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Ask Slashdot: What Is the Best Distro For Linux Lessons?

Posted by Soulskill on from the throw-them-into-the-deep-end dept.

MBtronics writes "I work at an embedded hardware/software company and we are currently moving all our products for Windows CE to Linux. Our core development team already uses their favorite distro for development, but the rest of the developers are still working on Windows. We are going to give a series of Linux lessons (from 'what is Linux' to installing, using and developing) for everybody in the company who is interested (including non-developers). They will be allowed to choose their own distro, but we will certainly get requests for recommendations. My question to the Slashdot crowd: what distro (and window manager) do you think is the best to teach Linux to the generic public? We are currently thinking of Ubuntu, Fedora or Mint."

8 of 319 comments (clear)

  1. Ubuntu by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ubuntu is the most common, with the most online forums and such... I would recommend that one.

    1. Re:Ubuntu by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Uh... Mint I think you'll find:

      http://distrowatch.com/

  2. Slack! by Sooner+Boomer · · Score: 4, Informative

    Slackware for the win!

    --
    Chaos maximizes locally around me.
    1. Re:Slack! by dakohli · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yes.

      I cut my teeth on Slackware 3.5

      Back then of course the two most common were Redhat and Slackware.

      They used to say "If you run Redhat, you know Redhat. If you run Slackware, you know Linux"

      There are no shortcuts with Slackware. The students can learn how and why. Then, once they get the base knowledge, they can move on to easier distros. I don't bother with endless tinkering anymore, I just don't have the time. But the knowledge I picked up when I had to still serves me well.

    2. Re:Slack! by Dr_Barnowl · · Score: 3, Informative

      I found Gentoo instructive for similar reasons. Painful, but instructive.

    3. Re:Slack! by miknix · · Score: 4, Informative

      I found Gentoo instructive for similar reasons. Painful, but instructive.

      After going through the Gentoo installation handbook one should acquire some basic knowledge about the inner workings of a Linux based system. Not just how to use a Linux system but also how to assemble and manage one.

    4. Re:Slack! by micheas · · Score: 1, Informative

      Are you dealing with java, python, C, C++ applications or something similar? My experience with RHEL/CentOS has been the opposite of yours, to say the least.

      Rails and php are horrible on RHEL and CentOS. You can get them to work, but compiling from source in the FreeBSD ports collection is less painful than trying to find set up a current rails stack. As far as php many people seem to give up on the rpms and just compile from source to get at least the upstream upgrade path.

      RHEL 6 has php 5.3, which isn't too old, but php 5.4 is out, and for the longest time RHEL was shipping php 5.1 when php 5.2 was considered the oldest legacy version of php that most opensource php projects were supporting.

      Ruby packaging for RHEL is painful.

      RHEL 6.0 is actually not a self hosting OS, as the CentOS people found that there were packages that only built on Fedora. (perl libraries IIRC)

      Overall, I can't understand why one would use RHEL, unless you were using closed source software that was only guaranteed to run on it. Gentoo, Debian, and FreeBSD (I know it's not Linux, but it is open source) seem to be less work, and more consistent and more stable.

      RedHat contributes a lot of code to the community, and is overall a good community member, and I can understand running Fedora to see what Redhat is experimenting with, but to me it feels like sort of like the lack of stability in debian sid, paired with the age of debian stable. (not a fan of "enterprise" operating systems in case you couldn't tell)

      --
      Work bio at MMWD
  3. Support? by s.petry · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is the million dollar question, but also comes with a price tag. If you want support, then you want Redhat. Support includes more than you would get with Mickeysoft for much less money.

    RHEL gets you a few other things besides a check book full of support. There are far more experts with Redhat than any other distro (at least in the US). This means if you can't afford, or don't want to pay Redhat you can still find help. Good luck finding that "Gentoo" or "Slackware" expert when something breaks, or good luck affording them since he's booked by some other schlep that went with that brand.

    Lets face a simple fact. At home, you can use what ever you want. Who cares about down time, bugs, learning curves, etc... none of that matters. When it comes to business, you need to have something with a support chain. You also need a fall guy when the shit hits the fan.

    At work, we strictly run RHEL. Kickstarts include the full KDE suite, desk top is changed to KDE and KDE's Kiosk features are used to manage the desktops and give a common look and feel. RHEL will include everything you want from the standard linux stack, though you may have to get both a desktop and server set of media.

    --

    -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.