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."
Don't go looking for trouble. If you couldn't handle Ubuntu, Arch will drive you insane.
Xubuntu. Customization + hardware support + debian repo. :-)
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.
wasting time trying everything until things work enough the way you need or you figure out what is wrong is what Linux is all about........
It's the distro with the largest user base and I'd assume the most active forums, which is a helpful thing when you have questions.
And I'm currently running a few different boxes with CentOS. Quite solid - it's based off Red Hat. Very secure, lots of support. GUI or command line, whichever you prefer.
... because it still works just like 1994
CentOS might be the best; it's a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, without paid support. (Red Hat's stated position is that it doesn't mind CentOS's existence). So if you learn that, you'd be able to leverage that for job opportunities based on RHEL, which is the industry leader on the server side.
One drawback: RHEL (and by extension CentOS) is oriented towards the enterprise rather than the consumer desktop; and towards the tried and true, rather than the latest and greatest. This is response to what its customers (IT administrators who have serious work to accomplish) have told them they're interested in. So it's probably not going to be a great platform for running games, for example - well it could be, but you'll have to be spend a lot of time downloading RPMs and trying to get things to work.
If for learning the command line, you want Debian stable.
Ditto if you want to learn F/OSS server software.
It's the cleanest playground for learning the proper way to *NIX
You would lead a happier life if you chose to ignore their advice
I installed debian on my desktop in 2004, and I am still using it (on a desktop, a laptop and a netbook). Tried ubuntu, fedora, slackware, mandriva, always came back to debian (never as fast as the one time I gave kubuntu a chance). The only tedious thing was installing the closed-source drivers for my graphic cards.
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.
I would suggest - Install Ubuntu with unity (or kde or gnome ..) for starters ... install Virtualbox and do full Archlinux installation there (up to desktop manager etc, so that everything is running and working and you know how you got there).
Then you will be able to use terminal a bit and can install Archlinux on the system itself. Day to day usage of Arch normally does not involve much work on terminal.
If you're new to Linux, don't use Arch. Arch requires far too much hacking to get work and although I myself am a fan, a newbie will likely rage right back to Windows. The best casual distro right now is Linux Mint (With Cinnamon as a display manager) IMO. Linux Mint fixes what Ubuntu got wrong (Unity) and Cinnamon is a beautiful display manager with intuitive and familiar design.
As for working with the terminal, you need some motivation to keep you revisiting. Personally, my motivation was coding in C using gcc as a compiler, and vim as an editor. If you are up for a 'fun' time learning, use Vim exclusively as your text editor.
Ha ha! This reminds me of my first Linux experience, c. '95 or '96 with a kernel version 1.1 (Slackware version ????) that I got from a CD in a book. I experimented with mkfs(8). I learned a good lesson!
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
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.
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.
Then don't.
It's not 1995 anymore.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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. :)
I used to use Ubuntu, but found its system layout, window manager, desktop UI, etc. lacking. I switched to Fedora and could not have been happier. It give more control, but it good for the novice user. I recommend Fedora with GNOME 3 desktop manager.
Mint is the new Ubuntu. They have been tweaking Ubuntu for years adding things that got left out by Canonical. Now that Canoncial has gone bat-shit crazy, they are in the perfect position to accomodate users that would otherwise be good candidates for Ubuntu.
Or you could just go old school and just use Debian.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Anyone who sets a beginner up with the "E" window manager probably also uses Gentoo because of their 'leetness, and is a bad source of information on how to properly operate a system either way. Reinstall Ubuntu and use the default window manager until you're read the entirety of http://ubuntu-manual.org/ and most of https://help.ubuntu.com/12.10/ubuntu-help/index.html. Ask questions on the Ubuntu forum, which has a *lot* of people. Then, after you've figured out how to get around a Linux system and have some idea of how it works, if you're finding things not working to your liking, look at other distros to see if they work in a way that you might like better.
Also, don't ever blindly follow directions from random blogs on the Internet. If you're copying and pasting commands, make absolutely sure that they were written for your specific distribution, and even then, try to figure out what those commands do before running them. And if someone tells you that you need to enable the root account for direct login, punch them in the mouth.
I think Linux Mint would be the ideal choice. It's easy to install, everything works out of the box and it has all the benefits of Ubuntu. Start off with something easy and explore the system from the safety of a relatively stable, friendly system. One can learn just as much working from Mint or Ubuntu as they can from Arch or Slackware. The difference is the user gets to work at the own pace, they're not thrown in the deep end and forced to learn at the system's pace.
And anyone who installs E17 on your Ubuntu system is not your friend.
it is pretty important to know that it is rare to find the distro you want on the first try. You'll probably be distro-hopping every few weeks until you are done comparing your experience between each distros. Then you will settle down, and invest your time on the distro you felt have the most pleasant experience with, doesn't matter whether it was because it provides more fun or just simply more stable. I've tried reading books when I began my endeavor with Linux, but it was more cumbersome than being helpful. There is simply no better suggestions than to just get wet really. Just use it on your daily lives, and you WILL encounter a problem or something you want to particularly do in Linux, I assure you. And when you do, that is when you will begin leaning all the quirks and galore of Linux.
SuSE has still the best hardware detection and fool-proof installation system of all distros - yes, even better than Ubuntu and Ubuntu derivatives.
In addition to this, SuSE comes with one of the best KDE experiences out of the box. If you're familiar with Windows, you will be familiar with KDE.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Test the different distros live disks to see which works best in your situation. Then install it.
I love KUBUNTU, but if gnome or xfce is your thing- LMDE
Since you're good at breaking stuff :-), try out one of the live distributions: put it on a flash disk, boot it and play around. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_live_CDs.
And enlightenment is best to be obtained via bodhi linux.
Your choice of distro depends a lot on you're needs or goals I suppose.
If you just want to learn linux for yourself and want to understand what is under the hood. Arch is definitly a good choice as you will be looking a lot to figure out stuff but you will also have a decent community and wiki pages to help you.
Ubuntu has a good community but you probably won't need to tinker as much which may or not be good depending on your goal.
I've never really tried it but Slaskware would also be a good choice as it is minimalistic. Again if you wish to work under the hood.
If you want to learn for use in a work environment. Fedora or CentOS are probably what you need to look at as they are Red Hat based.
Suse would also fall in that work category I would say.
Debian would also be a choice to look towards but I personnaly tend to not like how old the packages are and since it's for learning purposes, bleeding edge is better I feel. Debian testing would be better and again in a work environment. I personnally don't like it as a main OS for home but that's my taste.
Then Arch should suit you nicely.
It's a very "shell-intensive" distro, but it's exceptionally well-documented. On one computer/screen, get the Arch Wiki open (possibly with linuxcommand.com in another tab), and get a fresh install of Arch on another computer/screen. If you don't have 2 computers, just load Arch in a VM. Arch is probably the best "learn Linux the hard way(tm)" distro around.
That's basically how I learned, and I'm infinitely better for it.
From what it sounds like, you may be in need of a distro that optimizes Linux for your hardware. In which case binary distros like Ubuntu and Arch will only cause you more headaches than you can manage. With Gentoo, that's not a problem. It's one of the easiest distros to use and it's optimized for your hardware, which makes it really fast and lean.
Is this a repost from 1997?
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Do you try to drive him away from Linux permanently? LFS is great. If you are experienced, if you are interested in Linux in general. But pointing someone who has problems with Ubuntu to LFS is just mean.
won't stay down!!
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.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
My experiences of the more "user friendly" distros (mostly Ubuntu) was that while they automated a lot of steps it left me with something not entirely dissimilar to Windows - bloated with similar performance and needing a lot of tweaking to trim it down.
The nastiest part of Arch now the beautifully easy menu system has been removed is installation, though thankfully it is very, very well documented. The effort spent in understanding it and learning the command line will pay big dividends when you come to actually use it.
As a leftfield choice have you considered FreeBSD? The documentation isn't as good as Arch, but it is very easy to get a working machine up and running.
There are really a *lot* of distributions to choose from. It really boils down to what you want to do with the desktop. Ubuntu (I use it, but not overly happy with the unity interface), fedora, SuSE, even the "lesser known" distributions all have pretty intuitive installers and interfaces.
But I cannot stress the benefit of joining a local Linux User Group. There are a lot of guys that will help you gain a better understanding of what you are actually doing - instead of copy/paste/panic (what the hell did I just do ??). You need to know WHY things work the way they do.
+1
I hate following a link from a search engine, just to see a snarky "go to a search engine" reply for the question I searched.
its a fun project for a long weekend if you want to see how a linux distribution is put together. but do it in a virtual machine, or on old computer. I doubt there are many people who actually run LFS as their main distro. If they do, i bet they dont manage to keep it up to day with security fixes.
I would recommend Debian and Gnome. Ubuntu has too many bells and whistles and it can be funky to setup using bleeding edge kernels and drivers. Another alternative is Centos 6.2. It's essentially Red Hat. The desktop is quite nice. I expect you would learn more with Debian though.
you probably didn't crash it copying some unimportant files. Linux doesn't play that game.
