which linux i should use ?
 

I am using window XP sp3 now i want to use linux.
also i had never use linux at all in my life
Now i want to learn step by step to use linux
can any one please guide me.My only work is networking

1. Decide what you want to do in GNU/Linux or what you would like GNU/Linux to do for you.

2. Go here: http://distrowatch.com/ where you can get a brief overview of the various offerings.

3. Have patience, and be prepared to do a lot of 'Self-Help' if you want to learn quickly.

There's not much point in suggesting which distro is better for you. You are ultimately the only one that can determine that.

If you're not into a lot of tinkering go for a distro with ease of use in mind.

Although...

If you need something for a server, CentOS, a clone of RHEL is often recommended. What you need to do is to read this and post back.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/...Ask_a_Question

You can start by downloading and burning a few live-cds for their feel and as something on which to practice. The ISO file must be burned as an image file; check your burner program. Here is the list.

http://www.livecdlist.com/

Here is a first lesson. You will find that linux is certainly not Windows, neither in structure nor in terminology.

http://www.linux.org/lessons/

Additionally if you have the horsepower you can install something like VirtualBox or VMware. This will enable you to use the iso images as they are without the need to burn them to disc.

The one that best meets your needs, of course!

Now to try to give you an answer that actually helps ;)

As I'm sure you've noticed, there are lots of flavors (i.e., distributions) of Linux, and each of them has its own strengths and weaknesses. I started on Slackware because I wanted to learn to configure the system by hand -- my thinking was that if I could learn to read and edit conf files, I could pretty much go to any *Nix box (Linux, *BSD, Solaris, etc.) and figure it out with a little effort, and for the most part that has been true. Slackware is probably about a medium on the difficulty scale, and would be good if you have a second box to install it on (or will be dual booting) so that you can still have a working machine that you are familiar with when you just need to get work done (or go on-line to figure out why something you are trying to set up isn't working).

Gentoo is the second (sort of...) distribution that I learned, and is currently what I prefer over Slack. However, it is easily the most difficult distro that I have ever used. Gentoo is to Linux as buying a car restoration project is to driving. You have to build it before you can use it, and that's not a particularly easy task, especially for a new Linux user. After running Slack for about five years, my first Gentoo box took me a week to build :/ However, once you get it built, it is nice because -- short of a hard drive failure with no backups -- you will never have to completely rebuild it again.

Were I in your shoes, however, I would probably try Ubuntu first. The install is brain-dead simple, and when it's built it will just work. Wireless? No problem -- it will detect the hardware, install the appropriate drivers, and give you a list of access points near you, just like your XP machine will. Slack or Gentoo? Forget it. You'll spend a while getting wireless to work...if you can get it to work at all. With Gentoo, once wireless works, you'll probably break it again at the next update (done that three or four times myself) and it will take you another several days to get it fixed...again. The Gnome desktop that Ubuntu uses by default will look a little different than your XP box, but is simple and intuitive enough that you'll figure it out in no time.

If you are looking for a networking/admin job using Linux, you might want to skip Ubuntu and try Red Hat/Fedora or CentOS. They are nearly as easy as Ubuntu in many ways, or at least easier than Gentoo or Slack :) and are what is often used in businesses that run Linux. If you can install Windows, you can install the latest versions of Red Hat or CentOS.

The nice thing about Linux is that, since it's free (as in beer -- usually), you can try several versions and decide which one you like best.

Anything in the top ten on the "hit list" at distrowatch is fine. Don't spend any significant time on this question becuase you will probably try at least 2 before settling on what you prefer.

One definition:
The best choice for you is sometimes the last one you try. (Can be true for buying cars also.)

Wow, I wish I could have stopped at 2. I still distro hop just for fun. But I think I have now tried 11. But debian will always be my favorite.

Which Distro to use?
 

Most answers reflect personal experiences and biases, which is as it should be. I am a rank beginner, even after several years, but my enthusiasm has not waned. I started with Suse, then Fedora, then Sabayon, and settled on Ubuntu. It would have been nice had I done things in reverse order, since I find Ubuntu easiest to use and I'm quite happy with it.
Matthew

You wouldn't have known that until you had tried the others, anyway. :-)

well said. and it goes without saying that trying a bmw first may give you a bad impression of proton :P

As RWallett said above, you should try Ubuntu if you're really new to Linux. It's generally geared towards people coming from MS Windows. It's the first distro I tried, and I've been with it for a good few months, and I'm happy with it so far. I've tried other distros in VirtualBox, but most of those (at least I've found) are finicky sometimes, usually when it comes to things like the little nitty gritty details of configuation. Exceptions might be Debian (which Ubuntu is based on) and maybe Fedora or Suse. I'm no Linux expert, but I have learned quite a bit since I moved away from Windows, and I rarely even use Windows anymore on my PC. Linux is definitely a learning experience (or as some say, an unlearning experience ;)), and it takes some getting used to, but once you've got the basics figured out, then you should be well on your way.

