Hello. I'm Ricardo & I want to know the best distrobusion for me. I have known of Linux, but never had or experienced one. I have only seen vids about Linux. So,this is the Best kind I want that has all of these:

. High Tech
. 3D/Animative/Interactive
. "Cool" (Eye Candy)
. Customizable (Lots of options)
. User Friendly (Easy/medium to get around with)

So, let me know if you know one(s).

Thank You very much.



Ricardo

(Note: Check out my other posted for Linux & PDA/Pocket PC help.)

High Tech? What do you mean by that?!

All Linux distributions consist more or less of the same stuff - just differently packed and differently configured and differently branded and a different installer and sometimes patches added.

In that manner it simply doesn't matter if you play your movies with mplayer under SuSE or with mplayer under Debian or whatever other distribution.

3D depends on your graphic's hardware wether the chip is nicely supported by X11's 3D stuff or not.

Linux is that much configurable that if you like to see how your internet packages are made by your operating system, you can do so. You won't get through all the configurability for several years.

It will be as cool as you make it. You can theme either KDE or Gnome - which are 2 of 3 desktop systems available and every windowmanager available under Linux which supports themes.

Usally, many users seem to be doing well with Ubuntu or SuSE for a start. Install a bunch and develop your own taste. Other do well with Debian or Slackware.

And read. Read a lot.

Use Ubuntu, very user friendly.

I will personally recommend SuSE as a starting point. Not that great in the long haul (IMO), but better than Ubuntu (again IMO).

Yeah, I have herd of Ubuntu. lot of good things about it, but I also herd of one (Forgot name. I think the name is Sabyon.) that you can make the desktop interface like a 3D cube. It uses a type of thing called Beryl, I think. That one seems to be High in Tech. I'll see also maybe see about Linux programming. What tools & equipments would I need to make a Linux of my own? What programming languages can & should I use? Tutorials on the web? Recommended books?

Thank You.



Ricardo

Ubuntu or Fedora make good starting points, maybe Debian (Ubuntu is based on Debian but it is somewhat easier to use). Ubuntu has beryl by default, on Fedora it has to be installed first. I have used - among many other ones - Sabayon, openSuse and Mandriva but I cannot really recommend them to anyone who would use them for more than beginner's stuff. Sabayon is rather unstable, the other two are extremely good if you want to get familiar with the dreaded concept of a "dependency hell". Then again, as I said, much depends on what you intend to use them for.

Yeah. Well, what I want a Linux for is for what a Windows/Mac user wants in there OS, pretty much everything, all-in-one. I want Linux for Biz (Computer Field stuff, Office stuff, etc.), Personal (Media, Web browsing, etc.), & all in between.

P.S.

"dependency hell"?

Hehehe, maybe you really should try one of the three I mentioned...

Or wait, I'll save you the pain. A dependency is a software package that is required for another one to work (at all). For example, if you have a media player, you also need codecs because your player won't play an awful lot without anything that will do the actual processing of media files.
Now, it is typical of windows that everything comes bundled in one nice package (the well-known .exe installer). This is convenient but it also has its downsides. On Linux, however, packages that make up an application often need to be downloaded and installed separately. Because collecting all those packages is such a bore, most distributions come with a "package manager", a utility that is smart enough to figure out which packages are needed by a particular application. It will automatically fetch the dependencies and install them. In theory, that is, because here is where dependency hell comes in.
Some package managers simply tend to do a poor job. As a rule, things will install just fine at first but as you install more or begin installing updates, they introduce packages that conflict with what you already have. Then you get to choose: either you don't accept the new package - which is frustrating - or you uninstall the conflicting package that was already installed and you hope that there is another version available that does not conflict. But often that package is required by another one so you have to remove that one too because it's useless if one of its pieces is missing. And guess what? If you remove it, you find that it is required by yet another package, which then has to be uninstalled too. And then that package... I think that you get the picture. Doing all of that manually would be annoying so the package manager comes to the rescue again. It will offer to remove all conflicting packages in one go. But since A depends on B, B on C, C on D, etc. you shouldn't be surprised that telling the manager to remove one tiny package results in it removing a few hundred megabytes of other ones. In fact, I remember one occasion where Suse removed no less than 2 Gigabytes of software trying to solve a dependency conflict. Then you have to reinstall all of that, hoping that you don't run into any new conflicts - but half of the times you do.
Now, to be honest, Suse and Mandriva have gotten a lot better at this but it's still not perfect. And that's simply unacceptable considering that this kind of problem does not exist on Ubuntu or Debian. It does exist on Fedora but it has become really easy to solve.

If you want the 3D desktop (beryl, compiz) enabled by default, I would also recommend going with Ubuntu. If you don't mind simply installing it from enabled software repositories, I would suggest SimplyMepis.

In principle, Compiz (Beryl is merged together into Compiz/Fusion) is running on all distributions - the question is: how well is the distribution prepared? Ubuntu is surely worth a try.

But how well 3D is running on your system highly depends on your available graphic's hardware and how well it is supported. Some vendors open their sepcifications - so it's easier to write suitable drivers - some doesn't.

Use the programming language you like - I don't know of any common one not available for Linux. (And many uncommon ones..

Books.. check for something for your distribution as a start - after that, it depends on your subject what book is best. (Webstuff? Perl? C? Device drivers? Lisp? PHP? Mono? Gtk? Qt? ...)

For tutorials please check Google - not that I'm unwilling to help, but there are simply way too many subjects and therefore specific tutorials.

If you want "programming Linux", the language (and book and tutorial) depends on what exactly you are planning to do. (Kernel, GUI, networking..)

If you are possibly someone who really wants to know and really dive deeply into Linux and configure everything by yourself, Slackware is what you want as a start and after some time, try yourself on "Linux from Scratch" (making your own distribution a little bit easier..)

If in the long run you would really like to be a real linux expert or programmer, try not to do things using a GUI application, use a command line. In many cases a GUI application is a simplified version of a console command - that's where the power of linux lies

Wow. Thanks everybody . It seems like that Linux is mostly for Techy people. Well, it seems the Ubuntu Linux type is the best. Does Ubuntu have problems, errors, ect. at all or at least the very littlest? I also want to know, how I can make a Linux of my own?*

Thank You.



Ricardo

* = I'll research this.

Problems? Few in my experience but I don't know an operating system that is perfect. And much will depend on your hardware.

A Linux of your own? Like your own distribution? I wouldn't even think about that until you are comfortable using a ready-made one.

No, Linux isn't just for Tech people. But you'll have to read.

A Linux distribution on your own is relatively easy possible with "Linux from Scratch". Check out the sub-forum.

Hehe, yes, relatively easy, you said it. It is feasible but it will require a lot of reading and research (and time, obviously) unless a person has been using Linux for a while.