The best way to learn is to fix what you've broken. That's how I learned linux.
Submitter's question seems to be asking two different things, so I'm not sure what exactly he's after.
If you want to get into *using* Linux, then the suggestions of Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, et. al. are the ones you want to go with. With snazzy GUI package managers and "app stores", they hand-hold and shelter you almost completely from the command line and the ugly under-workings as long as you don't try to mess around with them too much. They also tend to get in your way if you ARE trying to twiddle with the guts.
If you want to LEARN Linux, then go with a minimalist, hands-dirty distro. Slackware was my first Linux love many years back, but I hear Arch is pretty good in that respect, with a few more modern conveniences. I never messed with Gentoo, personally. Using one of those, you'll learn a lot about Linux, but it'll be some time before you get a "usable" system out of it. You'll probably also end up learning bash scripting and at least one of TCL, perl, or python as a bonus.
If your aim is the latter, though, then as far as books go, I don't think you can go wrong with the ORA "Animal" books, unless that's changed in the past few years.
What about Linux Mint? It's Ubuntu-based so it has all the advantages of Ubuntu (many packages, many third-party repos, huge community) but it also focuses on an easy installation and ease of use. Plus the standard Gnome desktop should be more familiar for users coming from Windows than the Unity desktop of Ubuntu.
The very first Linux I used was gentoo which is even more notorius for being difficult, and that never hurt me. You seem like you are willing to learn, so Arch Linux is a really good choice I think.
If you want installation to be easier you can try Manjaro. It is based on Arch Linux but installation is a bit more user friendly.
...you had to get a friend to install Ubuntu for you, you're not quite ready for Arch.
Mint. No question. Fast, easy, reliable. Gets you up and running entirely painlessly. I like the Cinnamon interface.
Ubuntu was what finally moved me over to Linux full time, but I don't like the whole Unity thing. Still it's the Ubuntu underpinning that makes Mint so damned reliable.
That said, I tried out running the newest OpenSuse KDE distro from USB last week, and am seriously thinking about it.
The main point is DON'T GET FANCY! Choose one of the above, and install the straight vanilla version. Then you can start playing.
Three Squirrels
My very first Linux distro was gentoo, and I would still prefer it over ubuntu any day (mostly because ubuntu has gone to shit the last few years).
Arch Linux is not bad for beginners, but if you want to have it a bit easier you can try Manjaro. It is based on Arch but has a somewhat more user friendly installer. Definitely give it a go, it's the only distro that allows you to have it your way without getting bogged down in too many details you don't care about. Arch really cares about KISS and it shows.
Here are the problems. 12.04 seems to be happy to crash at any time. it's a weirdest release yet. Try something newer, like 12.10. E17 doesn't have enough of a) users b) users that'll report a problem c) much developers (to my knowledge). It's fancy but has little functionality. Try KDE if you like bling.
I haven't posted to SD in years, but felt compelled to brush the cobwebs off and reply to your question...
1. This is a semi-religious question, so you are going to get a lot of vitriol in some of the responses; ignore it.
2. Gentoo is the "dive in the deep end, with weights tied to my feet and battle my way back to the surface" answer to your question. You build everything. You won't just learn the command line, you'll learn build tools, config scripts, environment vars, libraries, manual dependency management and more. I DO NOT think this is the right choice for you right now given how new you are to all of this. This will be the "death by a thousand paper cuts" experience that runs the risk of driving you crazy after 3 days of work and you still don't have a GUI running because of some esoteric error that you don't understand.
That said, if you insist that this is how you like to learn, go for it. The community/forums are very helpful and PACKED with information. If you do this, mentally prepare yourself for days and days of an unbootable machine. Reformatting and reinstalling over and over again. Getting a boot loader wrong, not installing Grub right, killing your install that was almost working perfectly because you changed a VGA boot option and now everything hangs... just prepare for these KINDS of things. Don't go in thinking "Awesome, I'll get this done in a day and have GNOME running" -- you won't, and if you do, something weird will break it out of no where and you won't have any idea what to do so you'll need to start over again.
I am not trying to scare you, just setting the expectation. If that sounds like heart-burn city, move onto my next suggestion.
3. Arch Linux -- You already mentioned this in your post and I just want to confirm that I believe THIS is the right choice for you. It is the perfect middle ground between Gentoo and something like Ubuntu -- you do get to know the ins and outs of the system, without the compiling/building/dependency pitfalls of Gentoo. This is an EXCELLENT place to start, get really familiar with everything and grow from (either down to Gentoo, or out of system management entirely into something like Ubuntu).
4. Ubuntu / Fedora -- Use these if you want a working computer, want to "try" Linux with a nice GUI and slowly become familiar with the underlying system through SOME GUI tools, mostly command line and have tons of support for your hardware. This is the "Mac"-esque experience you can get in Linux, in that you can live in the GUI all day if you want, but there is an underlying CLI/Unix world there under the surface if you want to mess with it.
5. Mint / SUSE / Kubuntu / Slackware / Whatever -- I have always seen these as different flavors of the same things listed above. I'd start with the primaries first and go from there.
Have fun!
What do you want to learn? If you aren't a developer, or a network admin, then Linux doesn't offer for a typical desktop user. Besides frustration.
I use Linux on servers all the time on servers. It's great. But for the desktop...no. It's not worth it. Your best bet is to run Linux in a VM on a Windows box, and teach yourself how to set up a working Postfix and Apache server. That would be useful.
If you want to use GNU/Linux, then you need to learn the fundamentals of how it works. There is no easy path when it comes to GNU/Linux, you MUST learn and embrace learning. Slackware will give you an appreciation of what a package manager is, what dependencies are, and how to use a command line. Yes, Slackware is a hassle sometimes, but it is good for you. When you install it, the system is quite complete. You have A LOT of software already installed, enough to get you going so you can start browsing the web or going on IRC channels and asking for help. The Slackware people are not always sociable, so you can also try linuxquestions.org where people have to behave. I suggest Slackware for beginners who are serious about GNU/Linux and want to reap its benefits. IOf yo uare not interested in learning, stick with Ubuntu and hope for the best. Ubuntu is as close to automated as it gets. But that path will bring you grief. Go for empowerment. Once you go through Slack, THEN you can pick whatever distro you like to use like Gentoo, Arch, or even better, go for a Libre distro like Dragora...
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
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
It is not 100% what you want. But IMHO you should learn to walk first before you try to run. If you were only interested in Linux to use it without much interest in its internals, but also without many problems, I'd recommend Mint. Since you want to learn stuff you can go for a bigger challenge. IMHO this would be Debian Sid. I cannot say much about Arch, Never used it. But Gentoo... I used it and liked for quite some time, but with a growing system the felt level of necessary maintenance became just too big for me. At some point it wasn't worth the effort. And Gentoo problems are very often Gentoo only problems, so not too much to learn for general Linux problems.
This is somewhat dated, but just for fun:
If Linux Distributions Were Airlines
Red Hat Airlines:
The standard in air travel. Most people have flown Red Hat Air at one point
or other. Some people like it and some people hate it and move on to one of
the other airlines. Passengers are all treated the same; they get stuck in
their seats and told not to ask questions -- everything will be taken care
of for them. They should just sit back, relax, and not touch of the fancy
controls under any circumstances, lest they send the plane into a tailspin.
Red Hat Airlines is fabulously rich.
Mandrake Airlines:
Mandrake bought a truckload of planes from Red Hat, put new engines in them,
re-painted them, and now run their own airline. Considered by many to be the
most friendly airline for first-time flyers.
Corel Airlines:
A new player on the scene, Corel Air thinks it can be the airline of choice
for a new generation of first-time pleasure flyers, and maybe even lure in
some business travelers too. Their planes are big, brightly painted, and
like Red Hat's they protect the innocent, clueless passengers from the
dangerous buttons, switches and blinkenlights of the cockpit.
SuSe Airlines:
An airline out of Europe that tries to be everything for everyone and
succeeds -- to a degree. Recently paid a huge sum of money to use a comic
strip in its promotional material. (And after they finally named the
lizard...)
Caldera OpenAirlines:
These guys go out of their way to make things comfortable for the business
user. They've got a pretty terminal, pretty planes, really good in-flight
movies, etc. But I had a bad experience with these guys once. They lost my
luggage. Quite a mess, really. Ah well, such is life. I never flew with them
again.
SlackAIR:
>From a distance, their planes look just like everyone elses. But up close
you can tell that they haven't been painted and little bits of wire stick
out here and there. But onboard, the seats are comfortable enough and there
are plenty of stewardesses available to help you readjust your seat if you
manage to break it. There is no in-flight movie but if you get bored you are
always welcome up in the cockpit. The pilots will be glad to let you try and
fly the plane and are happy to let you push whatever buttons you want, even
if you don't know what you're doing. Generally, novice flyers avoid SlackAIR
as they've heard horror stories about newbies pressing the wrong button and
causing the plane to explode.
Debian Airlines:
They have a single type of airplane; a huge sucker weighing 2400 tons and
carrying just about everything you can imagine. They've got kitchen sinks,
massage parlors, a paintball arena, and 294 types of cheese for sale in the
onboard, 24-hour supermarket. You can see from the terminal they have a huge
team of technicians working on their fleet, poking and prodding. Debian Air
is the only choice for some: everything onboard is built 100% by union
workers -- no shoddy, possibly dangerous, imports here.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
Sure it is possible, but i can cause problems. So the best thing to do is to first have a partition available. A dedicated HD is even easier.
Then download something lik the openSUSE DVD, boot from that and away you go.
What can be even better is a dedicated machine. If you have a bit older machine (some 3-5 years old) you can use that and not worry about breaking stuff.
But there is a trap. You will be tempted to go back to the other faster machine, so perhaps install Windows on the slower machine and Linux on the fast one.
Also give yourself several months and don't forget linux is not windows
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I suggest you go through the Arch Installation as you will learn a lot through the process
Who cares? It is still a good opportunity to discuss the pros and cons of the different distributions again.
While there are many reasons experienced Ubuntu users dislike Ubuntu, for new users it often gets very high marks. The problem is that the desktop your friend installed, E17, is not the best for new users as it is a) not widely used (as compared to the major desktops) and b) definitely an acquired taste.
What your "friend" should have done is installed either straight Ubuntu with it's Unity interface, Xubuntu with the XFCE interface or Kubuntu with the KDE interface. They all have their pros and cons, but what they have in common is that they are all very well supported.
Coming from a Windows world, KDE or XFCE will appear most familiar, Unity, is Ubuntu's main emphasis now, and receives the most support and the most new consumer-like features. While I am not a fan of Unity because of how I use my computer, for new users, it does seem to work very well, with a minimum of trouble.
Without knowing what exactly is broken with your E17 install, I hesitate to suggest this, but one can always open a terminal and issue the command: sudo apt-get install XYZ-desktop
Where XYZ=ubuntu (for unity) kubuntu for (KDE) or xubuntu for (XFCE). Assuming your networking is still working, that command may also fix whatever else is broken. But, and this is a big but, before deciding on KDE, Unity or XFCE (or even gnome-shell), I would search the internet for various opinions. They all have their pros and cons, just beware that people defend their choices like religious zealots.
Just stick with Ubuntu 12.04 with the default window manager. Imagine you got a new Mac and you are getting used to a new UI/UX. It is actually quite usable, and very stable. Everything just works, and you get a very friendly App store concept just like you get with Apple products.
I find all the other distros are just not as user friendly as Ubuntu for newcomers.
One more thing to consider is how Ubuntu is now branching to Tablets, Phones, and TV's. It's not inconceivable that in the next 6 month, you'll have a totally seamless experience with your content being accessible from all those mediums (Should you choose to also get an Ubuntu TV device, and an Ubuntu Phone or Tablet).
They are going the Apple way, in the sense that you're going to have a fully working ecosystem where all devices speak perfectly with each other and everything just works out of the box.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... time... to... die...
The choice of the distribution is not the crucial one, as long as you choose a beginner friendly one. The better question quest is How to learn Linux?, e.g. what books, what sites should you read? The answer depends a big lot of your background knowledge.
Plese do check Crunchbang Linux. Debian derivation -- works out of the box. great friendly community too.
Back in my day you weren't allowed to post on /. before you tried at least 10 linux distributions, one *BSD and one archaic closed source UNIX variant. With the new owners it's turned into Computer Noob magazine.....
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
First off, don't install Linux (or anything you want to experiment/play with, for that matter) directly on your hard drive. Instead, download VirtualBox (a free, excellent, Virtual machine), then install Linux inside that.
If you do it this way, then:
a) You don't need to reboot to switch between Linux and Windows (the virtual machine just appears as another Windows app, although you cna full screen it if you want to)
b) If you mess up your Linux installation by experimenting, then your machine still works. You can even save your Linux installation at any point (e.g after installing a bunch of stuff), and get back to that saved point if you mess it up.
As far as which flavor of Linux - you want something simple to manage that works out of the box. When you gain experience with Linux in general then maybe try different versions. I recommend you start with Linux Mint - It's based on Ubuntu has a decent user interface ("Mate" or "Cinnamon" out-of-the-box, unlike recent versions of Ubuntu which come with a default tablet-centric user interface that you'll want to replace if you want to use it on a laptop/desktop.
I've just started Linux myself and decided on Mint
Ubuntu now phones home every search you do and not appreciated.
One could build their own Ubuntu but that's not my fix.
Mint will run everything Ubuntu will run at this time so has
a vast library to select from; once a Firefox plug-in is removed/disabled
your searches are between you and Google. Or run Opera like I do.
Linux Opera is backasswards; at the selection to open or close
I kept clicking on close and wondering why it wouldn't load.
I multi boot 2 versions of Windows 7 for my games and Mint
using EasyBCD -free for personal use and very easy to use
At anytime I can boot into Mint and play around for awhile.
I'm still too used to Windows to do anything productive with Mint,
but it will work out. One good linux game (for me) could make
a very big difference to my boot selection.
Good luck
Linux From Scratch. If you really do want to learn the ins and outs, and you really don't mind spending all the time ever.
I can't believe nobody else has mentioned it. What the fuck has slashdot become?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
It has a UI similar to Windows, is popular and has lots of public support, and is as easy as any other Linux distro.
Guns don't kill people, "with glowing hearts" kills people.
I'm a very new user to Linux looking for a distro that allows me to control and customize
As opposed to...?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
You could save a lot of time by trying different distributions via Live CD/DVD. (Many distros install discs actually double as an installer and a live CD.) Obviously you don't want to do this long-term but it would be an easy way to test drive and see which stock interface appeals to you before jumping in.
I'd definitely go with a major distro so that it's easy to find setup/troubleshooting instructions online. Different distros may store files in different locations so even though all Linux flavors are largely similar, it can be really frustrating trying to look for a certain config file and realizing it's not in the same place as the directions say it should be. Once you're more experienced you'll know where to look but it can be a deal breaker when you're just getting started.
Some to look at are Ubuntu, Mint, and Fedora. Personally I prefer Debian-based distros but that choice is probably not very relevant until you start diving deeper into things.
Go command line or go home.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I do like the Mint flavor. It's easy to install and doesn't have the Ubuntu attitude (innovation often done without sufficient thought) even though it's based on Ubuntu. A simple option is Puppy Linux. Also easy to install/run, and little upkeep, even if somewhat limited in scope.
The simple answer is Ubuntu on the desktop and CentOS/Red Hat or SLES on servers. The advantage of this arrangement is if you are looking for a job as a Linux admin or developer, these are (in my observation) the most likely distros you'll run into. A more complex question (run in 4 Mbytes, embedded, run off a floppy, ridiculous levels of security, home theater) yields extremely more complex answers.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I don't know about regularly. I've been using Arch on my laptop, and a few servers, and only the laptop has ever been broken by an update and really it was only KDE that was broken, it was fixed shortly after. If you do encounter a broken package it is easy to just rollback to a previous package with pacman.
Even the recent transition from init scripts to systemd went perfectly fine for Arch and I had fully expected that one to hose my laptop install (it didn't).
Do any distros use regular megabyte for 2^20 be default?
No weird mebibyte stuff.
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
Look, if copying unimportant files crashes a system to unbootable, we ought not discuss and suggest other distros. We should beat the s***t out of that distro. because then they'd screwed up all ideas Unix and Linux beyond recognition.
Any *nix distro that is allowed to exist must not allow this to happen, ever. Over.
I think you could probably manage Arch. It is more work sometimes to upgrade and to keep things running, but the forums are great and the documentation is excellent. As long as you know basically what the various packages you'll be using are (know what X.org is, know what KDE is -- not details even, just the names and that you need them) you should be good. They've got a wiki; read through the instructions for how to install it and see if you know what it's talking about. Very stable too. I switched about a year ago from Mandriva and absolutely love it.
Mandriva is a great distro too, much easier to get installed and I've always found it to be a bit more stable than Ubuntu. I think it may be dying though, looks like the last release was a while ago...
Even if the submitter kinda implies he or she wants to learn by doing (or, "the hard way"), I can't get a feeling out of my chest that all this learning by doing would be much more effective with at least some reading homework before and/or during the doing. For that, I recommend at least skimming through this: http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/Unix-and-Internet-Fundamentals-HOWTO/index.html
Yeah, there's some stuff the submitter probably already knows or isn't all that interested about for now... and that's why it's a good idea to skim through first.
Before installing a distribution, do a little research to know if drivers are available for your hardware. My 2
Why not Debian? Get a bit of extra stability with it.
I do agree that Mint is pretty nice though... but I'm not a fan of their tendency to try to hijack your web browser's search engine they way they do, making it a pain in the ass to "fix," all for their own financial gain. Back when I was in the Windows world, I used to call that adware.