I am a big fan op OpenSuse. Friendly to use, stable and powerfull.

Dear pandababu,
I think , to start with, Mandriva is the best , I am using for last 2 years.Moreover, Its a stable and free with all mulitimedia codecs .or u can go for ubantu.But for ubantu, internet should be there to install extra application.
bye

Mint
 

I first tried Ubuntu but as a newbie I felt I lacked support for multimedia, and switched to Linux Mint. Have never looked back, it works beautifully out of the "box" !

As the original poster, skpanda, I'm a network manager and I'm working in a very large and complex environment (>10,000 subnets, > 150,000 computers).
In the last 3-4 years I've experimented some open-source solutions for monitoring and managing the network.
I started using OpenSuse but now I'm using Ubuntu, both Workstation and Server editions. Ubuntu Server in particular is super-easy to install and to manage from remote. It's stable and permits me to reuse obsolete hardware (old servers with very little RAM) for my projects.
I recommend using Ubuntu.

Hehehe...

I used Ubuntu for two years before trying anything else. Now I actually use several distros, as I'm addicted to the little nuances that set them apart.

(dual-booting one PC, triple-booting another, and currently building a third. :D)

Good advice from a lot of people. I would just like to reiterate something RWallett said: first install Linux on a separate pc (or at least hard drive) if possible. This will give you the confidence to experiment without worrying about affecting your current setup at all.

You are bound to have a few hiccups whatever distro you use but there is endless support on the internet (including this site). I have never yet found a Linux problem I was not able to solve with a little help from other users.

My computer farm:
1) Ubuntu 9.04(KDE4)for daily desktop use: coding, web browsing, mailing, testing and so on.
2) openSUSE 11.1 for local web server: apache, mysql and productivity testing
3) WinXP Pro for case of compability testing

Earlier I use only WinXP and MSDN products. Then at first I started with Ubuntu+KDE, it's more "Windows like" ;) I thing most stable is openSUSE 11.1 - even desktop usage.

I was a beginner not so long ago and if I had 1 single Distro to tell you to get, it would be UBUNTU. IT's the one that has the most slant on making it user-friendly all-round. You're still going to have to use the basic Unix stuff every now and again but it's VERY user-friendly with a great cummunity behind it. Also, if you decide to go with UBUNTU, I advise you to get an program called XCHAT(X Irc Chat). If you go to the #ubuntu channel, the guys there will ANSWER ALL OF YOUR ISSUES FOR YOU!!! No joke. Any question, they'll reply with answers until you've figured it out. On top of that , they're very friendly people unlike a LOT of the chat rooms out there where they slam you for what they call STUPID opinions.
UBUNTU.COM to download. In a couple of days they're about to come out with another version!!! It's 9.10
Any how... good luck.
p.s. Let me know if I can be of any help

There are many distributions but as to which to use would depends on your goal. If you want to know the bare essential of linux, I would suggest Slackware. If you want a windows alternative, I would recommend Ubuntu, Knopix, Debian, Mandriva. But then again Linux is Linux :)

For anyone in your position I would recommend Ubuntu - easy installation and setup and a great way to get to know Linux. You could also consider Kubuntu as well - same OS with a different windowing look. Either one would be a good start.

My personal favorites are 1) Debian and 2) Slackware - installing either of these distros would help you learn even more about Linux.

Good luck and have fun! :)

New to Linux
 

PCLinuxOS will make you feel most at home switching from windows!

i think fedora will be closest to your windoze experience: same look and feel, clueless installation/update, and just a little bit less resource hog. oh yes, pulseaudio is a bit less irritating than wmp.

Start with one of the big well-Known distros because you'll feel more secure with a lot of documentation, detailed wikis and large communities.

I started 2 years ago with ubuntu...just for 14 days then I found out that Linux Mint is much more comfortable ;-) . In the next weeks and month I went step for step forward to more ambitious distros: pclinuxOS, Mandriva, debian, sidux, mepis, antix, zenwalk, vector, absolute, wolvix... at last I ended at slackware and was fully convinced of the speed, stability and clear system-structure.

