Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: New To Linux; Which Distro?
An anonymous reader writes "I'm a very new user to Linux looking for a distro that allows me to control and customize, but I'm not sure where to start. I had a friend install Ubuntu 12.04 on my computer, with the E17 window manager and somehow I managed to crash it during the copying of some non-important files and now my computer won't boot (the hardware's fine though). I've found descriptions of Arch Linux to be spot on to what I'm looking for and want (Slashdot user serviscope_minor mentioned Arch a couple weeks ago and it caught my attention), but my experience in the terminal is literally about an hour. That said, I really want to learn more, don't mind hard work, enjoy challenges, and am perfectly willing to spend hours and hours for months on end to learn command line. Any suggestions, projects to start with, books to read, or tutorials to do to try would be appreciated."
SuSE has the best installation and configuration utility and has a ton of helpful user-run repos for packages. It also has builds for basically every windowing system, so you can pick your preference without any hacking, and when you do want to get down to brass tacks, the system will get out of your way (now that suseconfig is gone) and let you tinker as much as you please.
And when you screw everything up (half the fun, right?), it ships with a fantastic system repair tool to get you back on your feet. You can also use SuSE Studio to make a custom image if you have weird hardware.
It's a really great linux experience.
Most other distros copy it anyway, might as well get the real McCoy.
If you're concerned about software freedom, consider is gNewSense, a Free-only debian derivative.
Very touchy topic, which distro to run.
I think Ubuntu is an okay start for you, mostly because it will mostly work and there's plenty of help (including various levels of help) for you to use.
Problem one for you:
1. You caused the boot issue. How?
2. Fix it.
This will start the learning process, a large part of Linux for me is it leads to learning. It's all there for one to figure out, eventually.
Anything is possible given time and money.
Somebody has to actually answer the question for there to be good pages for google to find. This sort of thing also ages pretty quickly, so I think it's worth reanswering at least yearly. Finally, this guy seems to want something that will teach him interesting stuff - not just something that has working flash etc.
So I definately think that this is a good question for SlashDot.
And personally I would recommend reinstalling Ubuntu. If you only have an hour of experience with the command line you probably haven't noticed that underneath Ubuntu is just about as "Linux" as any other Linux. Reinstall it and this time create a separate /home partition so that reinstalling the next time will not be painful. And then, learn to program - that's a nice 10 year project. :)
And, as pointed out in the Firehose: if you crashed an OS (be it Windows or OSX or Linux or BSD or anything) by moving some files around, then either (i) they were not unimportant files and you must have been running with privilege escalated, or (ii) you have some kind of hardware problem, which could be intermittent.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Oh, nonsense. If you are moderately technically competent, the distros which try to be "user-friendly" are usually the worst, as you have to get used to all their complex quirks and custom methods.
Something simple like Slackware or Debian stable is a much healthier and less frustrating learning experience.
Test the different distros live disks to see which works best in your situation. Then install it.
As a long time Linux user, I agree wholeheartedly. I started with Slackware before version 2.0 came out, in the early 90's. I used Slackware for years, then Red Hat, and nowadays Ubuntu. If you want to be cool and different, yeah, there's plenty of niche distros out there. For my main work computer (at home), I don't want drama, and I'm not intent on making any ideological points. I just want Gnucash, LibreOffice, etc. to run reliably, updates to be easy, and maintenance time to be a small fraction of usage time. Ubuntu works great for that. If you want to experiment, throw a distro on a VM, or on a spare test machine.
Yes, there's lots of discussion about GUI and the direction Canonical is heading in. I don't care. I have an Ubuntu Server 12.04 box as a firewall in my basement, another Ubuntu Server 12.04 box right next to it for DNS/DHCP/file shares, and Ubuntu Desktop 12.04 on the computer I'm posting this through. Works great, excellent uptime, and upgrades/installs are fairly fool-proof.
Support microSD: in a post 9/11 world, it is unwise to carry your data on media that you cannot comfortably swallow.
I'm not sure the question has a straight answer. It reminds me a little of when I asked my dad about how to evaluate a good wine (about 20 years ago) I expected him to educate me about legs, tanin, body and other quantifiable methods for evaluating a wine. Instead he said it's quite simple really....you drink a lot of them and after a while you start to develop preferences.
In the late '90s and early 2000's I took the same approach to Linux and installed nearly every distribution I could get my hands on. Back in the day they were varietes of Red Hat, Mandrake, Corel, Slackware, Gentoo, Debian...after a while you develop preferences and one distro doesn't fit all needs. To this day I prefere slackware servers, ubuntu desktops, and ipcop for routers/firewalls. But everybody will have their own preferences./P
This. BUT personally I go with Kubuntu. KDE is the interface with "least surprise", and you don't have to worry about what direction vanilla Ubuntu is going with Canonical's frankly bizarre ideas about window management.
You still install Windows updates on a new install the old fashioned way?
http://download.wsusoffline.net/ and don't look back: Push the button, come back later. It self-reboots and just sorta gets it done.
Kid-proof tablet..