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If you want to learn much more try to prepare your system manually. It'll give you a lot of knowledge about the system and its internal dependencies.
Look at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/view/cvs/
If you choose Redhat, I recommend 7.3. I have had crashes with 9.0, but it may have been an xscreensaver bug.
I use Gentoo for the bleeding edge stuff and I use Redhat 7.3 currently for working because I have it configured and rock stable. It probably will be replaced with Gentoo as it's getting there for me.
Mandrake is for some recording programs I found an install script for and I am learning it now.
Newer releases have more bugs that newbies have trouble dealing with.
Never mind on the iso disk question...found my answer, but if this is wrong, please let me know.
have a slow connection. How many of the ISO's for one distribution do I need to do an install?
You should be able to complete a working Linux installation using only the first ISO of any distribution listed. I say should only because I have not tried every distribution, nor read the complete documentation, myself. Once your distribution is installed, you can download and install any updates and additional programs. Since certain distributions are getting bigger and bigger you might want to buy the distribution from it's creators or use our "Buy" button to buy from one of our affiliates.
The best way to tell the differences between the releases would be to read the release notes for each release. You would miss the most hated features of 8.0 and 9.0, that's for sure. Buy them both plus Mandrake, Knoppix and maybe even Gentoo's live cds. They are cheap and I have some I can send you for a sase CD mailer. You can probably get someone close to you in a LUG to burn and give you some.
I avoided 8.0 from the posts I had seen about it, but some seemed to like 9.0, but I didn't take the time to look for the causes of my freezes in 9.0 as I know 7.3 pretty well and there are no quirks in it now.
Originally posted by rmartine If you really want to learn and have time, start with an old distro and upgrade it over time.
Don't install X. You'll be forced to use the cli. You'll learn real fast.
I kind of hate to say it, but he's right!
I used Linux for years, & got pretty familiar with the filesystem,..editing files,rebuilding the kernel & stuff. But I didn't start getting really confident util I installed Slackware with no windowing system on one of my old machines. Part of the reason I did slack (besides the independance from .rpms, lol) was the straightforward text-based install. Now that I have it set up, I just ssh(secure telnet) to it, I set up Samba on it, and some other stuff.
Let me tell you. I know the command line a LOT better.
Get comfortable with it... but as soon as you can, get an extra box, with a cheap network & video card & NO MOUSE, lol!
Then, once you have telnet, ssh, & whatever working, you can take off the monitor! Use it for another machine, or whatever.
A central source for numerous distributions is: http://www.linuxiso.org/ You might want to try several to gauge which one best fits your style. In any case, if you are interested in learning about Linux, and to echo a previous post, the book that has been most informative to me is Rute, which can be found here: http://www.icon.co.za/~psheer/rute-home.html
My 2 cents regarding Redhat is that v8 is the best version. It contains improvements over v7.x, and although I tried v9, it was kind of a waste of time. That being said, I'd recommend you try Slackware if you're serious about Linux. If learning is your goal, I'll have to say that Slack is the only way to go. As I once saw elsewhere on this board, "If you install Redhat, you will learn Redhat. If you install Slack, you will learn Linux." That to me has been totally true. -- J.W.
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Buy them both plus Mandrake, Knoppix and maybe even Gentoo's live cds. They are cheap and I have some I can send you for a sase CD mailer. You can probably get someone close to you in a LUG to burn and give you some.
