Knoppix, Redhat, SuSE?
 

hi

can somebody tell me what are the differences among knoppix and fedora core, gentoo, redhat and SuSE? Is there any particular differences among them all??

tq

hi,

They are all distros based on linux kernel. Just their components and ve gui maybe different. They have many differencies on management. Do u have any specific question? I recommend to use SUSE as it is more stabile and more user friendly.

knoppix you run from the CD without having to install to harddrive

Redhat is a commercial software company the free version of Redhat no longer exists since version 9, Fedora Core has taken over this. Fedora Core is used as the testing ground for Redhat's enterprise products.

SuSE is another commercial distribution owned (I think) by novell.

Redhat/Fedora Core and SuSE have windows like setup programs in which they try to do everything for you and setup all your hardware. They are also quite bloated and have fancy gui's to configure everything and make for quite a nice distro for those coming from Windows and wanting a easy to use OS.

Gentoo is different animal altogether, you download the source and compile everything for your specific machine, much of the configuration is done by editing text files.

Those are the basics, for the specifics visit each's website and read the documentation. All teh websites can be found using google

A few notes:

Knoppix is the odd-man out, being a CD-based distribution, based on Debian, IIRC. Knoppix can be installed on a hard disc if you so wish, but works very well as a bootable CD. Good rescue disc and good "taster" for Linux.

Fedora Core is the Open Source version of Redhat. There used to be just Redhat, but it got split into commercial and GPL versions.

SuSE - which I have used for years - is now owned by Novell. For better or for worse. Like Redhat/Fedora, SuSE uses the RPM system for installing packages. SuSE has a powerful configuration tool called YaST.

Gentoo - never used it so can't comment.

What are you actually asking - are you trying to pick a distribution to try out? If so, Knoppix will serve you well as you can run it on any PC with a bootable CD-ROM, without changing the hard disc in any way. Don't like it, just pop the CD and re-boot. If you are looking to try Linux out and you've got a decent Internet connection, you can pick up distributions right here: http://iso.linuxquestions.org/

To get a better idea of the different distributions, I'd suggest that you visit their respective web sites. If you install a distribution and don't like it, you can blow it away and try another.

At the end of the day, they will all do pretty much the same for you; I think that the bigger choice for you - assuming that you're going to use a graphical interface - is whether you use the KDE or Gnome desktop manager.

Pls correct me if i am wrong. Any linux distribution cant be commercial as they r open source. Redhat and SUSE charges only for the kits and for the technical supports for their products. So u can use these two unlicensed. Just get the discs or source elsewhere. This is not illegal.

Not necessarily, they can charge for the system but they must provide the source and allow the customer to make derivative works and sell/distribute them if they so wish

"Pls correct me if i am wrong. Any linux distribution cant be commercial as they r open source. Redhat and SUSE charges only for the kits and for the technical supports for their products. So u can use these two unlicensed. Just get the discs or source elsewhere. This is not illegal."

Think of it as free speech, not free beer! :P

"can somebody tell me what are the differences among knoppix and fedora core, gentoo, redhat and SuSE? Is there any particular differences among them all??"

What distribution you get depends entirely on your needs and circumstances.

If you want a quick and easy linux distro, just to try out and see if your system can cope with it, Knoppix is the way to go.

If you're new to linux, I'd recommend Mandrake. It has everything more-or-less "simplified" for the user. It makes the transition between Windows and Linux an easy one (well it has done in my case!) It's a similar case for RH/Fedora and SuSE.

As has already been said, if you like a distro where you can compile it yourself (so you can choose exactly what you want and what you don't) then Gentoo is for you.

So you can see, on a whole, the differences between each distro is quite subtle, and in many cases, interchangeable (apart from minor differences in functionality and GUI). Hope this has been helpful!