Friendliest OS for Newbies
 

:rolleyes: hello all you fellow Linux Newbies.. Iwonder how many of you are long-tyme Windows users/abusers who are used to Click and point and plug&play ,the old way,that is so intuitive.

My point here is that Iam new to LINUX ,I got Redhat 6.1 Helios on my other Box and It is nothing but Torture for me, same goes for SuSe 6.3 (except for its Yast(yet another System tool). Is thier ANY Linux Distribution out there that is easy to use as WINDOWS and does NOT have a prerequisite that you are a computer science major to install it.

All I really want to do on my "potential LinuxBox" is surf the web and listen to mp3,s CD,s .

Thank you ,ChilIBowl

Mandrake 9.0 is very user friendly much better than RH 6.1

Hello
 

I am by no means a Linux expert but from my own experience Linux does have a steep learning curve. However that does smooth out as lessen as you get familiar with the various commands and are able to write some simple shell scripts to automate some tasks.

BTW all of the reviews I have read about SuSE 8.x suggest you will be up and running SuSE in about half of an hour. The installer itself is graphical. Answer some questions and away you go.

Good Luck :study:

Redhat 6.1 and Suse 6.3 are fairly old distros, and aren't very user friendly like there newer versions are, if you want redhat get 7.3 or 8.0, if you want Suse get 8.0 or 8.1, but i say you would be good with Mandrake 9.0...

All very easy...

#Garry

I have a triple boot system running Win98SE, RedHat 7.2, Mandrake 8.2 and to me Mandrake was the easiest to instal & setup but I do suggest that if you install Mandrake 8.2 use the expert install methodit seemed to work better then the default install but this is just my opinion.

Bubba169

What are the System Requirements for SuSe 8.0 0r 8.1 ,in a perspective that my "future linux Box" is a COMPAQ Deskpro 2000 w/Pentium166 CPU and 64Mybte of RAM (Icould go to 128 easily). My hard Drive is 1.2 gig ide ,Basic cd-rom <works ok-with other previously mentioned Linux Versions>,Matrox Millenium Vid card. Would my Hdrive be too small for any of these later Versions{distributions} RedHat 7.2 or SuSe 8.0

Lastly ,any consideration of PEANUT LINUX????? for this entry -level computing experiment???!!!!!!! Chilibowl

I don't know about Suse because I never have tried it but as far as system requirements go I think your biggest problem would be getting the GUI interface to work with your video card as far as harddrive size goes only install just what you need. I haven't tried PEANUT Linux either I downloaded it twice and both times the install failed (this was my first attempt at Linux also) but I found another little distro called Vector Linux http://www.ibiblio.org/vectorlinux/index.htm I used version 1.8 on a Pent. 166 non-MMX, 16 Mb of ram, ISA soundcard (Soundblaster), 420Mb harddrive (later swapped it for a 4gig), Trident TGUI 9660 1Mb video card. Vector Linux 1.8 worked great for me it's Slackware based and I used this setup for about 4 months when a faulty powersupply killed my floppy, HD, ram so I built an AMD XP 1800 box for RedHat 7.2. One last thing Vector run decent on 16Mb of ram but when I installed Open Office & Star Office 5.2 I had to up the ram so I went to 64Mb.

Bubba169

Thank you for the Reply BUBBA169 ,I just might try that VECTOR LINUX ,Could I download it onto my WINDOWS 98 box Ihave here on to a floppy and put this floppy onto my future LINUX BOX(as previuosly mentioned) and simply "file transfer-sneakernet" onto my HDRive, or does LINUX downloads do NOT work onto WINDOWS machines??

Chilibowl

The way I downloaded Vector Linux was that I downloaded the ISO image from here ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/dist...ctorlinux/iso/ just simply download the ISO image then using NERO or some other CD burnong software burn the image to a CD-R (in NERO go to File then burn image then select the image you downloaded). Now you will have a bootable CD (if the BIOS supports it).

You can download any kind of file (Linux, MAC, etc..) to a Windows box but you can only execute what Windows recognizes (mostly DOS based apps) in order to create a boot floppy for Linux on a Windows box I believe you'll need RawWrite http://freshmeat.net/projects/rawwri...42%2C147%2C143 then you can create a boot floppy. I found it to be easier for me to just burn the ISO image to a CD-R & have a bootable CD then insert thed CD and reboot from the CD then start the install. My Pent 166 would boot from the CD but you should check yours to see if it will.

