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Old 11-15-2006, 08:05 AM   #16
itz2000
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Registered: Jul 2005
Distribution: Fedora fc4, fc7, Mandrake 10.1, mandriva06, suse 9.1, Slackware 10.2, 11.0, 12.0,1,2 (Current)]
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If I were you I'd go for

Mandriva or Fedora Core
instead of the ubunto state...
 
Old 11-15-2006, 08:37 AM   #17
samra
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Registered: May 2006
Distribution: Centos 5
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ubuntu, because i saw an ad about it,, its mre like a question which had no answer
 
Old 11-15-2006, 10:45 AM   #18
tuxus
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choosing Linux distro

Been there - I know where you're coming from.

I did what has been suggested - d/l as many different distro's as you possibly can - "live" and "regulars" and try them out.

One mistake I made, coming from a Windows environment, was looking for the "ideal" distro that would simply work with everything in my box. Big, big mistake. Not that that's not nice and easy, but it should NOT be the sole reason for choosing a distribution.

You're far better of, in the long run, to learn and UNDERSTAND why something is not working. Many have suggested Ubuntu, others Fedora etc. Other die-hard 'nix fans will assure you that there is no way to better learn and understand Linux than to go from the command-line. To an extent - they are correct. However, it is also very intimidating.

What worked for me is, read, read and read, and not being afraid to mess things up. LEARN what partitioning means, what it can do for you, LEARN about /home /var/ tmp /boot swap etc etc. If you blindly install a Linux distro and accept default installations, I bet that sooner or later your computer will suggest that you make a change to, or will reference to a partition you never ever knew you had on your system.

That will mean, in reality, that you should NOT rely on your Linux system in the beginning. (I know - that's an oxymoron, as it is unquestionably far more reliable than Windows). What I mean to say is, don't save important files, etc to your hard drive, because I GUARANTEE you that you will wipe them out and lose them because of HUMAN error.

What also has been neglected to mention (sorry, folks) is that you WILL be limited with respect to the hardware you are running. If you have a current system - go for it. It won't matter. However, if you have an older system, say a high-end PII or low-end PIII you will definitely "feel" your system be more sluggish with a full-blown desktop, and some distro's will simpy tell you that your hardware is too old/insufficient. Most distro's are excellent in recognizing hardware, but, as many will agree, chances are you will have to "tweak" your system to get everyting just right.

I was for the longest time a real distro-junkie and tried a lot - Gentoo, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Zen, Mepis, Kanotix, Mandrake, the list goes on and on. And, I'm glad I did.

Now - what did I settle on? I choose for stability, support and something that forced me to learn a lot on my own. And, since I started working with Linux in the hopes of making this a (modestly) paid hobby, I finally choose to go with a Red Hat based distro, that I put on all my boxes at home, and my laptop. (drum roll....)

*** CentOS ***

The folks at the CentOS forums are indeed NOT friendly as compared to an Ubuntu community - "spoon feeding" answers is frowned upon severely, and a few times I have seen the moderator(s) kick someone off the centos IRC channel for giving people with problems verbatim commands to input.

That's brutal, ok. But their mentality seems to be: if you want paid support and spoon fed solutions, PAY for it, and buy Red Hat, or choose another distro.
Otherwise, LEARN the d***n distribution, and thus add value to CentOS.

You know, for quite a while I simply watched the centos irc, making notes when a question popped up. And I must admit, although the answers and help in Ubuntu forums is excellent - I couldn't help but get the feeling of becoming a glorified typist/coder that knew how to copy/paste commands, without UNDERSTANDING the "how's" and "why's" - I never learned so much as by being forced to actually get my hands dirty, and figure things out for myself.

It worked for me. YMMV.

Sorry for the lengthy post. I hope it helps you and others.
 
Old 11-15-2006, 11:04 AM   #19
itz2000
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tuxus
...
if to go and something and live it == SLACKWARE!!!


but it's not as easy like that, he should go and try to handle the easy distribs first (mandriva, ubunto, Fedora core, etc) and after enough time, when he feels ready he can go to harder distrib like : gentoo, slackware, LFS, or whatever he feels like.

that's how it worked for me, and it did work.
 
Old 11-15-2006, 12:34 PM   #20
ajkrishock
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My two cents

Hi,

I came into Linux because my place of employment uses it and Sun Solaris almost exclusively. I have since used linux at home. I've experimented with SUSE, Mandrake, RedHat and Slackware. That's really not even a fraction of the options out there, but I feel I know enough about linux to make a recommendation.

If I had to provide any guidance on which Distributions to choose for someone coming into the Linux world fresh (meaning.. you know Windows but not much else), I would say.. use Fedora Core. Here's why:

1. RedHat is entrenched in the Linux community. They've been around for a long time. There is a lot of software out there for it, and lots of people out there who can provide you support.