My recommendation would be to try several different distros in virtual machines until you come across one you like, then do a clean install (or a v2p if you're well versed in virtualization). Even after picking a primary distro, you'll probably want to keep a couple of vm's with different Linux flavors around in case you apply for a job where they use a different distro from what you're running at home.
sit back
I honestly think this is the best way. I've seen many go for "ubuntu" but you don't pass a certain level in which you can do nothing outside ubuntu, and you can barely get by within it.
Gentoo is good, but only if
1) you can follow instructions with religious fervour until you know what you are doing (i.e. go line by lein throught the install guide!)
2) First download and burn a rescue CD (gentoo itself will do) and make sure that it boots your hardware.
3) You don't mind spending about half an hour a week updating stuff - this is half an hour of your time, the PC will take several hours a week updating stuff.
Gentoo is much easier to use than it was five years ago, and you will learn a lot, but you have to want to. If you don't then try Debian or Ubuntu - which are also very fine distributions, but will not require you to learn a lot of stuff. Gentoo will.
-- Anthony Staines
If you begin with Ubuntu first you will then go onto appreciate Arch, when you're ready for it. Both have their place.
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
I'm probably late, I feel really bad but I'll tell you my experience. As a newbie, I was quite comfortable with Xubuntu. When it's installed it looks like a Mac with the Top bar and the Dock on the bottom, I didn't like that so I rearranged it by removing the Dock and moving the top bat to the bottom.
There were about a dozen 'plug-ins' on the right by the clock for Pidgin and such, and a nonfunctional 'Network'. I mean nonfunctional because there were no flashing lights, so I removed that (Disabled Startup) and replaced it with 'Network Monitor' which was customizable. Yeah so, it basically looks like Classic Windows now with a few other tweaks, like custom quick launch. What they (XFCE) call a Quick Launch with their own plug-in is unusable for me.
So basically everything is completely different than what was installed; I'd say that's pretty darn customizable. Stable too, and I don't have the problems with XFCE, for games, that people who use Unity do; like Full-screen issues etc. I have a few quirks, some of the software installed isn't what I like, I replaced SMPlayer with VLC and Xfburn with K3B, replaced Pidgin with Kopete and Gyache because I need Webcam support, Pidgin doesn't have it, I don't use Spyware Skype sorry. I installed Gimp and GtKam, Wine and Gedit. I'm happy.
So yeah, I even wrote a blog post to help new people who wanted it to look familiar. I admit however, I'm probably a little more advanced than someone who doesn't know anything about computers, But it was new for me when I installed it as my only OS. Even managed to convert two people. =p
You are so 1999. If FreeBSD doesnt support your hardware, its probably broken. Competent IT people can get FreeBSD working in under 50 minutes, and keep it that way for a couple of years with less than 40 minutes more work.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I like Debian. Linux Mint Debian Edition is a good option, although I am using Crunchbang on my netbook. The latter is based on Debian stable.
Stability is the kind of virtue that you appreciate most in its absence. After an enthusiastic period of Fedora and Ubuntu use, I from time to time experienced issues with packages and drivers breaking on updates. These were usually resolvable, and forced a certain amount of CLI-foo on me, but there's only so many times one wants to wrangle with things that worked just fine yesterday.
Stability means having outdated versions of packages; you miss out on the new features as well as the new bugs. However, it's also pretty trivial to install packages from unstable if you really need them, and if all else fails you can compile from source (which is usually a painless process).
Ubuntu was certainly far less buggy than Fedora, and I certainly don't mind all you guys being Debian beta testers ;) but my choice of OS is going to be heavily informed by whichever one has the longest testing cycle.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
If you cant use any "mainstream distros" try a spesific one based off of Debian/Ubuntu or Redhat such as Mageia or Mint, personally OpenSuSe fits my needs 40% of the time while arch does 30% and the rest is a bunch of obscure or unknown distros (as well as ReactOS and Haiku ;) )
People once told me 68K ram was all we needed,
That's basically what a friend of mine puts himself through every few months when he braces himself and updates his Gentoo laptop. I find some of the stuff he uses neat, most of it pointless, some of it patently insane. Nothing of it makes me want to go through the all-too-frequent "week of reinstall" where he needs to recompile everything from scratch because an update fucked it all up.
Start with something a little bit more user friendly and if you like it, move up the ladder.
"enjoy challenges, and am perfectly willing to spend hours and hours for months on end to learn command line." The only real Linux is Slackware. You have total control of what daemons your running so it is a very secure system, you just have to keep up with the daemons your running, and Patrick V. takes care of that. It has a package manager, an easy install system, and if you start out with a full install, you will not be disappointed. If you really want to know Linux, then Slackware is the way to go.
When you want a computer system that works, just choose Linux. When you want a computer system that works, just, choose
About 15 years ago I experienced linux for the first time with RedHat, then move on to Caldera OpenLinux, then Mandrake and Fedora when I started college, then Debian after a while, and a few years later I started a long term relationship with Ubuntu (not very passionate, but really, really comfortable), after which I switched to Mint (for the very same reasons others describe: Apart from getting fat and bitchy with Unity, I felt like Ubuntu "cheated" on me with the Amazon deal and therefore lost my trust). I finally landed on OpenSuSE, don't know for how long, but it's where I'm right now and I'm very happy with it (And yes, I know about the deal with Microsoft: probably something to worry about in the long run but still good for me at the moment. And BTW I don't care to admit I'm a seasoned XP and windows 7 user, and maybe I don't know them as well as I know linux, but I think not to know your way around them proves almost as bad as not having some linux skills, and sometimes even worse). I also thoroughly tried other distros like PuppyLinux, Lubuntu, Slitaz, Slackware and Wifiway (from which I learned way more about cryptography and authentication than in any of my computer security related engineering courses). On my current VPS I started with Ubuntu Server but now I feel more comfortable with CentOS. I don't think I will ever need to be in such control over my distro's features, but in case I do I can always take the time of building something LFS based or use Gentoo so I can compile every package I want to install with my custom settings while maintaining a sane updating system and not worrying about dependence collision. From my experience, there's no one-size-fits-all distro, and that's the coolest thing about the linux ecosystem, so just try as many as you can and use that which best fits your preferences with the less customization effort, remembering it's not sacred marriage and you can move on if your distro stops pleasing you (though putting some time and effort in the relationship before sending it down the drain usually pays off :))
TL;DR: 15, 10 and probably even 5 year younger me would praise and recommend to everybody the distro I was running at that particular moment, but lately when somebody asks me which distro is better I always say: go to distrowatch and check some of them, giving each enough time to make an informed decision.
that's the spirit. the people who tell you not to go looking for trouble are the people who forget how much trouble they got themselves into.
You do not have to build your own Ubuntu to avoid the "phones home" search, it's as simple as uninstalling the lens to fix that. Also it's a bit harsh to call what they do phoning home, what they do is anonymizing the searches so that Amazon can't track the users. if they didn't then people would scream that Ubuntu gives away every search to Amazon.
Just a side note - but if you happen not to have an i386 (32 or 64) PC, very few of the distros listed have a PPC binary available. That's the primary reason I chose Ubuntu12.04 -- because I could load it right up onto an ancient G4 Mac.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
So far off.....
The only difference between RHEL and CentOS is the Red Hat logos are removed. If you want to learn RHEL, CentOS or Scientific Linux will teach you that. Fedora includes a lot of software and features that do not exist in RHEL, and is very different due to Fedora's 6-month release cycle (much more recent changes/software).
You can use CentOS or SL to study for RHCSA/RHCE, but not Fedora.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Funny, GNOME 3 and Systemd are two of the biggest things to avoid (and Wayland will probably be next).
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Mod parent up.
Also the question doesn't indicate where they're trying to get to... but if it's "work" then RH/CentOS/SL own the space.
Enthusiasts use Arch, novices use Ubuntu, conservatives use Debian, business use Redhat.
(Debian is awesome if you have hardware old enough to use it, it's rock solid and I've seen it's version of the kernel/IP stack outperform Redhat as well, but it's a steeper learning curve and doesn't get you as many job interviews).
Arch regularly makes changes that will leave your system thoroughly hosed if you update without watching the news feed.
That sounds a lot like Gentoo's methods. Little or no quality assurance in the main feeds which can leave you hosed if you don't treat updates like unexplored minefields. Until they get serious about that, they're a hobbyist distro.
We started with Gentoo way back when. It *sounded* like a good idea at the time because money was tight, hardware was under-spec, and being able to tweak the kernel and other things to run as fast as possible seemed attractive. Unfortunately, the reality is that hardware is relatively cheap, and my time is increasingly rare and expensive. Plus, having all the drivers in the kernel is a good thing because it lets you move entire systems from one set of hardware to another in a pinch.
We moved to CentOS / SciLinux / RHEL because it:
- Almost always works
- Less variation in setups
- Has a public company backing it
- Far easier to get support for RHEL vs Gentoo
- Has the mind share and market share
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
Heh - Started in 97-98 using LInux with early version of Redhat, then went to Suse, and Mandrake, back to Suse for a long time then to Ubuntu. I'm not going to talk about my experience with Gentoo, other than I spent too much time compiling. I think I had a couple of Suse boxes running for about 3 years of uptime before a power outage.
