What Linux Distribution to Use?
 

Hi I have used some Linux before. I have used 7.0 and 7.3 of RedHat Linux with sucess and have used mandrake with some problems. However I have heard Fedora came out. Is Fedora a good Linux OS to use and if not what is a good distribution? I am a moderate gamer and also like develpmental software such as staroffice. Please let me know the pros and cons of some distribution and which one I may want to choose. And please give me any info about fedora, thanx.

~Joshua Baerbock

Gaming: Gentoo, WineX
StarOffice: developmental software???

http://fedora.redhat.com
http://www.fedora.us

http://www.distrowatch.com

HTH,

Samsara

Fedora is ok, I am using it right now but it has some a few problems. It doesnt include alot of the plugins you will need to watch movies, play mp3's and a few other things. Fedora is good but not as good as some distros i have used like mandrake or debian. If you have an ati card dont use it, it comes with xorg 6.8 and it is not compatible with ati cards for the moment. Just to tell you it is brand new so it could have a few bugs in it.

For gaming i would use mandrake linux, with cedega to run the games. transgaming. Fedora is not bad for gaming but i like mandrake a little more. You should look at fedora so you at least have a feel of all the distro's out there.

I have Fedora on one box and it's OK. I'm using Ubuntu on my main pc at the moment.

Re: What Linux Distribution to Use?
 

How about doing a search of LQ for what is probably THE commonest question? You'd end up with more answers and variations of answers, opinions, ideas and suggestions than you can "shake a hairy stick @"

Oh, and you don't get moaned at by the moderators for not searching or have the thread closed either!

Newbie level i.e. ease of use - Mandrake, SuSE, Fedora/Deadrat, Linspire, Lycoris, etc etc
Above that - debian, slackware, gentoo, etc etc

Someones already posted the distrowatch link, that should keep you occupied for read/research purposes for a while.

Good luck with your choice.

regards

John

p.s. You can always check out knoppix. Run it from the cd (it's a "live" distro) then if you find it to your liking, you can install it to your hard drive (check out partitions first, as that's usually the easier option). Details of that are found here and here

Hi, I was in the same boat as you and asked this question a day or so ago.
The last time I had run linux was with like Redhat 5 or something like that.

These guys suggested that I try fedora Core 3, I now have it installed and am very happy with it. The only complaint I have is no NTFS support at all at install, and the RPM I'm trying to install for NTFS support is driving me nuts... not working for some reason.

Other than that, I'm loving it.

When you are still at "novice" level, it's often easier to stick to rpms that are optimised for your specific distro.

i.e. fedora/redhat ones for fedora, SuSE ones for SuSE and mandrake ones for mandrake.

Otherwise, you'd easily end up in "dependency hell".

Oh and not too sure about fedora, it used to be that you would be more likely to get NTFS write support from mandrake or SuSE, but maybe it's improved - but I wouldn't know, because the only 2 distro's I've never managed to get installed, have been Redhat and Slackware!

But it may depend on a few things i.e. for NTFS support in the gentoo I'm using, I'd need to enable NTFS support in the kernel, then recompile it, then install a couple of packages etc etc etc........

You may be better off trying UBUNTU linux, it's debian based, but apparently got a knoppix like installer. Being debian based, you'd have access to over 10k different packages and compared to redhat/fedora's RPM system, debians "Apt-get" squirts on RPM from a great height (yes you may be able to install apt4rpm, but I don't know about debianised RPM packages????).

Over to you!

regards

John

good call
 

Ubuntu is nice and video card drivers are very easy to set up. The site has step by step instructions to for many things ,which is great.

I have Red Hat 9 and I love it.

I also have Yellow Dog and it is great too.

Ubuntu
 

I just ordered some free Cd's from Ubuntu. What are the ratings on this Linux Ditribution. I gave heard all good things about it. Let me know what you all think. I will test it out myself since Im getting free Cd's anyway. Thank you.

You can get Distro's here and read about them some.
http://www.linuxiso.org

This may help too
http://users.netwit.net.au/~pursang/dtil/howto_toc.html
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/html/

Check your hardware for compatability
http://www.ibiblio.org/mdw/HOWTO/Har...WTO/index.html
http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/index.php

You can read about and get Mandrake here.
http://mandrakelinux.com/en/ftp.php3

I've used Mandrake, Slackware and Fedora so far. Knoppix will give you an easy intro.

For an install that is as easy as Win XP, with more control over it Mandrake is a good start.

linux
 

Is there a way to get other distributions sent to me on CD's for free? I know ubuntu does it but have not found any others that do it thus far.

go to http://www.linuxiso.org/ and download all of them that you want for free. You will need access to a broadband connection for this.

Read the Distro's web sites info. I think that most of them will send you a set on CD for a few $.

cd's
 

If you have cable or dsl a good thing to do is buy a big pack of cd's/cd-rw (sometimes their $3 after rebates) and just try out distro's. I went through hundreds of cd's:study: