. Knoppix is Debian based, like Ubuntu, so it really doesn't give you much advantage and is missing the K/Ubuntu system administration tools.
Mandriva (previously Mandrake) had the easiest to use system tools back when I was using it. It made most things very easy. Still, don't expect to not be editing system config files in a text editor and learning the hard way the first time you mess up a bleeding edge video driver upgrade
Mandriva was not keeping up with their 64-bit versions in a timely matter, so I moved to Kubuntu back when dapper was coming out of beta. I chose that version because I prefer the KDE desktop over Gnome, but you could go with Ubuntu just as well (Gnome may be the easier desktop to step into cold). You can always install the KDE packages later too, if you change your mind.
I'm very happy with Kubuntu - especially the pace at which it and the other Ubuntu distros are evolving.
What I recommend is to download every live CD you can find: Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Mandriva, Suse, Fedora, etc... and see what works best for you and with your hardware. See how the packaging systems of each work and find out what the main differences are between the ones to which you narrow the field.
-J
I'd try to avoid the dual-boot solution for the reason that your best Linux reference is the internet, which no workee if your new Linux install barfs!
Being able to refer to the web while you are installing is also nice.
Unless you have two or more PCs the reasons above are exactly why you want to dualboot. If you're installing and using Linux Linux for the first and you don't have a second PC then by dualbooting you still have access to the internet, unless you trash the OS already installed, so you can try to find solutions to problems that you run into while installing Linux. Until you can competently install Linux you should duaboot.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I've been working university computer support for a long time, and questions like this really give me hope for the eventual doom of the Microsoft hegemony. Tomorrow's decision makers are learning Linux, and MS operating systems aren't even in the decision tree. The most common question I hear from scientists and engineers these days is, "Linux or Mac?"
I recently interviewed for a support position at a major university physics department, and Windows support wasn't even a factor. They had already evolved past Microsoft products; none of the critical applications in physics were running on Windows. Their platform distribution was 60% Linux & Solaris, 30% Mac, and 10% "other", with Windows buried somewhere in the bottom 10%.
Ultimately, I suspect that Windows will be relegated to executives and administrators who must run "mission critical productivity software" (that is, Excel and Access), while the desktops in R&D, marketing, the factory floor and the retail store are all running some variant of Linux or MacOS. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft makes _any_ attempt at corrective action to slow this "brain drain" in the sciences and engineering schools.
Anyway, back on topic, I recommend Fedora. Although I use Ubuntu and find it very approachable for somebody that doesn't want to spend lots of time under the hood, the fact is that RedHat and RPM packages are sort of an industry baseline for math, science and engineering. You'll find most big open source projects are precompiled for RedHat, while Ubuntu will be stuck with some old version out in the Debian Multiverse or worse, you'll have no choice but to compile it yourself.
Rick R.
It's been about two years ago now that I embarked on a similar journey to your own. I wanted to find a good Linux distribution that met several criteria:
1. An installation routine that would allow me to dual-boot with Windows easily. My wife still uses Windows and is not yet ready for the transition, and since I earn my daily bread as a Windows sysadmin, I still need to keep it around for some of the things in my job.
2. A community which would be as newbie-friendly as the distribution itself. In the past I had bad experiences with some Linux experts who thought that Linux was, and should remain, the exclusive province of uber-geeks. In non-newbie-friendly support community forums, one may post a question, no matter how well formulated, and one of these fellows will offer helpful replies such as, "what a n00b- if you can't read the man pages, maybe you should go back to window$ or get a commodore64."
3. A reasonably good set of apps and tools built into the distro do to the things I need to do, and a reasonably good package manager to add new apps.
I loaded Mandrake (just prior to the change to Mandriva), looked at Suse, and Fedora. All of them met criteria 1 and 3, though correspondence to criteria 2 was a bit spotty. At that time I heard about a new distribution that was gaining a lot of popularity that had an African-sounding name: Ubuntu. I downloaded the then-current version, and loaded it with no problems. The forum users were hospitable and winsome, and welcomed me home to the distro, and the community tries to live up to the ethos of the word Ubuntu, which is used in several southern African languages, and means something like compassion for fellow human beings (very loosely paraphrased.) Where my previous experiences had been technically adequate and interesting, Ubuntu felt like coming home.
Since one of the reasons I was loading Linux was to join the free software community, I also decided that I would limit myself to obtaining whatever manuals and documentation I could also find that was free and open, in the same spirit of the Free Software Community, and here are some links that I think you'll find helpful:
The first stop on your documentation journey outside of the forums of your chosen distribution and the help guides and wikis therein should be the Linux Documentation Project at http://www.tldp.org/
Full length guides are here: http://www.tldp.org/guides.html Especially helpful to me were Machtelt Garrels Introduction to Linux: A Hands-On Guide and his Bash Guide for Beginners, but all the docs here are worthwhile, freely downloadable and printable.