Been on Ubuntu for about 3 years or so, and run KDE on top of it.
I just want something that works - and Ubuntu is that - makes the computer more transparent.. Package system is much better IMHO than Suse, and that's why I switched a while ago.
Oh yeah - and it runs Steam
..........FULL STOP.
with KDE 4, You never NEED to use the cli but you can do everything from the cli if you want to.
OpenSuSE
OpenSuSE Guide helps you to a good start.
Ubuntu is imho the Windows of the Linux world, they do much noise and the do very much to look nice and shiny...
It's much easier for you to specify your needs as there are hundreds of distros and packages that can be combined. To a first approximation pretty much all linux packages are available for all distributions.
Beyond that, most linux distributions are based off some other distribution. The description of Kubuntu as "Ubuntu, but with the KDE desktop environment" is perfectly descriptive.
So what distinguishes one distro from another? Besides what comes installed by default, the most significant difference is how those packages got there.
Debian is probably the distribution that the greatest number of other distributions are based on. It has a very very long testing cycle; it takes packages years to get into Debian's stable branch. Ubuntu is based on Debian unstable, and a shit-ton of things are based on Ubuntu, including Linux Mint.
Red Hat produces the next biggest family of linuxes. Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux are more or less analogous to Debian unstable and stable, respectively, but I don't think very many people are dumb enough to try and base a distro on Fedora. CentOS is RHEL with the logo removed, and Scientific Linux is also based on RHEL.
Next up we have Gentoo, Arch, Slackware, and Suse.
I was going to put a joke about Gentoo here, but it's taking a while to compile. Gentoo is a rolling-release distro where most of the packages that you use are compiled on and for your machine. You mention gcc, this is related, but you will probably not ever use it directly. Compiling packages yourself can make them run faster, but it can take a long time.
Arch is a well-documented, rolling release distribution. I'm not sure what else to say about them honestly, but "well-documented" is one of the highest compliments I'm aware of.
Slackware is the oldest and most "unixy" of the distributions. It uses an old bootloader, old unix-style boot scripts, and by default boots to a text terminal. You should use Slackware if you want to retreat into a cave for five years, to emerge with a profound knowledge of unix, a full beard, and a solid opinion on whether emacs or vi(m) is the best text editor. I'm pretty sure these things are highly marketable. No, really.
Suse hasn't failed yet. The last time I checked, they had a wonderful, polished experience, and great admin/configuration tools. I have no idea why they don't have more users, except that there's already a shit-ton of options.
It's probably fair to say that Debian stable, RHEL, and any derivatives will have the longest testing cycle, and fewest updates in any given span of time. There are many more distributions for more specialized purposes, such as BackTrack for pen testing, Puppy for small installations, Bodhi for those seeking Enlightenment. You may have to figure out what you need on your own there.
Whew! Let's take a break for a minute.
All right. So with all that in mind, you can install, as previously mentioned, pretty much all the same stuff on any and every distro.
Here is a guide on desktop environments. If you're a n00b, you're probably going to want one of those.
We also have another guide for more experienced users, or those on resource-constrained systems, that covers some of the more popular window managers. Because sometimes 2GB of gnome libraries gets a bit old. For the truly adventurous, this post covers 30 Window Managers in 30 Days.
Honestly, there's really a pretty limited amount of advice that one can give about using any particular distro. They're all substantially similar. Without any specific information about what you want to use, a recommendation becomes, well, exactly what you were complaining about. "Use XYZ bec
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Dual-booting is a hangover from the bad old days of tiny, expensive hard disks and underpowered PCs.
Newbies WILL break stuff and WILL churn through a few distros, so the best way to go is for them to install Virtualbox and test in VMs.
This allows surfing for answers to any questions they may have even if their Linux install fucks up.
As competence grows, they can shift to running Windows in a VM on a Linux host if they like.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I guess it depends on the hardware you have to make the quick transition to linux. I have a radeon 6570 card and every time i boot into the mint or ubuntu installer without the nomodeset i get graphical glitches and impossible to see anything. The ati opensource drivers suck. After installing the OS's under nomodeset I still can't go into normal mint or ubuntu boot because it crashes so I boot into recovery mode and drop down to terminal to start downloading the latest ati proprietary video drivers to make mint and ubuntu work.
I hate lxde, xfce, cinnamon, mate all these look like they belong in the 1990's. Unity looks more modern and kde can be modified to look modern. I had my linux fun and sticking to windows 8. Plus, windows blue updates and features will allow windows 8 metro apps to run on a dual screen. 4 metro apps same time with 2 full and 2 snapped. $90-$140 for basic and pro is a pretty good damn investment. Linux is free but I need to run my software so I need windows 8.
Years ago, you didn't have to care, install vanilla Ubuntu 8.04 and you're done. Later, it was Ubuntu 10.04. Then maybe debian 6 (debian squeeze) which was good when new but has an ancient kernel and ancient web browser, so it sucks (you have to know how to replace Firefox 3.5 with a less ancient version)
Now Ubuntu went on a weird track. It makes us feel uncertain (and we fear it, and we're in doubt). Also, if you stay away from all 3D accelerated desktops then you won't have to deal with them not working when your 3D driver is wrong, misconfigured or unavailable for a given computer etc.
Linux Mint 13 is the go-to choice, because it's 99.9% Ubuntu 12.04 underneath. It IS Ubuntu 12.04 for all intents and purpose.
I can recommend the Xfce edition since it has the simplest and leanest GUI of all official edition. Mate is more flexible (it's easier to move stuff around in the panels) but Xfce is more actively developed (next versions gain a few features) and you may try other small GUIs on the side (openbox, fluxbox etc.)
Don't deal with bugs, and don't deal with GUI crap, concentrate on learning the classical command line instead (ls, mkdir, chmod, chown, grep, less, piping stuff into head, tail or cut, sort.. also ps, top, kill, kill -9, killall ; ifconfig, lspci, lsusb, nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf, ctrl+alt+F1, chvt, service your-display-manager stop.. and for a newbie why not look at /etc/network/interfaces, /etc/hosts, /etc/hostname, /etc/default/grub) /usr/share/doc.. Pipe your output into something so that you can actually read it. Have fun trying to read /usr/share/doc/foo/Changelog.gz
Learn to get info from the system without googling constantly : man pages, your-command --help, apt-cache search, apt-cache show,
Also, debian vs ubuntu is irrelevant. It's mostly the same stuff.
Other distros have a bad rep (redhat/Cent OS is a dinosaur, fedora crashes) or aren't used by many people or don't have much software (I tried OpenSuse once and there was just little software compared to the very high amount in ubuntu)
Arch linux or Gentoo or something else may be great, I don't really know, but maybe try it after one year of linux experience.
I just switched from Ubuntu to Mint (yet another one based upon Ubuntu) and am actually quite pleased with it. I'm fairly well-versed with Linux at this point but nobody wants to have to repair or diagnose their "daily driver" so I used Ubuntu for quite some time.
I can safely say that Linux Mint is ready for the prime time and offers quite a bit more customization than stock Ubuntu with all the same stability. Give it a shot!
If you're coming from Windows, presumably, you want to use KDE because it's closer to Windows than GNOME is. And openSUSE is THE KDE distro to use.
It's got everything, it's supported by a large development community, it's stable, it has better QA than Ubuntu ever will, its software repositories are large and well-stocked, its GUI system management tools are very good (maybe the best). They also aren't prone to "radical" experiments in user interfaces like Ubuntu is.
I've used openSUSE for several years now after having had bad experiences with Mandriva and Ubuntu (specifically Kubuntu) in the past. No distro is perfect - currently I have issues with something on my system - I suspect the NVidia proprietary drivers and/or Firefox - that's causing frequent maxed out CPU situations. openSUSE 12.2 is the first time I've had issues of this sort. Previous releases have been perfect. Hopefully 12.3 will resolve these issues. And not everyone has them, just me and a couple other people in the openSUSE forums apparently.
But you can't go wrong with openSUSE. It's one of the top five Linux distros out there.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
If you couldn't handle Ubuntu, Arch will drive you insane
Methinks that guy may find the Slackware distro packs more punches
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
No. It doesn't, really.
I started in Linux using Ubuntu, back around Breezy Badger I believe. At that time there was a fair amount of configuration that had to be done manually, but increasingly Ubuntu shifted towards doing things through GUIs with a fair amount of automation. And Ubuntu was great for its large repository of packages, etc. Eventually though I tired of having to install binaries that sometimes lacked the features I wanted--including in the kernel itself. And Ubuntu actually discourages compiling your own kernel. So I ended up switching to Gentoo, which is exactly the opposite--aside from helpful build and maintenance scripts everything is managed by the user including that compiling a kernel is a standard part of the install process. I don't think I'd recommend it for someone who hasn't really worked very much in the terminal. Even so it is a tremendous learning experience to build a kernel and one that I definitely think every serious Linux user should at some point pursue. Arch might be a good compromise, seeing as how it is based on Gentoo but uses more precompiled binaries. That said, I haven't used it myself.