Bubba169

I consider myself an experienced linux NEWBIE, I've managed to use a linux distro for a year and still not know basic stuff, apparently this is the joy in using linux, personally I think I'm just a little slow :)

Since I've started I've used Mandrake, having started with 7.2, even at that stage it was an easy introduction into linux, and have since gone through every release they've dished out. I'm currently using Mandrake 9 and as always, absolutely love it. Many will tell you that SuSe, Red Hat and Mandrake are the way to go and since I've only ever tried Red Hat as an alternative to Mandrake (obviously it didn't stick) I can only suggest that your best bet is to research the three of these. Visit the web pages and see which one appeals to you more.

I think for what your looking for all of thee of these distros will do what your asking and ton's more, certainly there will always be the little quirks that linux users tend to live with but hey that's the fun right :)

Anyways good luck to you and have fun.

Anna

I have an older machine 200mhz 128MB, I've been running RH7.3 on it for a little while now. The only problem with it is speed. It's mega slow when using GNOME. Do you guys think Vector Linux or Peanut Linux would run a bit smoother on these older configs?

Whats up everybody. I'm a newbie to linux and (don't bash on me) using lindows right now. I have heard all types of treturous comments about lindows and how it might scare off the average windows user. Well it didn't scare me off. It's very user friendly and recognizes and installs most of your hardware for you. Despite the fact that a lot of hardware and software companies don't support linux of types, linux still interests. The fact lindows is trying to charge you for everything, does suck. But all you have to do is find it on the web for free. Any linux platform could scare off the average windows user. Especially the ones that are a pain just to get up and running. I've only tried 3: Redhat 6.1, Mandrake 8.1 and lindows. Of course there was a gap between using both redhat and mandrake and then using lindows. When i tried redhat, I almost didn't want to deal with linux, but i like to mess with things and linux was something unexplored so i searched for another and found mandrake. Mandrake was a lot easier to use and i had more success, but found it hard to get my hardware working. Of course due to lack of linux knowledge. So I quit for a while messing with linux till i turned Windows XP in and out and tired of it crashing all the damn time. Then I ran into Lindows 3.0, almost like windows, but without crashing (so far), of course the lack of supported hardware and software and if they are looking to try to take the market away from windows, i would suggest finding a better solution to doing a simple process as installing a program which has been a hassle for me in all 3 linux OSs. Lindows is on track with there click-n-run, but to charge $99 for free software? Sorry, didn't win my vote and your deffinitely not going to take the market from windows.
Lindows would be a good place to start to learn some commands. This way your computer and most of it's hardware will be at least running normal and you can still do normal operations while learning linux. Once you get that down, you can tackle installing hardware with other linux os's. I'm about to go try out mandrake 9.0 and see what improvements have been made since 8.1. I'd also like to hear from you guys trying out that Vector linux.
OK now my question. Lindows is based of Debian and no, i'm not an insider as they call lindows users who were suckered into paying $99 for free software. So of course lack of support. Anyhow, I can't for the life of me figure out how to install deb files. And does anyone no where i can find that alien software to convert rpm's?

I ran Vector Linux 1.8 on a pent.166non-MMX and it ran fine. Now I bought 2 of these pents. at a local auction for $15.00 (US) each (monitors, KB, Mouse included) one of the boxes I did a CPU upgrade from 166 to an AMD K6-2 400Mhz from Evergreen Technologies, both had 16 Mb of ram so upgraded both to 64Mb, same video card, NIC, Soundcard, motherboards in both PC's the only differences were one had a 3 gig HD & one had a 4 Gig HD & the Windows box had a software modem in it. I was shocked to find that the 166 w/ Vector 1.8 was much faster then the 400Mhz w/ Win98SE. Now Vector is Slackware based so it wasn't the easiest to learn but I used a Windows program (AnalogX Proxy) then using a crossover cable I let Netscape connect to the internet through a proxy on my Windows box, I dual-booted this box with Win98SE later on. I really learned alot from this distroso if you have older hardware and just want to learn Linux not use it everyday for now I would say get Vector Linux but be forewarned I soon wanted to try more and more then I went and built a new box & triple booted it. Linux is very addictive.

Bubba169

I submit to you that Linux has no more of a steep learning curve than any other OS. It is different from the "other famous OS", which means that if you are new to Linux but have become reasonably conversant in Windoze, you need to climb the OS learning curve again -- but the Linux curve isn't any more steep than the learning curve for DOS/Windoze, it's just that because it is different, you must climb again.

Linux is not rocket science, although it is used in rocket science :D !

chili, I started as a noob with RH 7.1, then Slack 8.0 and now Mandy 9.0. I've found Mandy to be the most user friendly as it has a lot of gui tools.

I triple boot the 3 distros (along with W2K) on a PII 166Mhz with 64MB of RAM and 2 x 20GB HDs and they all run equally well. Mandy probably detected my h/w better and the gui tools made the manual h/w setups easier.

Personally I just don't want to use Linux though, I want to experience it, so I try to use the command line as much as possible.

I like Slack, now that I'm not such a noob.