Another good guide is RUTE: Rute User's Tutorial and Exposition Very well written and thorough. The author writes, "You can find out what book a person needs by asking the question, "Do you want to be a Muggle or a Wizard?" (1) If they answer "Wizard", then you give them Rute. (2) If they answer "Muggle", then you give them "Linux for Dummies." (3) If they answer "What's a Muggle?", then you give them "Harry Potter". I had just finished reading the first few Harry Potter books to my kids, and so this tickled me. RUTE is a great starter manual: http://linux.2038bug.com/rute-home.html
Bruce Perens is one of the brighter stars in the firmament of the Free Software movement, and his publisher, Prentiss Hall, has a number of books in the Bruce Perens Series available in PDF format for download here: http://www.phptr.com/promotions/promotion.asp?prom o=1484&redir=1&rl=1
No list would be complete without including the O'Reilly Open Book page. This page includes books such as the Linux Network Administrator's Guide, but also some books on the history and philosophy of the Free Software movement such as Eric S. Reymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar
Put Ubuntu on your new computer, and Gentoo on your old one. Make the Ubuntu your desktop and the Gentoo one a server. Install whatever you want except any GUI components (using Gentoo on a modern desktop is a headache). I use a similar setup here, except I have Vista on my desktop (and yes, I did setup Gentoo on my server). The Gentoo will give you an outlet to learn about linux without screwing up your desktop (and also forcing you to learn a CLI). You can even get a stage4 backup cron setup (after you learn how) so if you hose your server you can always restore it.
If you want to learn Linux and not Fink or whatever bottleneck app you need to run to get your Linux stuff working don't get a MAc. While OSX is all nice and fluffy trying to get stuff running on Macs via X11 w/fink or whatever will add a whole new level of frustration.
Go with Linux, Ubuntu is nice, Centos is good too. (If you don't have high speed internet, go with something that has all the whistles pre-loaded on a CD/DVD like the retail SuSE, as you won't have to wait and download all the goodies.)
Get some books, I reccomend the older "Red Hat Linux Bible" for its completeness of covering wall that is GNU/Linux is in general (regardless of distro) as well as grab more in depth tomes on getting skilled in specific areas (especially for programming,) do browse your bookstore and peersonally check out the books for yourself, some are real dogs. Get used to using Google, google groups and hearing a lot of "Read the ####ing Manual" as you start, it's not really hard, just different.
As for hardware get something Intel/AMD with at least a Ghz of speed (I would not worry about 64 bits if you can't afford it right off, the support of 64 bit apps is still a bit behind 32) and at least 512 MB RAM, Nvidia Cards have some of the best performance for low prices and are not hard to configure, some ATI cards super right out of the box (careful on many other manufacturers video cards your experience may be really bad when starting with the wrong video card). A really good keyboard and mouse are helpful too (
lots more typing in Linux).
An external drive for backups is a nice thing, and if you are dual booting consider getting a second hard drive for Linux to live on (so you don't have to futz with Windows repartitioning).
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
For your publishing activities, you might like to install both Scribus and LyX in addition to the TeX and LaTeX you mention.
While the suggestion to buy a Mac is marked 'Funny', and was, I'm sure, intended to be such, it's actually not such a silly suggestion because Macs do run Linux very well, and if you find you don't like Linux, which while being superbly user friendly, it does tend to be somewhat pickey about the friendships it makes. If you and Linux just do not get on, you still have a very good piece of hardware and software in your possession. Macs will also run the software I have mentioned using the X-11 server from either Apple or Fink. That's in addition to all the proprietary software offered by Apple and their ISVs.
Test your hardware first with a boot cd:
/home; the reason is, that no matter what distro you use, you can use your same data folders without having to tweak things to find your data :)
Try slax; ubuntu; kubuntu; mandriva-move; free-spire; vector; knoppix;
1) maximum out of the box windows compat: xandros
2) good capabilities on older hardware: vector, slax
3) debian based distros - (ubuntu; kubuntu; freespire; knoppix; xandros), I cannot say enough about apt; it rocks; it works: updating or installing on bleeding edge unstable it sometimes has issues but is mostly rocksolid.
4) Realize that you are using an os that is ideologically against proprietary software/codecs and on some of them you will need to take extra steps to play mp3s, wmvs et. al.
5) do not play the comparison game. the os' are different and approach the same ideas from different angles. In linux you don't need to login as root/admin in order to install software etc. that is what the 'su' (superuser) command is for.