Centos is a good stable choice. Some of the packages are a bit old but it is very very reliable. It would be my first choice for a novice.
Xubuntu is a reasonable choice because it has a stable if a bit primitive UI on top of a more complete and up to date set of packages.
Mint Cinnamon is probably the nicest desktop Linux available. I've recently started using it and like it a lot. I have had a few glitches with it though so it may not be quite as stable as I would like to have for a noob.
Ubuntu 12.04 LTE is another interesting choice to start with. Has the funky Unity UI but at least is missing the keylogger and other piracy issues. Enable gnome classic on the log in and you have a nice stable but comprehensive setup.
By which I mean, a distro that runs Gnome2. I've been using Linux as my primary desktop OS since sometime in the late 90's and I actually work as a shell programmer. I am not interested in using some new UI that is designed to run on a tablet, or that is written by some cabal of out of touch developers for their own masturbatory purposes. I want something that is easy to install that I don't have to waste a lot of time dicking around with. I assume most other people who have lives feel the same way. My 2 cents:
CentOS: A clone of Redhat Enterprise Linux. It is quite stable but does not have quite the same selection of packages as Ubuntu and its derivatives like Mint. Also, the software tends to be lag a bit behind faster churning distros like Ubuntu. But if you don't care about living on the bleeding edge, CentOS is for you.
Mint+Mate: An Ubuntu derivitave that runs the Mate UI, which is a fork of Gnome2. I'm using it now on my home PC. It's fast enough for me and I have it set up so that it looks very similar to the way I had 10.04. So far I have had zero problems with it.
In short, if you want to be on the bleeding edge and don't mind a few bugs, get Mint+Mate. Otherwise, get CentOS.
Your friend is a very bad person. Your friend should have installed Bodhi Linux or Vanilla Ubuntu. Again, your friend is a very bad person.
I have been using OpenSuSE for almost 20 years now (well is was just plain SuSE back when I started) and it is the most consistent and useable distro' I have ever used and I have used Slackware, Yggdrasil, Redhat, Mandrake, Debian and Ubuntu and always kept coming back to stable, consistent SuSE. Others will have their opinions but you really should give it a try. Between the wonderful YAST for configuring things (you don't need the command line for most of what it will do for you) and the fact that it just plain works on all my hardware (that includes wireless, HDMI, sound and SATA) you really can't go wrong. They have many repo's for installing software to support proprietary things like WMA files and others. You have the option of a network install (very small install cd then all the packages are downloaded from online repo's) or can download a DVD image for most non-proprietary packages. You have the option of many different desktop managers (KDE, Gnome, XFCE, LXDE, and others) that all have great default configurations out of the box. Try it, and don't listen to the nay-sayers who will whine about the supposed things with Novell and Microsoft, OpenSuSE is independent of that stuff...
Buddha of compassion
To expand on a couple points:
Some distros make it more or less easy to install rights-restricted software, like the stuff you need to play mp3s or DVDs. Neither Fedora/RHEL nor Debian allow nonfree software in their repos, but it's generally a fairly painless process to add a repo that does.
Ubuntu will, IIRC, ask you during the install process if you want to install such things, and Linux Mint comes with the media codecs by default. For other distributions you should research this issue.
Fedora and Ubuntu are the "big" distros, more or less, although Mageia seems to be climbing up DistroWatch lately. I had written off that project as dead when its Corporate Overlord bit the dust, but it's probably worth checking out. I hope I may say with enough accuracy that it is of similar quality to OpenSuse.
Fedora and Ubuntu have the biggest corporate backing and are likely to represent the most polished experiences. Ubuntu has its own way of doing things, most notably they have implemented at least two desktop environments (Unity and UNR) and their own startup process. Startup tends to be one of those big differences between distributions, but it's something you can safely ignore as a n00b user.
Fedora and Ubuntu use incompatible packaging systems, which tends to be irrelevant for a couple of reasons that aren't worth going over here. Generally you should figure that [a] any distro that is described as being derived from any other distro is package-compatible, and [b] it's very uncommon to need to install a package outside of your distribution's package management tools. We don't download software off websites, pretty much everything that you would ever want to install comes in the box.
It's hard to come up with too many more big important differences between these things, really. Desktop environments make a pretty big difference. Distros, not so much, especially among the big players.
Oh, and I forgot to mention. If you ever want to give yourself a real education in Linux, try Linux From Scratch. You'll probably even survive the experience. By contrast, slackware will be a friendly and trivial introduction, and Gentoo... ...sorry, my Gentoo joke is still compiling :(
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Linux Mint 14
Linux Mint was the first distro I used, and I think it's superior to Ubuntu as a first linux fistro (especially now with Unity). On top of that, it's a great distro in general, so you might not want to switch from it! In any case, it's a great starting distro, and then later you can move onto Arch.
Seconded.
#! Waldorf is Debian Wheezy running openbox with training wheels installed. It comes with a working panel, compositing, wallpaper, screensaver, conky and as parent pointed out, one tool per task. I wanted to learn a lightweight WM without all the pain of first-time configuring a lightweight WM ;-)
I won't need crunchbang next time I install but am grateful to the #! team for teaching me openbox in the most painless way possible.
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
If you wanted Ubuntu with E17, the natural choice would be Bodhi Linux, which is the actual E17 flavor.
http://www.bodhilinux.com/
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
Ubuntu has a terrible support community and the packages are usually full of silly bugs that no other distro has. I know this sounds like Troll bait... But the reasoning behind my statement is that they consistently suggest the most bizarre fixes for even common problems. If there is a "root of the problem" they will never attack that, but rather suggest outlandish (and nearly always incorrect) fixes for all the child problems instead. This is not productive or enjoyable. Ubuntu refuses to cooperate with upstream projects - they'd rather ignore them and cry when things don't work.
If you like Ubuntu, try Debian or some sort of direct Debian derivative instead. Unlike what many people like to say, Ubuntu is *not* Debian.
You mentioned that you like the look of Arch Linux - great distribution and excellent community. Unfortunately your skills are not up to the level that *mainline* Arch requires, but this does not prevent you from using a friendlier derivative. I suggest Cinnarch as the best friendly derivative because unlike Manjaro or Chakra it uses the main Arch repos instead trying to mix (well actually, that's not completely true, but for the purpose of the argument it is) and become broken as a result.
Another really good choice is Fedora - great distribution and excellent community. There are a lot of RPM haters but the truth is that anybody who has used a *modern* RPM based system knows that common arguments thrown up by crotchety old neck-beards and rabid Ubuntu fanbois are moot. There are a lot of haters of the new installer and not without reason - but keep in mind that most of that hate is purely hype. Of course there is going to be problems with the first iteration of any software.
Why Linux?
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
I'm fascinated by the volume of posts to this. I must say that the vast majority of posts remind me of "baby duck syndrome" (the first big thing that moves is mama!).
If you crashed an OS as the result of copying files, and claim that the hardware is fine, you're clearly hiding back story. The problem is probably not which distro that you're using, but rather computers in general.
Debian is my favorite distro - for servers. it is absolutely not suitable for a desktop for a novice. in fact, I have decades of Unix administration and systems programming experience and *I* don't even use Debian for my desktop. Debian has too many rough edges in the desktop realm, and as of 2013 A.D. there are still useful non-free wares for which free software doesn't exist. sorry, but that's the real world. Don't tell a novice he must suffer and waste hours of time and have incomplete functionality for getting stuff done because it's against your RMS-religion. That non-free software of which you have so much contempt will help the novice (as it does me) get stuff done. I wish there were free alternatives, but there are not. The real world is not as nice as we'd like.
Why Linux, after all? If you want to learn about system administration, NetBSD is a good choice. It is not a good choice if you are looking for a desktop OS, however: it can be done, but it is not done for you.
Don't ask any more questions.
Arch is fine if you want to DIY.. it's not like Windows though. Once it's set up there is always an issue. Plug in a USB and away it goes? Forget about it - spend precious time reading up on it, set it up, only to forget how to do it next time you set up your machine or something goes wrong with it.
Laptop tools break, hibernating - rebuild the ramdisk, Pulse - good luck.
Mint just works out of the box.. then why the hell have I been using Arch for two years? The community is very good - a bunch of sarcastic dicks at times.. and will ignore you if you're a newb - but they really know their stuff. Hop onto the Ubuntu IRC and they stop short of licking Windows. (no pun)
Gentoo is a nice compromise with respect to the community - but the learning curve is much higher.
Both have good Wiki - Gentoo edging it. (the Arch Wiki can be a bit vague at times)
Stay away from Ubuntu. If you care about the future of FOSS at all - stay the hell away.
There's plenty of decent debian derivatives that take the pain away - even my phone runs one FFS.
Go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Linux_distributions
Print out a section.
Put it on a wall.
Throw a dart.
Load that distro.
Post to Slashdot and you'll hear a bunch of good and a bunch of bad about the 'choice' you made.