In addition I tested nearly more 50 distros,just to get more exprerience about linux...even a test with PC-BSD have I done.

So don't think too long about "what's, the right distro" take a well-known one und just start. It's just the beginning of an exiting journey. Good luck :-)

You could try using VirtualBox. I've used it under Vista and successfully run two Linux systems in less than 1G total ram, less than 512M once Vista had grabbed its share. Don't rely on wireless working (natively) on a laptop, some don't have their WLAN interface powerd on at boot time.

As for distros, even Ubuntu is better than Windoze!

Versions of linux from a beginner
 

Dear kspanda,
As a windows user for some 20yrs i have been looking for a substitute also, i purchased a small spare hard drive and try as many linux distros as i can, doing this does not effect my windows.
troubles are a plenty if you decide to dual boot with windows, often destroying your windows.
The best i have found so far is the latest Mandriva free Spring and PClinuxOS. Suse,Fedora,Debian,Puppy linux etc are very ordinary and are often awkward to install unless you have a good knowledge of linux.
I hope this helps.
The oldfart

Something that took me 2 years to work out: linux is free. Yep we all know that but it means you can feel free to experiment and if it goes wrong just reinstall from scratch. Experimenting is how you learn. With w$ the risk of breaking your OS is unacceptable so you tend to stay on the known paths.


If you want to try out all sorts of software, get yourself a distro with "dynamic package management". Google it to find out how this is different from w$. Basically, the applications (programs in W$ speak) are held in a public database (repository in Linux speak) and you can pick them up and drop them at will,no cd's, no product keys, no hunting around for dodgy freeware. Then, say, you want a money manager- just find the package handler on your Linux system, type in money and pick what you want from the menu.

Debian, Ubuntu, Redhat, and others, have this. There are dozens of distros but I think this is essential for someone new to Linux.

It has to be easy to install. I personally think Ubuntu ticks all the boxes for a Linux beginner, as the website will just talk you through. With modern hardware and no special requirements you should be Ok. All distros can go in with an existing W$ system, but Ubuntu among others makes this easy. It will only work if you either have an extra hd, as has been suggested, or if you defrag. your drive and reduce the size of the w$ partition- this is hazardous so check it out and back up data first. Don't do it unless you have a w$ restore disk. I personally do this (i.e. dual boot) so I can use w$ as little as possible and keep it pristine for when something won't work on Linux.

When you do install, try to find out how to set up your "home" folder (my documents in w$) on a separate partition. Not essential but then you really will be able to replace your whole OS without losing data, email, bookmarks,etc. Sorry to repeat but like others posting here I really believe experimenting is the key. Good luck!

I have been using Linux since January 2008, I started with Fedora - because of its association with RedHat I assumed it was the best. I decided that it was much better than Windows for several reasons, but found that after installing a new version I always had to fiddle with something (I have a list of 7 issues), perhaps even having to go to the command prompt, this wasn't a lot better than Windows. I decided to switch to Mandriva/Gnome (2009.1) this year and everything worked straight away without any fiddling! I'm an ordinary sort of user who just wants an operating system that works - I don't need any sophisticated services from it and I am not interested in experimenting with it. I use my computer for the Internet (including radio and YouTube), for storing photographs and for processing sound files from VHS and vinyl onto DVDs and CDs. If you are an ordinary sort of user like me I would recommend Mandriva.

If you're really new in linux,you could consider to use Ubuntu. Fedora and Mandrake are also good IMO.

The 1st time I installed and tried linux was Fedora. Then, I started to use Redhat-based distros, like Mandrake (i used it about 8 months) and CentOS. I tried Slackware, CentOS and Gentoo but it didn't last too long in my hard drive.

Then, one of my coworkers,which works for an ISP,invited me to see his datacenter. At the time, i didn't know Linux too much.

Almost 70% of all their servers are Debian-based. I started to take a look on it and I was pretty impressed how easy it is compared to Redhat,specially the apt-get command!

I previously made firewalls and web servers w/ Redhat, but Debian is much more quick to configure and 'get the things done'. My firewall is debian-based and it has a 503 day uptime!!

Ubuntu is a debian-based OS much more designed to the "newbie". I mean, @ school we use Ubuntu.

If you have a good computer, you can virtualise a Linux distro, instead of screwing your hard drive.