6) create a seperate partition for the
7) make sure you use the ext3 file system to create your home partition as that will be mountable from windows (since you will be dual booting)
8) programs that are not os critical can be installed into your user folder; I like to keep more recent versions of azureus, sun java, firefox and tbird than most distro's have time to get to so I install from the software creators sites to my home folder and then when I need the latest version i just update them no need to su or anything.
9) when you do find something that is working, stay with it for a while, and don't listen to the "but x distro can do this!!!" there is a tendency to play with all the "new" distros/versions but if you need the machine for day to day work keep it stable and keep it simple.
10) no matter which decision you make it will be right/wrong depending on who you talk to, so go have fun.
Commander Data - Engage Flame Drive!!!
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
well so far alot have said Ubuntu, why not to Linspire or Freespire, its great for new people. Im getting it cause im still trying to get used to linux, ive used Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Ubuntu, and Suse 9.1-10.0 and im still not good with it.
I agree with your point of view, and I use and recommend Debian over Ubuntu on servers, for example, or for guys who are going to make solid use of apt-get or do lots of open-source development. However, the post seems to be asking what's good for a typical Windows user, new to Linux. I feel this has been Ubuntu's monomaniacal focus, and that they edge out a slight advantage over Debian. All the Debian based distros are very similar, and the really good work is done in Debian. However, the additional contribution made on top of Debian helps focus it for particular applications. I find Ubuntu less frightening to Windows users, partly because of the live-CD, partly because of the pretty picture on boot, etc. Frankly, I wish the distro would smile at users, like the old Macs use to do. The other interesting area Ubuntu seems to be going after is users who want a company they can call at when things don't work. While I can get excellent Debian support, there's not a single company that I can point to as the default go-to-guy. I know it would turn off us open-source guys, but I think it would be wise to advertise Canonical's phone number and web site during the install for anyone who feels they want to pay a few bucks to figure out how to log-in and start Firefox.
;-)
Prior to Suse going evil, I would have strongly considered Suse for newbie Linux users. I have a Windows sys-admin friend who recently told me he felt Suse was the best distro for those comfortable with administration of Windows servers. He says it tries harder than the others to look and feel more like Windows. It's a huge shame they decided to turn-off the open-source community, but on the bright side, it's one less distro for us all to waste our time on. Well before Ubuntu came along, we already had waaaay too many distros. Of course, it might be fun creating one, and I'm a pretty good hacker... maybe I'll cone Debian and call it Bill-ian
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
90% of a good distro is in it's community, in the knowledge base it produces and maintains. No matter how technically good a distro is, it's less useful if there isn't documentation in your language, if a bug isn't noticed by a user, the forums aren't lively, or if people aren't packaging for your distro because no-one's using it - if it doesn't attract developers +/or package maintaners for all these reasons.
For this reason Ubuntu is the winner, hands down, despite being extremely sensibly put together. I'm a Debian user but would never suggest it as a starting distro for a newbie. I have pointed many people at Ubuntu that have very little computer experience, with great success. Some of these people have been running Ubuntu exclusively for over a year now.
This article explains why Ubuntu is ideal for new users, using criteria that users actually care about, instead of the usual holy wars surrounding distro of choice discussions amongst geeks. Check it out.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
In terms of Linux, where you have many options to chose, it is good and bad. Good because you have many distros and each one with some specific features and it is bad for the same reasons :)
I've been using Slackware for many years and i really love it, it is simple and in my opinion, easy to use.
But you always can try Ubuntu that looks real good and Debian because of its package manager that may make things easier for newbies.
You must keep in mind that any linux you chose, does not matter, you'll always have many similar tools for math and programming.
Before you decide take a look at the following links:
Slackware
Debian
Ubuntu
Gentoo
It is very important that you learn something about those linux distros out there and make
your own decision, pointing out what does really matter and what doesn't
Don't you have some virtualization tool for testing? You can install a couple of distros and
then make your decision based on experience.
good luck!
I doubt this'll be read by many folks (after all, the article was posted -hours- ago), but I haven't seen anyone else mention it.
I think that there are two things that should affect your decision.
The first is application support. Open Source stuff isn't a problem. You can just assume that it's available for any distro that you like. If you're going to use any commercial software, you should check with the makers of that software to see what distros they support. A lot of academic software expects Redhat Enterprise (or a clone like CentOS) or Suse.
The second thing you should consider is distro lifetime. Many linux distributions stop offering support and upgrades for old versions after a year or two. A lot of us -like- to wipe everything and reinstall, but if you're trying to get work done, it can be really annoying. There are a few distros that offer a longer support window, though. Ubuntu offers a "LTS" ("Long-Term Support") version, and Redhat (again, and clones like CentOS) offers support for their products for several years.
Forward, retransmit, or republish anything I say here. Just don't misquote me.