Seriously though, research some of the mainstream ones (Fedora, OpenSuse, X/K/Ubuntu, etc.) and see what they say. Poke around on some of their forums. Ask the people (and trolls) residing on those forums why you should choose that particular distro. Just remind them that you are not trolling, just looking for honest input.
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." General James Mattis
Last year I managed to revive a server full of IDE disks by using FreeBSD to the point where it was working at reasonable speed (ZFS over a pile of slow disks acted like one really fast one) and I was almost wondering why it had been retired. The nice thing about FreeBSD is you can use the current version on old 32 bit gear, hammer it mercilessly, make all your newbie mistakes there, and then after not a lot of time you are ready to set up the real thing in about 15 minutes.
the best troll ever.
Run knoppix from USB or CDROM and you've got something almost unbreakable with most applications people look for in a distro. You can have a read/write area on USB or if you use the CDROM (or DVD) you can use a USB stick as a persistent home area so any changes you want to keep will be there on the next boot.
Since it's debian based it shares a lot in common with Mint and a few others suggested here.
It will run on nearly any x86 machine from the original pentium up, and it's a useful tool for dealing with MS Windows machines that won't start up or other tasks you want to do outside of the MS Windows OS (clone disks, resize partitions etc).
going from 'cheapskate' to 'insufferable snob' is not an upgrade..
Since he's presumably not talking about using it as a server, he could take PC-BSD and it would work just fine.
1. The objective is (as I understand it) to learn Linux, not a particular distro.
2. CentOS is very easy to set up, and it's rock-solid.
3. What are these key differences in config to which you allude but do not name? Last time I installed CentOS, the only difference I could see with upstream was the removal of the RHL name and logo. Seriously, I'm curious.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Thing is that GNOME 2 is no longer supported. People who want to continue w/ it would have to either go w/ MATE, or risk GNOME 2 falling behind in terms of not being able to support newer software that requires GTK3 or later. At least, migrating to MATE, people would have a fork that is being maintained. GhostBSD, for instance, has just released v3 of their OS w/ GNOME 2, but announced that this is their last release w/ GNOME 2, and that future distros will bundle MATE. Centos will have to determine whether they too want to either go w/ MATE, GNOME 3 or whatever else. My suspicion is that they will just be following whatever RHEL does, so let's see how that works
On a distro, I prefer the ones that require a separate root a/c to be created, rather than one that assigns the default account that is created as the root account. I then use that root account only to install or update new software, so that the changes permeate throughout the OS to all user accounts. I tend to create multiple user accounts for different purposes, as well as more for other family members, so I prefer that the root account be separate. I don't want any of the user accounts to screw up the base system.
0 for 3 so far... Keep up the good work, I guess.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Asking Slashdot, you'll get vastly differing opinions but you'll likely get some interesting information which will likely be useful.
However... the only way to really know which distro is "right" for you is to try several and pick one.
So I would suggest geting out your favorite Virtualization software (VirtualBox, KVM, etc) and try several distros at once. Find out what you like.
I recently did this back in August 2012. Here are the distros I liked:
*Mint Debian 201204
Fedora 17 (18 has a yucky installer)
OpenSuSE 12.1
*Debian (Squeeze, Wheezy, Sid)
Arch (fastest package installs by far, no sound in a VirtualBox VM)
*Pear Linux 5 (looks just like a Mac, except a Pear in place of an Apple. Fun to play with.)
Slackware 13
Vector Linux7.0 (based on Slackware, has package management. Fun, snappy.)
Least recommended: Gentoo. Attempting a base install + KDE4 was a THREE FULL DAY compile, after which X refused to start. Very frustrating.
2nd least recommended: FreeBSD, only because there's no GUI by default, and I couldn't find instructions to install one.
Regardless of which you choose in the end, best of luck to you. :)
I would recommend Debian. Stable, fast and clean look. Haven't had any problems on PC. On NB was issue with wifi, because of drivers. Mint is also good, because it is made to easier migrate from win. It looks like win and many things are quite intuitive. Though mint doesn't motivate you to use terminal ;D
I think you're supposed to install a *woosh* here. But really, what's the problem with systemd? On Arch there were some initial toothing issues if you decided to migrate before it became mandatory, but after that I haven't had issues with it, and the boot times are just staggering (10s from GRUB to KDM, and this includes various daemons as well, not just a plain desktop). Why the hate?
Don't tell a novice he must suffer and waste hours of time and have incomplete functionality for getting stuff done because it's against your RMS-religion.
Today is "make up shit about RMS day". Again. Just like every day.
RMS things proprietary software is bad and should be avoided where possible. He even stated for the record that he hasn't avoided it completely: prior to Linux making GNU self hosting, all of GNU was developed on proprietary unix systems.
It's now got to the self hosting stage and *he* can run a 100% free software system. He also advocates strongly using Free Software where possible. He also evnagelises the many benefits and user friendliness[*] of free software.
Put please, stop making up crap about RMS.
[*]Software than never stabs you in the back is friendlier than the alternative.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
going from 'cheapskate' to 'insufferable snob' is not an upgrade..
In the UK it is. It happens all the time when politicians retire and are given a place in the house of Lords.
On a primary computer, I find it makes sense to go with a distribution on which things actually work, since there is plenty to learn even then.
In my own case, on my primary machine I run Ubuntu, but with XMonad as a window manager and I do all my disk operations in XTerm. This has forced me to learn a great deal, and indeed configuring XMonad is not a small undertaking for a nondeveloper.
On my secondary machine I alternate between Debian and Arch, initially with the intent of eventually displacing Ubuntu as my primary OS, but those installations still have things not working which on Ubuntu just work, so I may just stick with what I've got. On your primary computer, you won't have the patience to have essentials not work for weeks on end.
The point of this particular thread-let is what to learn if you're after an IT career. I don't know of any respectable Unix admin that would choose Fedora over CentOS in the enterprise.
CentOS (and Scientific Linux) are both well-respected, stable OSs built from the RHEL source. It's basically Redhat without all of the licensing silliness.
As was mentioned in another thread, Unix is best learned in a VM that's regularly snapshotted. That way, if you hork things up, you can revert without a lot of pain. Having to set up a system from scratch because you broke it and keep breaking it will dissuade new users from learning essential skills.
I also suggest that if someone wants to learn to be a Unix admin, learn the vi editor. Don't use a gui-based crutch until you're proficient in vi. I know a lot of people like emacs, but vi is an essential tool.
Learning to write shell scripts is also an essential skill, but stick with a mainstream shell. Csh is godawful, and zsh is too obscure for the enterprise. Ksh implementations used to be very spotty, especially when moving scripts between Solaris and Linux.
Learn some of the other tools like awk, sed, grep, cut, sort and uniq.
There's a huge shortage of decent Unix admins and a glut of Windows admins. Most of the Unix Admins we interview can't script unless they're stealing from something someone else wrote and most don't understand the innards of how the OS even works.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
CentOS is also pretty horrible for doing gaming and running it on laptops. It's an enterprise OS and doesn't have the consumer-friendly bells and whistles one sees on Ubuntu.
I run CentOS on my servers at work and Ubuntu on my linux box at home
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
...or maybe even Xubuntu/Lubuntu.
http://nathanlindsell.blogspot.com/
Plain and simply the easiest distro for those migrating to Linux for the first time
/home directory on a separate partition during the initial install. This way you have the option to completely re-install or upgrade your OS without losing your user data at some point in the future.
Use 13 because it is a Long Term Release model, and choose either the 32 or 64 bit version according to your needs
Although not new to Linux, I've been using Mint for years as my primary desktop, and it does 99% of everything I need to do. For the remaining 1%, I use Crossover or Virtualbox
I've recently installed it for my fiance on her laptop, which previously ran Vista, and not only does it run BETTER than Vista ever did, she's completely happy, and has never used Linux previously
I've used Knoppix, Puppy, SUSE, Centos, Ubuntu, Mepis, Arch, Vector, and even DSL, but for migrating to Linux with little or no previous Linux experience, you simply cannot beat Linux Mint.
The only other word of advice is to check up on how to set up your
Differences between how you act when some one is watching, and how you act when no one is watching, define who you are
e17 desktop uses a Ubuntu base and includes no blot at all install the packages you like.
I'm neither "experienced Linux user" nor "very new to Linux", somewhere in between.
When I looked for Linux as a secondary desktop (internet banking, development) I tried Ubuntu first.
It drove me mad with the "ubuntu one" interface.
Tried SuSe Linux, and still using it. While being free, it also has a bit of commercial polish.
Asking this question on Slashdot is akin to opening Pandora's Box.
Learning to write shell scripts is also an essential skill, but stick with a mainstream shell. Csh is godawful, and zsh is too obscure for the enterprise. Ksh implementations used to be very spotty, especially when moving scripts between Solaris and Linux.
Learn some of the other tools like awk, sed, grep, cut, sort and uniq.
There's a huge shortage of decent Unix admins and a glut of Windows admins. Most of the Unix Admins we interview can't script unless they're stealing from something someone else wrote and most don't understand the innards of how the OS even works.
zsh isn't too obscure for the enterprise...it comes with RHEL. zsh tricks are better left after learning sh, bash, and ksh though.
