Hi all,

i need some help here.

Im totally new to Linux - and am sick and tired of win-blows; There's no way in hell that im going back to it.

So which linux shd i begin with? - Im willing to put my time in, and want to master Linux no matter how long it takes.

Right now i have Mandrake 10 installed, but i figured its not all that easy. It would be alot better if it had some basic tutorials for setting up tar.gz and rpg files (or explain what they are). etc etc...

So which ("distro"?) would be the best for someone like me?

suggestions would be appreciated

hmm suse and redhat.

But remember, its never as easy as windows

I switched from W to Mandrake 10. I would say it took me about 1 to 2 months to start to feel somewhat comfortable. Somewhat. It takes a lot of fooling around, lots of mistakes, check everyones links and read everything you can get your hands on. Mandrake 10 is fairly Windows friendly I thought. After 2 months of some battling, I started to feel like, hey, this is pretty neat. Not necessarily easy but pretty cool. Everyone is wonderfully helpful here. I still dual boot but really starting to enjoy Mandrake after a lot of playing with it and reading everything online I could. I think most say Mandrake, SUSE or Knoppix is best.

Hang in there.

Use any of them, try several of them out. In the end, their all the same with the same functionality of any other. Some have easier installations and tools to configure, but well, try several to see which you one you like the best out of the box per se..

Join the Newbie wave, I just switched and I like it much better. I have found that the Redhat Fedora Core 2 works well for newer machines and Redhat 9 is really good for machines that don't have all the strange built-in systems. As it looks like, I have only used Redhat. I have installed 3 different distro's of redhat before I found one I liked. That is not to say Gentoo will not do what you want or the other 6 or 7 distro's out there. Please read http://www.linuxquestions.org/reviews/index.php?cat=2. It is the LQ Distro Reviews. It might help some.


mst700

I suggest Xandros 2.0 - its very easy to set up, and is familiar for Windows users. Although, if you want more power and flexability, then I suggest Fedora Core 2, although it is a bit harder to get up and running (I love it though, cause of its bluecurve insurface and gnome integration)

I've tried RH9, Fedora, and Mandrake but in the end I'm a SuSE fan. It easy to setup and user friendly.

Linux from Scratch, dude. That's the way to go!

But seriously, Mandrake 10 is a good starter choice at the moment.

Suse has the advantage that if you buy it you get some pretty decent manuals and even a month or two support. Mandrake is not bad for newbies. I'd say buy a good book to go with it. A good book doesn't need to be mandrake specific. Ther'es probably a linux for dummies.

I'm with amosf, lfs (or core linux, or any distro that has only a console at start) is the way to go, you will learn howto do things in the console so when you get a really good distro (i like Gentoo best personally) things will be relatively easy, i learned linux in just a few months by using core linux from the start (tried lfs, but i was to lazy to make a non-root account , so i failed (don't ask why... I'm still wondering that, all i know is they said you cant be root when you make lfs)

Moved: This thread is more suitable in Linux - Distributions and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

Cool

I think it depends on what you want to do with linux or what you expect from it.
If you do not want to learn much about Linux itself, but want a good Desktop-System to work with, I´d recommend Mandrake.

If you are willing to learn a lot about Linux itself, and you are prepared to do things "by hand" without any "wizards" and stuff, and then enjoy the success of setting up a good and clean system you can work with and at the same time know how things are working, I´d recommend Slackware.

In the beginning I tryed Suse, Mandrake, RedHat and Fedora, all with no success, and all of them left me frustrated about Linux itself.
Then I found Slackware and it helped me to learn much faster than any other distribution before.
( but only because I am the type of person who really enjoys the feeling that you get when you hear some sound after three weeks fighting with ALSA on an old Laptop )
A lot of people say that Slackware is no good for newbies. I don´t think so. It made me learn ( and it still does every day ), and i tink that´s the way it should be with Linux