I would suggest give any of the popular distributions like Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE or Debian a try and decide for yourself. You can download the binary and burn it on a dvd/cd and then try the LiveCD version. The LiveCD version runs linux from the CD and gives you an opportunity to try before installing it. Each distro comes with GNOME desktop and KDE desktop. Both are nice and well supported. Its really depends on your personal taste. If you would like to know the look and feel of GNOME and KDE try searching for their screenshots on the internet.

Where do you go to school??

Sorry for being off-topic, I've just never heard of any school (at least in the US) using Linux-based computers before.

Ok, this more like a personal option but as many mentioned, download live CDs and see which one you like better. This is my farm:

1)Home Server: Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
2)Laptop: W$nxp and OpenSuse 11
3)Desktop: Ubuntu 9.04
4)Jump Drive: BackTrack 3

and I'm downloading FEDORA 11 to add it to my laptop.
Good Luck and HAVE FUN!!!

Hi,
As with a lot of the other respondents i too have tried a lot of different distros and for a newbee making the switch from Windows i would go with Linux Mint - another debian off shoot like Ubuntu but has a few added extras that make it even easier to use and has nice attractive interface as well, if your into that sort of thing.

Cheers.

If you are working with older computers, I would like to suggest two other distributions, with apologies to those who have suggested that you select one of the top ten distros at distrowatch.com.

I am not sure where these two distros are found in the list, however, I have found them both to work very well, with minimal difficulty installing and configuring, compared with other distributions, or with Windows XP.

Crunchbang
Puppy

I think they are both very well done, especially for slightly older computers with a 32 bit cpu.

Both of these distributions work as well with more modern computers too, but most of my time is spent using them on older hardware, and they are both simple to work with, in my experience, compared with all of those other distros, listed above, in the preceding posts. yes, I have tried them all!!

Regards,
CAI ENG

Hi,
As per my suggestion go for fedora 11 very user friendly and you will like windows operating system and in November they are releasing fedora 12 also

Fedora were two originations combined working Redhat company and fedora company .

You can download fedora 11 from INTERNET it is free

Well, is in a "operating systems" class in our school.

In fact, we install Ubuntu on a bunch of IBM servers, configure a dns server, web server and samba server.

I hope that answers your question MrCode

I disagree with only the top 10, though it's an excellent place to start. Ubuntu (and derivatives like Kubuntu) are known for extreme user friendliness but they do not like proprietary drivers and codecs (thought it only takes a couple clicks to fix that). I personally run Gentoo but that is definitely NOT for beginners but Sabayon, which is based on Gentoo and comes with KDE or GNOME and is a complete system right out of the box, is great. I installed it on my laptop (with a Atheros/Broadcom wireless card) and everything worked right out of the box. I had wireless, audio, and all the apps I needed -- OpenOffice (office suite), Amarok (music), Kmail (mail), and even games right out of the box. It also refused to take out libdvdcss (used to play and rip encoded DVDs) in order to be hosted on more mirrors and be placed on the cover of magazines. And if there is anything else you need you can just open up it's package manager and search for it, then click it to install. Also, Sabayon is ranked 7th for page hits on Distrowatch.

Fedora is a great distro but is even worse than Ubuntu about proprietary drivers and is rather bloated as it comes with GNOME and KDE (assuming you go with the DVD rather than CD) but I guess it's better to have it even if you don't need it rather than have to install it.

Mandriva is $50 for the latest version if I am not mistaken? I also have not used Madriva so I cannot comment on it.

There is also Linux Mint which is based on Ubuntu but includes better media support (proprietary codecs) and is a great distribution with what many consider to be the best package management and it is extremely user friendly.

The major distributions are compared here and if you click on one you can get some more info and where to download it from.

I would reccomend Sabayon or LinuxMint.

That is if you go for the 'PowerPack'. Mandrive Free & One cost nothing like many other distros available for download.

That's not quite accurate either. They choose not to include proprietary drivers and codecs that are not free in the open source context.

NVIDA and ATI cards both require closed source drivers for good hardware acceleration. It is only a matter of clicking and icon in the system tray and selecting yes in the dialog that pops up to enable them but some people dislike that "idea". And many things like libdvdcss are not installed to begin with, but they are easy to install. On Fedora, however, you have to add third party repositories to get libdvdcss so...

You cannot go wrong with the out of the box media support of Mint and Sabayon.

