Hey everyone, I'm an absolute newbie to the linux OS and need some help from some linux gurus please. (not much of an introduction, sorry).
my problem is this:
im building a custom desktop system of my own, and i want to run linux on it. it is going to be a powerful one, and i want to know which versionof linux would be the best for a new user. also, which hardware would be the best. right now im planningon building an amd SP powered machine (64 bit), with an AMD motherboard. I can't give the specifics of the board, cause i forgot. hehe, anyways...........80 gb drive and 256 RAM.
suggestions, comments, tips are welcome (just like in newbie a forum right?)

i want my system to be able to run TIerra software (heard of it?)
if not, google search: "tierra tom ray artificial"
don't ask why, it just works. this is defintly something worth checking out, but it sucks cause i can't find a tierra community ANYWHERE! grrrrrrr.... oh well, maybe some of you have heard of it. hopefully, peace.

Well one very noob friendly distro is Fedora Core 1,2,3 or Mandrake (very popular). But if you really want a custom OS, and are not scared of reading some instructions files, go with Gentoo. My choice is Gentoo, but if you want a clean and very easy install, go with fedora or mandrake. You can get the ISOs on their webpages.

For your AMD64 chip, I would reccoment you get a 90nm Athlon64 3500(+?). This chip should draw a little less power than the 130nm versions, and stay a little cooler. What ever you do, be _sure_ to get a socket 939 cpu and MB, because the 754s only have a one channel memory controller, and don't have the same upgrade options available.

As far as the linux distribution... I think you should use Gentoo. I won't lie to you. It will be much harder for you to get it installed then the others, but that is a _good_ thing. If you are a linux n00b and make it through the gentoo install, you will learn quite a bit about how your system in particular works, and how to use linux in general. Gentoo usually runs a bit faster than all the other binary based distributions as well. And remember, Gentoo has some great online documentation to step you through the difficult install.

Once I you go Gentoo, you never go back

ah so gentoo is the one for me huh? cool, i'll do that. after i build my system of course.

thanks for the help

Hey there. I would actually suggest Mandrake Linux (though I never have used Gentoo), becuase its basically built for linux newbies. The hardware installation is very easy, its heavily GUI based and its in general very easy to use compared to something like Slackware.
Thats actually kind of interesting that you are using Tierra. Is it just for fun or is it for research?
In any case, if you are a true newbie like I used to be, coming from Windows, be warned that however easy to use the linux distro you choose is, there are stark differences between the two and expect problems.
--ben

blinux you've heard of tierra? where from? and have you used it before?

right now i haven't even begun to use tierra, but i've read a shit load about it. at first it will be used for fun, but i would like to use it in a more practical manner.

Hi Zhou Yi,

Just wondering .. How are you gonna use Tierra in a practical manner ?

Could you explain a bit more, please.

Cheers

well until i have tierra installed and running i can't fully answer that question. but i want to eventually be able to attempt to "perfect" small bits of code that i have written, and eventually join the tierra network.