Why would Wayland be next? If they do what they did in KDE 4.00, then yeah, but if they complete that project and then have DEs adapted to it and then introduce it, it should be fine.
Let me tell you how I learned about Linux as a desktop operating system, then I'll recommend how to avoid some of the pitfalls.
In 1996 I installed Slackware distribution on my PC. It was challenging. I learned a lot. Sure it was as user-friendly as wrestling with a rabid bear. But I felt very accomplished once it was up and running. I was hooked on that. My experience prior to this with computers was limited to Windows 3.11 and just enough Unix to get through an introductory Fortran class.
The next year, I started using a Suse Linux distribution. That added to my knowledge because they do things differently. Then I got a small laptop and installed Debian on it. That worked much better for me. It isn't as difficult to install as Slackware. Apt-get (a package installer in Debian-based distributions) takes care of dependencies fairly automatically.
Over the years I've also had experience installing and/or using Red Hat, Fedora, Linux Mint, Puppy Linux, Suse, Arch, Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Linux Mint, and I've built several Linux from Scratch systems. On these systems I've used various desktop environments and window managers such as E17, XFCE, KDE, Gnome2, Unity, FVWM, Fluxbox, CTWM, etc.
If you're determined to learn Linux I recommend:
1. Ubuntu (or one of its variants) for a beginner.
2. Slackware (or maybe Arch) when you're more advanced and ready to be challenged.
3. Build a Linux From Scratch system if you really want to know how it all fits together, but not until you're ready for it.
Here's my final advice on the matter. Run! Run to FreeBSD as fast as you can! Save Yourself!
When I asked that question before, Tranzistors gave me a very good response. Here is a link to that sub-thread: link.
I am not sure if I agree that the issue warrants such a life-or-death exaggerated attitude towards this system, but apparently some portion of the community is quite passionate about rejecting it.
http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/6.0.6/i386/iso-cd/debian-6.0.6-i386-netinst.iso
Casteism
This happens very very rarely. The only time you can really hose your system without reading the news is by using --force (don't).
Overally, Ubuntu 12.10 is the perfect distro for me and I use it for work and play. It's also nice that Steam installs quite well on it and I can even play some Team Fortress 2 and CounterStrike on it. However, DO run "sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping" on it first thing after install. NASTY feature.
The answer is simple. Just use the latest version of Ubuntu. Ignore anyone who recommends otherwise. And get onto freenode on IRC (install xchat), and the nice folks in #ubuntu will help you if you ask politely and are patient. There are currently 1775 users in that channel right now, so it can get busy.
--- wad
I picked up a phrasebook.
It's called "Linux: phrasebook"
it's by Scott Granneman
from Addison Wesley from 2006
Their networking stuff is a little wonky
trying to get it to work with windows.
But it's most if not all the basics
(for command line interface)
Then Slackware is the distro for you. Forget all the rest.
I'm annoyed by stuff breaking. Something that used to be as simple as booting to init 3 (appending init=/sbin/init 3 to the end of the kernel) stopped working for me. Want to edit an init script? Nope, can't modify the services anymore. The Linux developers are embracing everything that is wrong with Windows (extra complexity, inability to edit stuff, etc).
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with Ubuntu, but, if it's not working for you, try Fedora. Download LIVE CD version that will fit on a USB drive. Have someone help you set it up to make it bootable. There's a prog called Linux Live USB. http://www.linuxliveusb.com/ That works pretty well.
THEN plug it in and boot it up. If you like it, most of them can be installed on your hdd with just a click.
Look, I have read through much of these comments and I have to agree with the people saying it is a preference. I do NOT like Ubuntu, but I love MintOS which is a spin off of Ubuntu. It is just friendlier, and works great for my entire "Winblows" type family. Took a weekend to change everyone over, took a couple days for everyone to know where "mail" and "internet" are... but from there... smooth sailing. Good thing about an Ubuntu base at this time is that "Steam" the gaming platform, is officially supported there now if you are into that.
My recommendation for Noobs, or even moderate users is to TRY MintOS... if you want something more stable than an Ubuntu base, and do not need the thrill of having the new features built into KDE and such... go with something like CentOS. CentOS is a RedHat based Distro, that is very stable, and supported by a huge community. I use it for our servers at work at around 250+ servers... and never have issues (of course I am not using X, but I have used CentOS X environment (for you noobs, that is the GUI interface) and it is not bad.
Point is there are hundreds of distros you could try, many of those having live CDs you can test it with. Stay with KDE if coming directly from Windows... it will be more familiar to you. As to you people bashing (not to be confused with #) the other distros... everyone has their own preference and use of the system, bashing just shows ignorance.
Where there are windows... there are doors to get the F out.
I deleted Ubuntu last year (or maybe the year before I can't remember) after using it since Feisty, because I got fed up of the way it got more and more windowsey, and apparently harder to configure than before unless you use the gui tools - what finally killed it for me was the new Gnome UI. Installed Arch, haven't looked back since. Before Ubuntu I ran Debian for quite a while on my old laptop, loved it, Mandrake on my desktop, Slackware until I decided I didn't like the attitude of Slackware folks, before that I tried Fedora, SuSe (pre Novell thingy), others I can't remember. Started off with Red Hat 6.2.
Don't like RPM based distro's much because sooner or later you have to hack RPM's.
My 6 or 7 year old laptop goes from cold to LXDE in just over 30 seconds with Arch installed almost straight out of the box. Configuration was mostly easy - just a few text files to edit and a bunch of stuff to install, and the guides on Archwiki are very helpful - not perfect, I did have to hunt around to resolve some things. So I can start doing stuff faster than ever. Happy.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
If you were never impressed with Windows from 3.0-8, install Ubuntu. I'm in this camp, while they are/were the defacto standard I find MS's UI designs nonsensical. But if you think Windows 95-Vista had an excellent UI and were blown away at their intuitiveness, install Mint. You can get more of the desktop shortcuts, quicklaunch bar, and crammed 300px x 300px start menu by using Mint. If you miss that. Mint also has slower updates due to lack of server infrastructure, a sparse dev team, and does not offer automatic in-place upgrades. Ubuntu has none of those problems. For me there's only two choices I care about, Ubuntu and CentOS. Both are solid. Plenty of people religiously hate Ubuntu's Unity interface, but Ubuntu just works.
http://www.accountkiller.com/en/delete-slashdot-account Stop visiting Slashdot.
Your attempt will likely fail. But what you learn in the process will be priceless. So you should go for it anyway. Arch has pretty well detailed docs. If you have a second pc or something that you can read these with while you install you should do that. Otherwise links and ctrl-f1 though ctrl-f6+ are your friend.
This is one of the simplest and easiest to get started with.....it has E-17 Enlightenment and right off the bat, a nice Simple fairly quick Browser Midori. It comes with a "WHAT ITS ALL ABOUT &nice clear instructions on how to set it up. It initially had just a few basic APS plus a nice easy APS LIST, complete with descriptions of what each is about and does and a very easy INSTALL setup on the page with eaxh spas discription. It has Forums, news items and comments with a bunch of users giving you straight opinions on many of the aps! Enjoy it.!! Another good Linux O/S is MINT, AGAIN LIGHT AND FAST. LOOK UP VARIOUS systems Videos on the net too! But Arch is not for Newbies....I know 'cause I'm one! If you want to go Ubuntu....take a Look at ULTIMATE EDITION too.
On the rpmfusion.org website is a mention of rpmfusion spins. The most recent entry is a spin of Fedora 18, created in Russia.
This spin has all the codecs that you would find with Ubuntu, includes chromium, flash player, and libdvdcss2 (ask about it).
There are some extras too, in the way of tools for developers.
I was a skeptic, but when I installed it last January 15th, 2012, I did not know what to expect. What I got was a super stable release, with everything in it that I needed for a desktop and laptop.
http://rpmfusion.org/Spins and under it
RFRemix
RFRemix is a Linux distribution developing in Russia and based on Fedora, RPM Fusion and Russian Fedora repositories. All codecs, flash and proprietary video drivers are available from the box. Your can download installable DVDs and LiveCDs with GNOME, KDE, XFCE and LXDE. DVD contains full language packs as in original Fedora. Default language for LiveCD is Russian, but it can be changed.
I selected the DVD which is in English, and after the installation was complete, I pointed Chromium to my preferred website(s).
All Fedora operating system updates are from Fedora and rpmfusion.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
If you want to learn Linux, take an old machine and install Slackware. That's how I did it in the mid 90s. It took me about a month. If you want to learn how to use linux, I'd say try Mint KDE. It's flexible, user adjustable (enough to drive you crazy), but can be used from the first install, before you learn how t do much with it.
I have ran with the version Ubuntu not a huge fan, lots of nice features although not really what i was looking for. If you are looking for something easy to use i prefer to use Linux Peppermint. Really nice OS, still in development, although installed it for my 5 year old and he can function with the OS very well, and it just works. I installed it in an old HP desktop with Old P4 running 1 gb of ram and the system perfoms well with the peppermint.