2. Fedora is a "rapid release" product.. meaning every three months or so, you get a new, updated operating system (if you want it.. of course). This is a good way of keeping up with the traditional "my <insert device name here> doesn't work on Linux" problem.

3. you'll find RedHat/Fedora in the business community (as I have), so the skill you gain by learning Fedora might actually be marketable somewhere.

4. You're gonna have much better luck getting "exotic" devices running on Fedora.. such as video cameras, webcams, RAID controllers, etc.. I run hardware SATA RAID-0 on my Fedora box, and I love it. I also do video editing. Granted.. you could probably get these kinds of devices running on other distros, but I'd be willing to bet you'll find better drivers and support under Fedora.

5. If you're coming in from Windows, you'll find it easier to transition to RedHat than from Windows to.. say.. slackware or SUSE.

I know that the recommendations you get is to "try <insert favorite distro here>", but if you choose a distribution that relies heavily on command line, and you find yourself turned off by that, you're much more likely to throw up your hands in frustration and go back to Windows. I am arguing that RedHat/Fedora products are easier to get used to than almost any other Distribution. Ultimately, they all look more or less the same under the hood.

Ubuntu is probably the next best out there, but I can't get by the name.

Take it for whatever it's worth. That's my experience.

Last edited by ajkrishock; 11-15-2006 at 12:35 PM.
 
Old 11-15-2006, 07:25 PM   #21
Zelator
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Registered: Jul 2005
Location: Melbourne Australia
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If you want to learn about Linux then Slackware seems to be the classic. If you want an OS you can just install and use, then Ubuntu/Kubuntu, SUSE, and Fedora seem to be the front-runners. I have used all of them at some time and they all have their virtues. But be aware that any one of them may not like your hardware. I had to abandon Kubuntu 5.10 when it refused to burn CDs. Maybe there was a way round it, but I rely on my PC for a living, so I reverted to Fedora Core 4 in a hurry. My first attempts to install SUSE 10.1 were thwarted by an installer bug related to my hardware - installing 10.0 and upgrading to 10.1 got round it.
The best thing to do is make several partitions on your drive and install a few distros you like the sound of, and check them out against your hardware and see how they run the software you will need. You can also play with configuations - I found that the KDE bar can be made far less wasteful in its use of space, as can KMail.
I am using SUSE 10.1, and it is excellent, apart from a bug with Audacity. Solid, reliable, easy to maintain now the updater is fixed. I don't like the look of the Novell version of Open Office, I can't see whay they bothered, but it works just as well.
So make a small partition and try a few out.
 
Old 11-15-2006, 08:27 PM   #22
dosnlinux
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I would give distrowatch a look.

It lists a ton of distros along with their descriptions. It also has distros ranked by page visits. I would probably start with the top 10 first.
 
Old 11-16-2006, 11:25 AM   #23
RWallett
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which distro?

Well, that depends. You didn't say what you were looking to do, so it's kind of hard to give a meaningful answer

So....here's my answers based upon a couple of guesses for what you might want to do:

1) Easy, set it up and use it like it was Windows, only better: Ubuntu. This isn't based upon personal experience, but upon a number of reviews, including one from a co-worker that I greatly respect. It's supposed to be a brain-dead simple install that works with the most hardware with the least fuss. The downside--you learn more by fixing what isn't working, so if you want to become a *nix sys admin, you probably shouldn't start here.

2) Learning, don't mind tinkering "under the hood": Slackware. It's what I started with, and I've been really happy with it overall. Despite what everyone says, it's not all that hard to learn--it only took me an hour and a half to build my first Slack box--and when you learn Slack, you can jump on just about any other *nix-like O/S and apply what you know because you know what the config files do, and how to modify them yourself.

3) Gung-ho, I want to learn it all, and I want to have a really modifiable, customizable, smoking server/desktop/whatever: Gentoo. It's what I'm using at work, and what I am planning to migrate my systems at home to. Gentoo is all about setting up your system *exactly* the way you want. It's not easy--after my three years of Slack, it still took me a week to get my first Gentoo system running (but it was a laptop, so that complicates things), but I'm down to a day, if I can devote my time to it, now. You never have to reinstall your O/S with Gentoo as long as you keep good backups because you build Gentoo from source...which means you can always upgrade each package you've installed independently, so you can always have a cutting edge (or bleeding edge, if you set your package masks appropriately) machine, if you want. I'm updating my machine as I type this, in fact

4) Anything else: I don't know; these are all I've used, so far. Actually, I've also installed Caldera Linux, and wouldn't recommend it for anything, and I've installed Trixbox, but that's a modified version of CentOS with an Asterisk server and some custom management tools for Asterisk, so I haven't dug into the guts of the distro very much. Red Hat and Suse are industry standards, so if that's where you would like to go, it might be wise to gain some exposure to these distros.

