ive used linux a couple times, and for the most part i've gotten nothing but headaches from it. the real problem is, i hate not being able to fully understand and run something. so im back again looking for another distro. ive tried mandrake 9, red hat 9, and knoppix. i liked redhat because i have some cbt's and pdf's on how to do different things with it. what id really like to master is networking, (win and *nix, *nix and *nix, samba, integrating into an AD domain, intergrating win clients into a *nix domain). im thinking about getting Fedora Core 2 or something, but I dont know. i liked the fact that debian uses the apt-get command to update software (i think its debian anyway). i kept running into dependency problems under RH9. Even though it was a big headache, i really enjoyed learning it, and actually missed it a few days i formatted and put windows back on. anyways, so whats a good distro for a newb with some knowledge of using linux?

thanks

search around this forum and distrowatch.com...this has been asked a zillion times. Most LQers will tell you this

I was a newbie until about two weeks ago, when I downloaded and installed ubuntu - www.ubuntulinux.org -. I had already tried Mandrake, Fedora, Suse and, most recently, Yoper. With all of these I came across one or more seemingly unsurmountable problems, but with ubuntu, while there have been some minor problems, I have always managed to sort them out, leaving me with a sense of achievement rather than frustration.

Maybe it is just what is right for me, but I do feel that ubuntu i better, more managable, than the other distros I have tried. The one that I haven't tried is Debian, ubuntu is based on Debian so possibly deb would have worked as well for me as ubuntu does.

Redhat/Fedora/most rpm based systems have some kind of automated dependency resolving software: you have YUM, you have apt4rpm, Mandrake has Urpmi.

Seriously man, if you get discouraged this easily over dependencies, you will run into many problems trying to master Samba and other networking issues.

it is already more then one year that i have totaly disinstaled windows and no work only on linux. If you are a newbie, i realy recomend mandrake. I have started with it and i think it is great. Now i use gentoo, which i belive to be the best. But to install it you will need to do a lot of progresses. Mandrake is efficient, not as much as gentoo or slackware, but almost. You will be able to sort out almost every problem thought grafical interface. Plus you will be able to learn using the console without being forced to. Moreover, it has a package manager(rpmdrake) that will manage the dependencies and packages for you( at least the most of it): There is now the 10. I havn't used it, but i knew the 9.1. and i think it is exelent for newcomers in the word of the future(linux)

Honestly, I went through a few different distros when I really 1st started out...Slack, Red Hat, and Mandrake. The only I really could tolerate out of that bunch was Red Hat. Of course, at that time, I didn't really have the motivation to stick with Linux...I'd install the OS, let it run, but rarely use it. Eventually I'd just reformat the HDD and use the machine (it was an old PII machine I had) for something else. To get to the point, this summer I swore I was going to take the time and motivate myself to learn Linux...choice this time was Fedora. I've been very happy with this distro since.

a couple of people have said that fedora core was a pretty good distro to use. fc is based off of red hat aint it? the main problem i had with dependencies on red hat was that while trying to install apt4get (so i wouldnt have to worry bout dependency problems so much) i got more and dependency issues which each dependency i tried to install.....after a while i just fuck it. that was a few months ago tho, so im ready to give it another try. isnt fedora core 3 supposed to be coming out soon?

thanks.

It's pretty much 6 of 1 and half a dozen of the other. Personally, I've never managed to get on with redhat/fedora (well I've never bothered to try fedora because I never got on with redhat).

I'd suggest that as the various RPM based distro's all have their own way of solving dependency problems (and I can assure you it isnt as bad as it used to be!). I believe that fedora uses YUM, whereas my mandrake uses URPMI.

Now, if you settle on an RPM based distro (redhat/fedora, Mandrake, SuSE, etc etc), then if you only install RPM's for that specific distro, you shouldn't usually experience dependency snags. That's why I only install mandrake RPMs, I could use others, but to be honest, I can't be arsed!

If on the other hand, you settled on something debian based, you should have "apt-get". That's one seriously good bit of software. The downside being that proper debian is, well can be, a right shit to get installed and configured. So the easier route would be to download Knoppix, burn it to disc, run it from the disc, as a live distro. That way you've checked that the disc works fine, then you just look around the knoppix forums and locate the instructions to installing it to hard drive.

Bingo. Off you go. Though once you get used to it, change the apt-sources to ones of your choice and you get all the benefits of a debian based system without the hassle of trying to do configuration stuff blindly (that's if you don't know much about manual hardware configuration).

IMO gentoo is probably the best. But it can be an absolute twat to install. Even when I did a "stage 3 + GRP" install it took forever (stage 3 is the quickest method of install and the GRP bit is precompiled packages - e.g. when I screwed up the installing of the GRP package of KDE, I entered the command to download and install it, kde's made up of lot's of packages and to download and compile on my 2 gig intel system with 120 gig's of hard drive space and 768 megs of ram, took a mere 15 hours ). Once you get gentoo installed it's absolutely brilliant. Very easy to manage - portage (gentoo package manager) is mega. The packages are very up to date.

The best thing about both gentoo and debian (or debian based systems) is that once installed, you should never have to install again (unless you screw it up big time!), because you can just update the whole damn distro! You cant do that with any of the RPM based systems (that I know of).

regards

John

since you have some experience, try arch. no dependency problems, because all the packages are binaries built for the distro. you keep the whole system up to date simply by running pacman - couldn't be easier. it's also probably one of the fastest distros. ubuntu might be a good choice if you want a debian system with an easy install. not sure yet if ubuntu is another "fad" distro, but the people using it so far seem to really like it.

Debian based MEPIS is a live distro so you can run it from the CD first, if it suits your needs it has a simple Graphical installer, and utilises QtParted for partitioning if required, also graphical.

See herefor more info.

Mathew

I use fc3 test 2 (Fedora Core), but fc2 is also great. Redhat 9 is very outdated, as a matter of fact, I think by a couple of years. Fedora Core, in my opinion, is Redhat, but it's more open to the public.
I've tried Debian, and could get through the install, but I could never get X to start.
I've also tried Slackware, but overall Fedora Core is my choice.
Fedora Core installation is cake, very similar to win.
And remember you can also use apt and yum in Fedora Core as well.

with arch, do i have to compile the source or anything like that (i just learned what compiling meant in my java class )? i dont know much about programming so im not sure if compiling in a linux binary is the same as compiling a program in java. forgive my lack of knowledge.

thanks

edit: a quick question, i tried dling the fc2 dvd iso, but its only like 76mb when i dl it. im confused because thats the smallest dvd ive seen in my life. ive tried different mirrors along with redhats site. any info will be appreciated.

no, you don't have to compile anything. binary means it's already compiled for you. and it comes with option of 2.6 kernel, so you don't even have to compile that if you don't want (or need) to.

~~~~~~~~~~
edit: the power of pacman.

i'm doing an upgrade, so i took some screen shots so you could get an idea of the process. just run pacman -Syu a couple times a week, and you are kept totally up to date.

pacman-prompt
pacman-download
pacman-install

is pacman installed be default on arch, or did u have to install the package?

default.