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."

Comments

stick with major distros

[ssam]

I recommend that (at least to start with) you stick with major distros. distrowatch has a reasonable list http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

there are many hundreds of distros, mostly with little to distinguish them and some maintained by very small teams. if you use a distro that has small non-fulltime development team, then how long is it going to take for them to push a security update in to the repositories? what if one of their developers is on holiday, or has exams, or whatever. with the bigger distros they will have a security team to do this.

Re:Arch Linux is for you

[The Mighty Buzzard]

I love Arch myself but NO. Arch regularly makes changes that will leave your system thoroughly hosed if you update without watching the news feed. That's not even sysadmin-friendly much less noob-friendly.

Re:Timewarp

[TrekkieGod]

Is this a repost from 1997?

I get the feeling it's a bored troll just trying to get a rise out of someone.

The question will never get a straightforward answer, especially here on slashdot - and because there's no one true answer.

Definitely a troll. In fact, it's so obvious I'm surprised the editors didn't realize it.

Let's analyze this. His computer crashed while copying unimportant files with good hardware and now it fails to boot.. Even in 1997, this would have been an unreasonable scenario. I've certainly seen applications in Linux crash, about as often as I see them crashing in other OSes. In very rare circumstances, I've seen the kernel crash. A kernel crash that prevents the computer from booting again, though? What exactly would cause that?

One thing would be if instead of copying, he was accidentally moving system files. That's pretty hard to do, he would have to get elevated privileges, and even if he did, any file that the system was currently using would remain loaded in ram, so it wouldn't be likely to crash then, he'd just have problems booting up later. Not only that, but this so guy who is self-identifying as inexperienced anticipated this response and made sure to point out the files were "non-important". I'm pretty sure he also chose that wording to avoid saying "system files", afraid that would betray his level of knowledge.

Another possibility is that he has a failing hard drive. Again, this would be unlikely to crash his box, but copying files around in a bad drive could maybe cause corruption of the file system preventing it from successfully booting up next time. So, of course, this guy also predicted this response and made sure to point out that his hardware is a-ok.

What are we left with here? Linux being hard on new users cliche? Check. Using a distro that is known to be user-friendly and suggesting he might want to move to a distro known to have a high learning curve? Check. Implication that Linux's reputation for stability is underserved? Check. Trying to rile up slashdot into "what's the best distro" flamewar? Check. Anonymous submission? Of course. The only thing missing is good old-fashioned vi vs. emacs debate.

Re:slackware

[mr_shifty]

Even though I'm a diehard Mint user nowadays, I agree with this.

I started out with Slackware, and I used it for 8 years before moving on to Ubuntu, and finally Linux Mint Debian Edition.

Slackware, while it has a learning curve, is also (as odd as it may sound), actually quite simple. It does what you tell it to do. No more, no less.

It's rock-solid stable.

It's fast.

It forces you to learn about how Linux works, because you have to tell it what to do and how to do it. It isn't as much work to get running as Gentoo, but it makes you think about things like kernel versioning, what's going on in /etc and where your system logs are, and how to compile applications from source from time to time.

I've taken what I've learned from Slackware and found that it's applicable to every other Linux I've knocked around.

I use Linux Mint more like a "casual desktop user" these days, but if I need something rock solid stable and reliable, I will go back to Slackware, because I trust it. It's not a Cadillac like Mint is, but a stock car that has everything accessible and tweakable, so you can bend it to your will and it'll serve whatever purpose you have in mind for it.

So, to sum up, while it doesn't sound like a newbie distro, I still think Slackware is a great way to cut one's teeth in the Linux world, especially if one is truly setting out to learn Linux, not just using it as a launch platform for a browser and an email client.