Good morning, I am new member to LQ. I joined to familiarize myself with Linux.

I've been doing some initial research to try and decide which Linux distro I should start with
to gain more experience and it appears that Fedora is the optimal one followed by Ubuntu.
Also just based on the initial research I am leaning to the GNome desktop enviroment.

The other thing which I am looking at is E-Mail client to use.
Here below are two articles from Tech Radar that I've found provided some helpful info.

My plan is to purchase a cheap windows laptop, wipe it clean, make two partitions,
load Fedora on one partition and Ubuntu on the second partition. This I believe
will allow me to get a feel for both.

I would be interested in hearing from folks on their experience on running Linux on
windows intel based hardware vs a MAC OS Lion. I will be purchasing a Mac laptop in the
next 3 months and plan to run Linux on that as well via VMware on the desktop if that is
possible. Please feel free to share your feedback, links and any best practices.


Tech Radar Articles:

10 best Linux distros for 2011
Updated: How to choose the best Linux distro for you.
http://tinyurl.com/857ammo


Best Linux email client: 5 reviewed and rated
In Depth: Evolution vs Thunderbird vs KMail vs Claws Mail vs Zimbra.
http://tinyurl.com/85pn7k8


Thank you for your time.


Pablo

These kinds of questions often turn in to long diatribes about what is better. You have done some valid research and have reached a political sort of decision. What you have chosen to do is like having one Republican and one Democrat in your living room. Fedora (the Republican) has ties to commercial interests, is a development platform for RedHat, and really is at the forefront of the linux world. The RPM package management system is robust and is (technically) the standard.

Ubuntu, which is based on Debian, represents the left side of the aisle. Debian believes only in Open Source, the New Deal of computing. Ubuntu is more practical in that it makes Closed Source programs more readily available (This makes it the Populist candidate). Ubuntu is also at the forefront of the linux world, though Linux Mint is giving them a run for their money.

If you don't have a job that involves server maintenance or computer development, my experience is that all roads lead to Debian or Slackware. They really are the basis of all this. You have chosen good places to start. If you give them equal time, you will learn much.

1 members found this post helpful.

I will devote a second post to EMail clients. I have tried all of the ones you mentioned except KMail. I no longer use the top-heavy desktop environments (KDE and Gnome). You have to love Mozilla, so Thunderbird is always a contender. I do like the simplicity of Claws. The beauty of Gnu/Linux is that you can try them side-by-side and see which you prefer. Zimbra is designed to be an Outlook replacement. If you don't have commercial interests, I would skip it. It has a lot of features you will never use.

Because you have done some real research and seem open to possibilities, check out Seamonkey and Opera. They give you great browsers and EMail clients together. Seamonkey is Open Source, Opera is not. Both free. Evolution probably comes with Ubuntu by default. It works and you may be happy with it.

Good Luck!

1 members found this post helpful.

One more post concerning Linux and MacOS. You will have no trouble running Linux in a virtual machine if you wish. This again strikes me as a Republican vs Democrat kind of thing. In this case Mac takes the Republican role. Steve Jobs was great at making money. He really wanted to monopolize the computer world, particularly creative media. MacOS is smooth and trouble-free, but it is diametrically opposed to the Open Source linux world. I have tried all this. Mac is overpriced and overrated. It is better than Windows, but wants to sell to the same market. It now runs on top of Unix, more or less. There really is no advantage to Mac over Linux, unless you just want to spend lots of money.

1 members found this post helpful.

@liberalchrist

Good morning and thank you very much for the information and valuable input. I appreciate it.

If I may, I would like to get your input on virtualization.
Is there a specific virtualizaiton product that you've had good experience with
using that you would recommend?


Thank you,

Pablo

Linux is more like getting a pet. It picks you.

1 members found this post helpful.

It will be a good idea if you have a distro with Gnome and the other with KDE so you can become familiar with these two popular desktop enviroments.
for virtualization if you are going to do it from a mac platform then virtualbox will be the choice, if you are doing it from linux perhaps the Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM, qemu) will be a good choice considering the kernel has suport built in. you still need to download the modules from your distro repositories.

A comment about post#2 is that Canonical a software company from Nederlands is making lots of money out of Ubuntu, so Ubuntu is also tied to commercial interests. And not just that but it is also locking up lots of things in the distro so the user has no business changing it.

Good luck to you.

1 members found this post helpful.

VirtualBox has worked pretty flawlessly for me. I have run both Windows7 and MacOS inside Slackware with it. It is the only one I have used, but it has given me no reason to try anything else.