Which Linux OS is better?
 

I recently installed RedHat linux 9 and my sound and cdroms and... well everyting is mot co-operating with linux. So I was wondering is there a version of linux out there that is better than RH9?

Thanx

there is no such thing as "better" here... if you looked around a little you'd quickly have seen that everythign is down to opinion. please search this site full and look at our distro reviews to see what people *think* of other distro's. also check sites like distrowatch.com

I personally favour Fedora Core 3. It's 'the golden middle way', meaning it's easy for beginners, and at the same time serves experienced users well ;)

If you are familiar with RedHat, then I would recommend Fedora Core. RedHat9 is showing its age; it was superseded by Fedora Core. FC4 is waitning in the wings....

Thank you. I will put your replies to good use.:)

why not give debian a try?
knoppix, and ubuntu are debian based and have relatively easy installs.

I recommended Fedora because it was easy for newbies, and at the same time good for experienced users. Debian is noob-unfriendly, and ubuntu only has gnome ( :x ) so I think Fedora is the best. ;)

Agreed, debian is way out there when it comes to ease. FC3 is very friendly and easy to install. The question one has once the install is done is "how easy is it to install programs and perform OS upgrades?"

Suse 9.x is nice except that I do not feel that Novell has done an adequate job of keeping things up to date, specifically in the realm of video drivers. I got stuck on one version of nVidia's drivers even though there were many updates past that release on nVidia's site.

FC3 has issues with ensuring sound works properly (that is without you having to correct it). Their Java support is sorely lacking too--as they install in an odd way completely foreign to the way Sun.com's versions of them install.

Debian is just tough. It isn't for the feignt of heart.

If you want to optimize or customize your linux for your particular computer or environment, consider gentoo (www.gentoo.org). It is a source based distribution as opposed to a binary based distribution. Documentation and user forum is excellent.

as a newbie myself (still feel that way) i am glad i started with RH9. i stayed with RH9 for a long time (FC3 was out before i switched distro) and learned a lot with RH due to the simple install and updating you can do with it.

now that RH9 is basically a bastard child and no longer supported directly (can you use up2date) i would sujest giving the FC line a try. grab the most current stable release and try it out. IIRC FC3 is based on the 2.6 kernel and should offer better hardware support then RH9 does.

i worked with RH9 for about a year before i made the move to debain. i am very happy with debian and do not see a switch any time soon.

I personally don't believe that a "source based" anything is good for linux. 10 years past the need of that we are. If you are a newbie there's no good reason to go that route, not any more.

Besides the unparallelled customisability? I moved to slackware 15 months ago from Red Hat and I would NEVER go back to an RPM based distro. Since installing software from source I've had fewer headaches with dependencies, I don't have to rely on there even BEING a package for my distro, and I have total control over my system.

One advantage of "source based" distribution is that it will compile optimally for the CPU of your equipment. There are differences from low end to high end 64 bit AMD64 chip. For embedded equipments (e.g. router, DVD player), they require more customization and optimization than desktop computers. Obviously it takes some time to compile programs, so it will take longer to get a computer up and running. The gentoo documentation is really excellent, so a newbie will learn a lot about linux.
In addition, gentoo also supports binary packages.

and compiling...
 

Compiling isn't as hard as you may think.

1. unzip the source *.tar.bz2 into a subfolder in your root folder
2. open console
3. type su
4. move to the folder you just unzipped into
5. type ./configure
6. install anything it stops and complains about
7. type make
8. watch a tv program for 20 or so minutes
9. type make install

that's pretty much it, compiling is pretty automated these days.

There's always the exception like with mplayer you should type ./configure --enablegui

to get the gui to work, and you need to manually add the codecs, skins and fonts into seperate folders before install but besides that most are just like I said above.

p.s. only install what the ./configure actaully stops at, don't just install everything it doesn't detect. and install using the above method, rpms will just slow you down in the long run.

Re: and compiling...
 

gentoo linux (www.gentoo.org) has the "emerge" command to do all this in one step.