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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.
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.
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There are some cases where dual-booting is more advantageous than virtualization. Virtualization takes a heavy hit on RAM (I tried Parallels on my MacBook with a measly 512MB of RAM, my 1.83GHz dual core computer felt like my old 8MHz Mac SE), and if you're strapped for cash and don't have much memory, it's better to just dual-boot where the OS has full access to all of the RAM needed.
That reminds me to invest in a upgrade to 2GB of RAM soon.
LFS would be much better for a newbie!
Beer! It's what's for breakfast!
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.
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....
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.
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."
Well, that really depends on why the person is looking for a Linux system. If it's someone who's looking to get into desktop Unix (or just looking for an alternative to Windows) and doesn't realize that Linux isn't the only player in town, then it may be worth mentioning OS X or FreeBSD. At the moment, OS X is my current favorite desktop Unix in all respects except politics so I think it does deserve mention.
Now if the person needs to have something that works with existing hardware or specifically wants Linux for political reasons, then it's different and it's not worthwhile to mention other OSes.
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).
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.
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.
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 )
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