Basically, like other people have said, download several distros, play with them, find what you like, what you don't like, and *then* decide which one is best for whatever you want to do with Linux.
 
Old 11-16-2006, 01:32 PM   #24
itzymat
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Ubuntu

Quote:
Originally Posted by JET-33
When it comes to deciding which os you use, what would make you lean towards one version of linux over another?

Would you choose fedora core, suse, ubuntu? Which is the best? or if that is a question which does not have an answer, why would you choose one over another? are some better at certain environments?
I would choose Ubuntu just because it is perfect for the beginner. I did, I am and I am very happy with it. But that is not to say that other distros arent good, quite the contrary, some are better. It all depends what you want to be able to do. How much control you want and how experienced you are. The good new s is you really cant go wrong. There is tons of help out there.
Enjoy
 
Old 11-16-2006, 03:52 PM   #25
edcaslinux
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Choosing a Linux Version

I know that all of the variations sound great, but I have learned, the hard way, that it all depends on the PC or hardware you use. I have had a number of problems associated with hardware not compatible (a Microsoft conspiracy) and had to replace my modem twice because the first was a Winmodem (Microsoft Windows control) and no driver could correct the problem, my second modem was listed as a Hardware modem and again no recognition by Linux and the driver did not make the cut, finally I got an external hardware modem and it now is Linux compatible. I have also experiences problems with some of the Via hardware installed on many AMD PCs these days, still on a mission to correct all of these.

I am A+ Certified and still meet these challenges with the various Linux available, so my first question is: Does my PC Hardware conform to Linux or will I have to start replacing parts in order to run the OS and take advantage of all of the hardware, speed and graphics capabilities. At this point it becomes more of a mission than a hobby.
 
Old 11-26-2006, 10:34 AM   #26
fred99
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think about vector linux, the fastest distro out there with all codec preinstalled (for movies, mp3) and it works out of the box. On top of that: you can choose which windows manager you want (the desktop), so each session you can move from KDE to XFCE, it's all preinstalled. Also in the lighter version (standart one) there's other Windows managers for slow computers. Finally you can download and install other ones like Gnome or the revolutionnary Enlightenment, a near 3D desktop, very interesting. The fastest distro I've seen with KDE.
 
Old 11-27-2006, 07:33 PM   #27
royceH
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If yopu don't mind me bandying about my 2c, I would say "Try before you buy" so to speek. This means getting a big pile of live CDs and trying them all, one by one. This will give you the best idear of what's out there, and will let you try diferent window manegars, ideologs and hardware compatibilitys without the trial of installing each before deciding on one to install. This is exactly how I decided on my distribution of choice which is Debian, through my use of Knoppix and DSL as rescue disks for windows. My list of CDs to try would include: Knoppix, DSL, Mepis, Fedora spin, berry linux, Vector, Ubantu & Kubantu (these two are realy good for comparing the two big window managers), Puppy linux live, Black dog, ect basicaly anything that's a live CD.
 
Old 11-30-2006, 12:48 PM   #28
itzymat
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Go

Quote:
Originally Posted by edcaslinux
I know that all of the variations sound great, but I have learned, the hard way, that it all depends on the PC or hardware you use. I have had a number of problems associated with hardware not compatible (a Microsoft conspiracy) and had to replace my modem twice because the first was a Winmodem (Microsoft Windows control) and no driver could correct the problem, my second modem was listed as a Hardware modem and again no recognition by Linux and the driver did not make the cut, finally I got an external hardware modem and it now is Linux compatible. I have also experiences problems with some of the Via hardware installed on many AMD PCs these days, still on a mission to correct all of these.

I am A+ Certified and still meet these challenges with the various Linux available, so my first question is: Does my PC Hardware conform to Linux or will I have to start replacing parts in order to run the OS and take advantage of all of the hardware, speed and graphics capabilities. At this point it becomes more of a mission than a hobby.
Alright then...
1.Make a complete system backup
2.Downloaad and install a distro
3.If you like it use it and enjoy the benifit of never paying for upgrades again. Or
3a. reinstall windows install backups go back to paying full price for everything never having any real help and dealing with unconcerned techs.
 
Old 12-02-2006, 02:52 AM   #29
derxob
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There are many options to consider when choosing your distro ... check out 5 resources that will help you choose your linux distribution

Good luck!
 
Old 12-02-2006, 03:19 AM   #30
kcirick
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I'm kind of confused about the initial question: Was he asking which linux distro or linux kernel? These are two different things

If you were seeking answer to the former, then shop around. Try different flavours of distro and see which one you like the most. There is no absolutely better distro than others. Of course there are personal preferences but that's different for everyone.

If you were looking for which kernel, I would go for the latest stable version (2.6.16?) and don't bother upgrading it for a long time. Right now I run 2.4.31 and it's been gold for the longest time.
 
  


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