Im considering a new linux distribution. Ive narrowed it down to Red Hat, Mandrake, and possibly Slackware. Any suggestions on which one to choose will help. PLease give reasons for decisions.

I know you're new to the whole Linux thing, but couldn't you have done a little research into this yourself? This question gets asked nearly everyday, so it's not as if you'd even have much to search through here before you could get some idea.

Red Hat is considered to be an industry standard. If you know your way around RH, then you should be set for most of the other RPM based distros.

Mandrake has a deservedly good reputation for being very newbie friendly. It is an RPM based distro, and the latest version (8.2) comes with a handy utility that handles (to some extent) any requirements you may need before installing any new software. Be warned, though. If you're looking at a distro to introduce you to the world of Linux in the workplace, then this is probably not a good idea. It can, if you let it, allow you to use too many wizards and things, so that you don't actually know what's going on - not a good idea if you're planning on becoming a network admin...

Slackware is, in my opinion, the best distro there is. You pretty much start right from the beginning. You need to do almost everything yourself (not as much as you would with an LFS, but that's another story), so it gives you a good grounding on pretty much everything that's going on in your system.

Others to look at: Debian (some reckon it's as hard, if not harder, than Slackware) and SuSe (German RPM based distro that's a close contender with Mandrake).

The "which one is best" question gets old after a while, simply because there is no right answer. Unless you have some specific need that may be best met by a specific Linux distribution, then just pick one (or more), install it (them), get to know it (them), and use it (them). Probably the most important thing is using it (them), because that's what an operating system is for -- preventing hardware from being a paperweight .

thymox.. how on earth do you still have the strength to say all that for the millionth time??

Hey, common. I'm planning on becoming a teacher, I must have the patience of a saint to do that!

thymox has probably got various versions of the same reply on disc so whenever the question is asked, the file can be checked and a slightly different reply is then posted - the rule of 6p - prior preparation prevents piss poor performance!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I appreciate your question. I've the very same and I would think, after shoving Thymox's castigating opinion into the water closet, that this site would be a good beginning.

"Things we wish we knew before we started" That link will be a good beginning for me. Thanks!

huh huh, your name reminds me of Austin Powers "I put the GRR in Groovy baby, yeah!", huh huh

Cool

for a newbie, i would highly recommend Lycoris Desktop/LX. This gets you running in linux easy, and while you learn you can explore other options too.

The good thing about Lycoris is that all kinds of things are preconfigured for you. flash, wine, and lots more too. Very useable right out of the box.

I tried Mandrake 8.1 and 8.2, Red Hat 7.3, ELX RC2, Peanut, and Lycoris. I keep going back to Lycoris because it does everything that I need it to do...although I am gettin gtempted by Slack and Gentoo now.....

So its just another Windows running a Linux kernel. If you really want to learn Linux, I wouldn't recommend Lycoris, If I want my system to detect and install and do everything for me, I install Windows...

While the trickykid has a relavent point, surely, even though he feels that Lycoris is window$ running a linux kernel, surely, the main thing is that it isn't window$.

If the person, likes the idea of doing things in a "non-micro$soft" way, but is at a bit of a loss as to how this could be achieved, Lycoris, must surely, be a viable way ahead.

I have not tried Lycoris, but judging by the rumours and the amount of stress that I have experienced using something as "easy" as mandrake 8.2, perhaps Lycoris is the way that I should have gone, until, that is, I know enough to "get under the hood and tinker"!

The trickykid is one of the people who post here who is without a doubt part of what I term the "Linux cognescenti" and I would be very suprised given the knowledge and depth of his answers, didn't use slack or maybe debian (the alleged "harder" distro's).

But, I suppose, that that is the whole point of LQ, for those that "know" to be able to pass on the knowledge to those of us (me) who "don't", and that the IT world is a better place because of the marvellous attitude of such individuals.

Hence, keep up the good works tricky (and others too numerous to mention).

regards

John

Good point there John, but I would have to somewhat disagree. Actually on several things

First, I think that, while not using winbloze is a very good thing, and it's nice to get away from that beast, but to actually "experience" linux and learn the OS as a whole (or at least enough to get around a bit) it wouldn't be a good idea to use something you are "used" to or are so "comfortable" with.

At one time I am sure that your weren't all that comfy with winbloze. But after time spent learning shortcuts, and learning how to work things quicker, and such, you became a "winbloze cognescenti". If you had been used to DOS forever, and decided to install MSDOS, and used it for a while trying to become "accustomed" to this new GUI thing, that wouldn't really have helped you. (Although bad example, going from command line to a fat bloated GUI is very easy, but I hope you can see through all my bad examples to the actual kernel of them )

So using a "wanna-be" distro, and thinking that you are linuxing, doesn't really help you. Here I think will be a good example for once.

Your recent sound problem. If you were using a distro that straight out configured all that crap for you, and all you did was point and click to your sound, then what would you have learned? You actually got to experience alot of different ways to configure sound in linux throughout the course of that dilemma. Well, now you know how (or at least have a better idea of how) to get things rolling on that. IF you ever switch distros, and have problems again, well now you at least sort of know where to start. Plus along the way you learned about symlinks, and block devices.

If you had a distro that set all this up for you, and configured everything for you, then if you ever ran into problems down the road, or switched to a distro that didn't, you would be in a dark place with no one around to guide you. But now at least you have a "bag of tricks" to pull from to begin with.

I do not know for sure about Debian being "harder" than Slack, so I disagree simply because of "lack of knowledge".

And finally I do agree that tricky probably uses Slack, but that's only because it's listed in his profile as his distro

Cool

Strange. I thought Linux was an operating system, not an "experience". :-)

Yes, *I* like to learn things about Linux, and about computing and the Internet in general. Doesn't mean I want to make life harder for myself than I have to, and it doesn't mean I should force anyone else into learning the precise semantics of symlinks and block devices purely because I had to.

I run RedHat, for instance. I install everything through RPM. This means the only stuff I compile is stuff *I* wrote. I like this. I use th utilities for configuration, rather than even bothering to edit the sysconfig files and scripts myself. It's quicker, and requires less thought. Meaning I can get on with *using* my computer.

If you had a distribution that set everything up for you, and configured everything for you, then you've done a good job in selecting your distribution. If you run into problems later, then it's the distribution that's failed, not you. *Then* you'll need to be prepared to work your way through the documentation.

Of course, if you *want* to spend your time fiddling with the innards of your computer, then that's fine - nobody's stopping you, and it's no bad thing. I did it for years, myself. There's loads of distros there for you, including Gentoo, Slackware, and so on.

But you don't have to, if you don't want to. And if you want something like Windows, but running on Linux, then Lycoris and the like is perfect for you.

Very good points, very good indeed. And it would seem that I don't agree, I think learning how to do things properly is of the first and upmost importance when learning anything, not just how to configure your OS's.

And linux is both, it's an experience in using an alternative OS to the other one which I won't mention.

And just because something "configures" everything for you doesn't mean it's a good distro. If you have everything configured, and it is still all "foreign" to you, then what's the use of having it all done for you?

One more part I disagree with...

If you do run into problems on the "perfect" distro, and have no idea how to do anything, then all the documentation in the world (with the exception of LQ and the likes) isn't really going to help you all that much. Especially if you are a point and click, copy and paste, plug and play kind of user. You may actually have to read a log file, and since this user we speak of has no knowledge of linux in reality, the log files would look "sanscript" to them.

But like I said, you have very good points, and it would seem that they just don't agree with mine, but that's part of the fun of Linux, different ideas on how to do things, use things, and abuse things

Cool