My advice is experiment with all distros , be it ubuntu, fedora, mandriva etc. basically all are the same but with different flavours, with some tweeking here and there. So first try with the first disto that you can put hands on.
Some distos like ubuntu are available as live CDs which allows you to test without installing on HDD. Others need installation on HDDs. So keep one drive (partition) say of 20 GB for your "experiments with linux", which can be reused.
Secondly you shall be ready to experiment and also be ready to do a lot of googling. Configuring the video, printer, modem and other peripherals may be problematic as no installation or driver disks are available for linux. Many a times I spent long hours in configuring the video cards and printers.
If every thing goes fine, ubuntu will be much near to winxp in look and feel.

wow I just finished installing Fedora 11 and I really like it! lol

Another Opinion about Distro's
 

I'm just going to offer my opinion, which is worth, well... You know.

If you want a distro that will let you do basic things and installs in
in a snap, try something like X-Ubuntu. Very cool and runs well with limited resources.

For something that is very polished and reliable but can still work as a serious workstation, try the most recent Fedora. I liked it but there were a couple of application issues with it's own version of Java, and I'm not smart enough to want to fool with it. :-)

My favorite for a very long time is Slackware. I think it combines the best of both worlds in terms of ease of use teaching us how to do things. I find it the most "Unix Like" of all the distro's I've seen.

Everyone else here had great advise too, you might also check www.lwn.net, the Linux Weekly News, it has a huge distro list too.

Have fun!

Photon Blizzard

I use ubuntu 8.04 at home. It is the best stable release till now. ( only my opinion ) . I am looking forward to Ubuntu 9.10 ( Karmic Koala).

Wait for Oct 29, and you will get one of best desktop Linux ever i.e. ubuntu 9.10

I will add my 5 öre advice here too ;)

First, try what friends have. That is THE recommendation from me. If no friends run Linux, you should continue read :)

I would recommend Ubuntu (any flavor) or Mint as they are Debian based and adjusted for easy use (All you do in Ubuntu or Mint you can do in Debian, buy you have to make more choices yourself)

In Ubuntu you could install on a separate disk partition, but if you want to try you don't need that.

Just insert an Ubuntu installation CD when MS Windows runs and autostart from the CD. It then will create a large file in MS Windows file system, use it as a hard disk and install Ubuntu on it. The when you boot your machine, it will ask if you want to run Ubuntu or MS Windows.
It will also make it uninstallable from MS Windows if you don't like it, like ordinary MS Windows programs (should) do.
It will be a bit slower then installing on a real partition, but works ok to test.

Another way is to install VirtualBox in MS Windows (or MacOS X) and install Linux distributions in that. This is very easy to install, start and remove an installation from Virtual Box. I really recommend this if you cant do an installation in a MS Windows file as I mention above or if you want to test another distribution than Ubuntu.

So I suggest in order one of these:
1) Install Ubuntu from MS Windows in a large file, aprox 4-10 GB, on C: disk (You choose Ubuntu or MS Windows when you start your computer)

2) Install VirtualBox and in a virtual machine in VirtualBox install any Linux distribution you want to test. Here you have to have at least 768 MByte RAM free for the virtual machine and aprox. 4-10 GB disk space for each virtual machines virtual hard disk.

3) Prepare MS Windows disk (check disk and defragment) and then boot some modern Linux distributions installation media, CD or USB memory stick, to make room for itself and then install Linux there for dual boot (choose what to run when machine starts). (if possible, make a separate partition for /home to store user files in)

Service at hand...

Distrowatch has a search engine that can be set for different hardware, needs, etc., giving you suggestions to narrow the field.

http://distrowatch.com/search.php

If your interested in something to get you feet wet, try slax www.slax.org.
It can be put on a USB Flash drive and boot a computer.
I use Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora-11, but keep slax in the bag as a handy tool.
As they have all said, the best linux is the one that suits you best.
Get an external HDD so you can try many and not mess up the XP, any more than it is already.

I bookmarked Slax to future download.. That distro looks interesting

Well; as you can see, there are hundreds of different versions and flavours of the linux operating system. I've personally tried all the main contenders and found them wanting, too slow or resource-hungry like 'Doze etc. I keep coming back to Puppy linux. It's relatively easy to make the transition from Windows as there's a huge & very supportive online community. and once you've gained confidence you can re-master and produce your own version with apps, games to suit your own needs. Also, Puppy runs fast and happily from a live CD or USB stick, whereas all the others really want to be installed on the hard drive to get anywhere near matching Puppy's speed. If you have an XP computer I would recommend version 3.1, but if you're Vista and not FAT32 formatted I'd go with version 4.2. I've tried dozens of systems but found nothing that can match Puppy for versatility and speed.