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.
... 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.
It's the cleanest playground for learning the proper way to *NIX
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.
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.
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.
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. :)
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.
Test the different distros live disks to see which works best in your situation. Then install it.
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.
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.
+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.
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.
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!
I'm not sure the question has a straight answer. It reminds me a little of when I asked my dad about how to evaluate a good wine (about 20 years ago) I expected him to educate me about legs, tanin, body and other quantifiable methods for evaluating a wine. Instead he said it's quite simple really....you drink a lot of them and after a while you start to develop preferences.
In the late '90s and early 2000's I took the same approach to Linux and installed nearly every distribution I could get my hands on. Back in the day they were varietes of Red Hat, Mandrake, Corel, Slackware, Gentoo, Debian...after a while you develop preferences and one distro doesn't fit all needs. To this day I prefere slackware servers, ubuntu desktops, and ipcop for routers/firewalls. But everybody will have their own preferences./P
This 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
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.
Is this a repost from 1997?
I get the feeling it's a bored troll just trying to get a rise out of someone.
The question will never get a straightforward answer, especially here on slashdot - and because there's no one true answer.
Definitely a troll. In fact, it's so obvious I'm surprised the editors didn't realize it.
Let's analyze this. His computer crashed while copying unimportant files with good hardware and now it fails to boot.. Even in 1997, this would have been an unreasonable scenario. I've certainly seen applications in Linux crash, about as often as I see them crashing in other OSes. In very rare circumstances, I've seen the kernel crash. A kernel crash that prevents the computer from booting again, though? What exactly would cause that?
One thing would be if instead of copying, he was accidentally moving system files. That's pretty hard to do, he would have to get elevated privileges, and even if he did, any file that the system was currently using would remain loaded in ram, so it wouldn't be likely to crash then, he'd just have problems booting up later. Not only that, but this so guy who is self-identifying as inexperienced anticipated this response and made sure to point out the files were "non-important". I'm pretty sure he also chose that wording to avoid saying "system files", afraid that would betray his level of knowledge.
Another possibility is that he has a failing hard drive. Again, this would be unlikely to crash his box, but copying files around in a bad drive could maybe cause corruption of the file system preventing it from successfully booting up next time. So, of course, this guy also predicted this response and made sure to point out that his hardware is a-ok.
What are we left with here? Linux being hard on new users cliche? Check. Using a distro that is known to be user-friendly and suggesting he might want to move to a distro known to have a high learning curve? Check. Implication that Linux's reputation for stability is underserved? Check. Trying to rile up slashdot into "what's the best distro" flamewar? Check. Anonymous submission? Of course. The only thing missing is good old-fashioned vi vs. emacs debate.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
I came here to say this. Debian is a good OS and is as mainstream as you can get without lots of fluff and it Just Works. I like that its not a "flavor of the week" distro, its what "flavor of the week" is *based on*.
The only other option in my book is CentOS, although I don't like it as much as Debian esp on the desktop. But, its the free version of RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) which Fedora at least used to be based on.
I answer these two distros because you mentioned that you want to learn- and these are, in my opinion, the best ones to learn on. Understand them, and inherently understand their derivatives.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
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.
My first Linux distro was Gentoo, after I failed with SUSE and Debian. I installed Gentoo more than 7 years ago. I still use Gentoo, moreover I still use _the same_ Gentoo, I never had a reinstall, just coping/moving the hard drive the system to the new computer. However it is important to note that Gentoo isn't the easy way to have a linux desktop. As far as I know Gentoo does not have _any_ installer you have to install it by hand in command line. After installing you get a command line, and You have to install and setup everything. It took me 2 days to get a desktop back then. Compiling is quite time consuming but it wasn't a problem at all back then, as I had to read a bunch of howts/tutorials/documentation. All in all it is a nice system, and easy to use if you know what are you doing. Nowdays Arch may have better documentation. The easiest option is using Ubuntu, but please do not use E17 if you don't know what are you doing. Ubuntu is quite similar to Windows, if something broke down you have to google for fix. On Gentoo if something broke down blame yourself, you did it, and probably you also know how to fix it.
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.
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.
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.
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.