Hello everyone,

I'll try to keep this short and precise, that way everyone gets what they want and can get on..
Now, I've tried several "flavors" of Linux including Knoppix,Dsl,Slackware, Gentoo,Debian, Fedora, Linux Mint, Linspire 6,Ubuntu, Mandriva, PCLinux, Mepis, OpenSuse, Solaris,& FreeBSD.

I want to LEARN to Operate(* We're talking constructive working, not surfing and reading emails!)and eventually code in these. Are the listed above "novelty" Distros for linux newbies? Would I be better off using a different kind? I've decided to stick with Ubuntu for now, seeing as its the most popular, and I can find my way through tutorials. I learned the ways of windows by messing things up, and then fixing them. Linux isn't that easy though, & I find myself re-installing more than tinkering. So seeing as this is a forum for newbies, could you guys point out some good sites that explain the konsole commands, what I should look for, where not to go in the folders, etc. etc.? Thanks for the time, Have a goody!

All those Distros are fine - each to their own - you won't get a conclusive answer on the ultimate one. that's one thing you'll need to make your own mind up on

For help, start HERE - Google for LOTS of other sites, newsgroups etc etc

You can download books from here:

http://tldp.org/

to help you learn all about Linux. None of the distros you mentioned are "novelty" distros. Some are easier to install and run than others.

Setting up Arch Linux can be educational.

In addition to tldp, check out the O'Reilly website. They now have some free books...+ the Safari subscription service.

IBMs offerings are also worth a read - HERE

...every one of the distros that you quote can be used for useful learning. From what you want, I'd tend to prefer one of the 'big, do everything' distros to one of the 'fits on business card CD' distros. (I'm not saying that the latter don't have a purpose; for what you want, though, having a good selection of compilers and tools is going to be important; in the small distros you will have to do something special to make these work, for the big distros {Debian, Fedora, OpenSuSE stand out as the biggest, but the other non-small ones are good too}.

For the big distros this should just be a question of selecting the right packages at install time (or adding them later from the DVD).

For the moment, I would stick to one distro and try to learn it in a bit more detail. It hardly matters which one you start with; most of what you learn will be transferable.

I'm a bit worried about the re-installing aspect; you really shouldn't be installing all that often and if you are you could probably do with thinking a bit more in advance. While it is true that someone who never made a mistake never made anything, you should be concerned if the rubber wears out before the pencil!

Well if you want to learn linux Rute is a good place to start. Also study the FHS File Hierarchy System.

Same as windows, you need to FIX the problems in order to learn the system, not re-install to avoid the hassle. You won't learn anything other than how-to install Linux if you just re-install every time you hit a bump in the road.

RUTE and TLDP as mentioned earlier are excellent sites..

heres a few others.

http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/linuxcommand.org/index.php

http://tille.garrels.be/training/tldp/index.html

http://www.linux.org/lessons/interm/book1.html

farslayer, thanks this is giving me crap loads of info! you guys rock. Pretty soon I'll be good enough to call myself a linux illiterate! Right now, I'm just a *shiver* Microsoft switcher

We've all been there... pretty soon the d-t's will go away and you'll be free... heh

My favorite learning tool ended up being CentOS (Redhat/Fedora based) using the command line only. If you're in it to learn until you start developing, try to set up a box with ssh, ftp, firewall, apache, php, mysql, and email completely command line. It's an exercise that will make you comfortable with your OS. Try not to use yum or apt-get if you really want to have some fun. Of course, those are more networking things that I really use, so fill in the blank with installing gcc, etc, if you're going to be programming.

Pick a well supported ('big') distro, install it, and then back it up somewhere to avoid having to re-install it.
Then learn (research) how to do a restore.
Or get a CD bootable version like Knoppix to play with.

Get a book on linux for beginners (many are available on the web/online do a Google).
Read the HOW-TO's & FAQ's (see http://www.tldp.org/), browse forums like this one, and see what other newbies are doing and what their fixes are.
Just be aware that there are alot of flavours of Linux out there, and things are done a bit differently
on each, such as what & where programs are installed, how they are configured, etc.

This can also be a useful background/comparison read for someone new to Linux: http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm