I posted this also in the general section because I am not sure which is the best section, anyways:


First: can I find hardware driver to download for linux ? And if so are they compatible with all the different distributions ? I mean is a driver the same for any linux distribution or does each distribution require a different driver ?

Same question for any software program. Can I just download a general program for any general linux and know it will work on anything, debian, red hat or whatever, or does each distribution require a different download ?

This is very confusing for me.

Also Are all the distributions binary compatible (for example all those for Intel 86) or are they all different binary programs ? What is the fundamental difference between the distributions ? Are they all completely different programs ?


Sorry and thanks for any help....

hardware support is somethign that the kernel deals with, and generally the kernel is similar across distributions. as it's somethign the kernel provides, you don't generall download drivers, they come with the kernel. additionally hardware support is chipset centric not model centric. as such you don't load a driver for a network card made by xyz corps, model 123abc, you load a driver for a netowrk card based on chip abc, irrespective of who made it etc...

compiled software is generally built with a specfiic distribution, indeed a specific version of a distribution, in mind. more often than not this is implicit as it's compiled as an rpm for redhat, a deb for debian etc, so you can't (well.. don't) get close to trying to install them as there's nothign that recognises those alien file types by default. if you download a source package and compile it, it should work on any distribtuons, as it can dynamiacally detect things which would otherwise need to be decided in advanced with a prcompiled packge, e.g. required versions of core libraries etc... more often than not though, you can just use the built-in package management systems of the dsitribtuion, e.g. yum or apt to install things without downloading anythign yourself at all.

not really sure what you mean on the last section... often you can pick out a simple c program, and copy it between distributions, but if it wants more complex requirements you can foul up. generally you just don't do this sort of thing in the first place, just doesn't happen.

One of the great things about Linux is that the drivers typically come with the distribution. Only rarely do you have to install a driver manually.

Any Linux application can be made to run on just about any distribution. The key is having all the right libraries. The best way to do this is thru the package manager. A good package management system (eg apt/synaptic) actually makes SW installation EASIER than on Windows.

Thanks alot for your help. So if I understand right, the process is not like in windows where I can find an exe file or an install file, download it and click and it gets installed. It seems that in linux you must recompile the source all over again because of libraries etc. Is this true ?

So you can't find a precompiled program that will immediately run on a linux box, indeed you say that even the same distribution but different versions can create incompatibilities, is this true ?

So program A that runs on red hat for example, can't just be copied to another distribution, like debian, but must always be recompiled all over again ? (always on the same Intel 86 type machines I mean, I know that other processors can't run code compiled for a different processor)

I saw linspire website, so those programs can't run on other distributions ?

Are the kernels exactly the same or do they all have some differences between distributions meaning that the behavior of a program is unknown on another distribution ?


Thanks for any help, but it is a bit confusing....

It depends on what distro you are using, many distributions got package-managers. for example; I'm using archlinux, which got a package manager called "pacman", if I want to install firefox, then I would only need to do a "pacman -S firefox" in a terminal to get all things necessary without having to do anything, whilst one would need to download a firefox installer and check so windows got all dependencies in windows (which it usually, but not always, has ).

For the "big" distributions, you will rarely (if ever) need to compile anything from source. It's a very good idea to figure out how to use the package manager that comes with the distro and use that to install/uninstall everything.

From my limited experience, I'd say that a lot of programs will run on different distros (that use the same chipset) using the same pre-compiled binary. The real problem that you're likely to find with this is the libraries that a program depends on. Just about any reasonably complex program will depend on a few libraries, which causes the complication that first, you need to check that a suitable version of the library is installed, and second, it needs to be installed in a path where your program can find it. For this reason, it's generally a good idea to compile from source on each different distro and/or make a package of the program.

to start with assume that this is the case. but as i said above, you go about installing software in a different way. now yes under windows you can install a program for 98, me, xp, 2k from the same package, (but that's normally because everything is so crippled it'd only use the most basic method, resulting in poor performance etc... ) but under most modern linux distro's you don't even download anythign in the first place, just run the package manager directly, as mentioned a number of times already,
a kernel comes originally from kernel.org and is deemed "vanilla" each vendor then usually applies security patches or feature enhancements not (yet) part of the standard kernel according to how they wish their system to operate. they also enable and disable functionality as they see fit.

I have not compiled a Linux application in many weeks. On my system (Mepis--a Ubuntu spinoff), the repositories have 98% of what I need.

You will find some of these questions easier to understand when you actually start running Linux. Pick one of the distros in the top ten at Distrowatch and dive in...

find a distro who is friendly to mp3 and the likes ... so that you dont need to do unnessary things(with grumbling) with your desktop ...


.

Ok, thanks alot, i think I got how it works. But if each kernel is somewhat different then the concept of "standard" is very vague in the linux world isn't it ? I know it is a very technical platform for experiments and optimizations and servers etc. but this flexibility also means much is not really standard, but you always have to kind of fiddle around with it...

Also which is the king distribution that probably has everything ? Is linspire good ?

NO distribution has everything...

Linspire is fine, but why pay when there are really good free distros? At least START with a free one.

really depends who's asking the questions. from your perspective i'd suggest letting it largely wash over you for the time being... there's not going to be anything different within any kernel that you'd percieve to be important or relevant.
i hate linspire. i am, however, a zealot... horses for courses mate. don't judge a distribution by how many packages it has of course. infact i'd think that due to linspires commercial wrap, it would have less support, as there's no community out there making them for it, unless you branch out to freespire, which then isn't linspire in the first place. linspire pretends it's "windows for free" not linux...

Well, linspire does have some kind of 'community' thing like most of the other corporate distros, doesn't it? [ed. -- Oops. Took awhile to post and didn't see acid_kewpie'd already answered that.]

Anyway, my understanding is that most any deb-based, rpm-based, or *BSD system will get you thousands of packages. You're not likely to use thousands of programs, anyway, so most anything should suit, but probably Debian or FreeBSD would get you the most; I dunno.

Then again, with Slackware or any of the non-deb/rpm/bsd systems, you'd still have access to every bit of Linux software under the sun - you'd just have to compile a lot of it.

At a guess, the distro with the most packages available is Debian, but the stable branch of that tends to be a long way behind the latest releases (for a variety of reasons). Probably the most beginner-friendly distros are Ubuntu and Fedora. As pointed out by acid_kewpie, there's a lot of personal taste, you just need to find what suits you. That said, a lot of new users (and I was definitely one of these) try out a whole load of distros when they start out, often without a great deal of benefit. My advice would be to try a couple of the most popular, "simpler" ones such as Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Mandriva or SuSe, and just stick with the one that works easiest to start with. Once you've begun to get a handle on how things work, then you'll be in a better position to decide what distro to go with - you'll have found glitches that annoy you, and features that you like, and these will help you to narrow down your decision. If you have more than one box you're going to install Linux on, it might be an idea to choose different distros for each one, so you can get a handle on which things tend to work in the same way, and which things tend to be different.