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Best distro to use for someone just bored of Windoze?

G

gf4200isdabest

Senior member
I have too much free time on my hands so I decided I want to run Linux as my primary OS. I don't really need that much out of it, probably just IM, web browsing, and the such. A snazzy interface would be a plus but certainly not required...If nothing else, I want the average computer user to have no idea what's going on when they look at my OS...

From what I've gathered, it seems that i should be looking at Slackware, Gentoo, or Debian though maybe I'm misinformed...

I don't really have a good answer to the "why are you bothering to switch to linux if you aren't going to utilize it" question...
 
If you really have a LOT of time, try Gentoo as you'll be compiling a lot of stuff from scratch since you'll be optimizing the apps for your system. If you can't be bothered, I say go for either Mandrake or RedHat or SuSe. All of them are easy to install and have nice looking GUIs since they offer the choice of KDE or GNOME or both. There are other GUIs that you can use e.g. Enlightenment and stuff like that. But I've been outta touch for a while.
 
I just installed Suse...interesting. A bit different from the mandrake i had on here. Was pretty simple to install. Try out 2 or 3 and see what you like.
 
If linux community was a swimming pool

Debian, Slackware, and Gentoo are the deep end. Suse, Redhat, and Mandrake are the shallow.

Many people prefer the shallows simply because they like the support, and don't have to work to hard at it. Plus they can swim around if they feel like it.

The deep end is were you can dive in if you like it, however sitting on top of the high jumping board can be a bit frightening, plus you can get over your head realy quick. Grabbing on the pool side, gasping for air is never fun, but learning to swim like a seal is.

Goto www.linuxiso.org and check out the SuSE's live eval disk. It's realy realy cool linux-on-a-cd trial version. Most fun you can have that's under 700 megs. If you like it SuSE has a FTP install option, but unlike most distro's you have to buy it to get the install CD's. Which is worth it IMO if you like SuSE alot.

As far as browsers, here are the main options.
Mozilla -most common, better then the windows version.

Galeon -requires GNOME installed (but not all of it, and you don't have to be running it at the time). Consintrats on being nice to use, and minimises Mozilla's bulk to just a webbrowser

Konquerer -KDE's web browser/file manager. Very slick, not as widely used as mozilla.

Netscape -brought to you by our friends AOL. Mozilla's corporate commercial darkside. Also good, better then IE, but most prefer Mozilla.

Opera -possibly the best browser ever created by man kind. Fast, small, effect, user friendly. The major downside is that unless you pay for it you get a addware version.


Aslo a interesting Distro is "Evil Entity" linux. Not widely used, but it's interesting non-the-less. A desktop multimedia-type distro with a Goth theme. Small stuff, but it looks interesting to me. I am trying to talk my roomate into installing it currently. I was using SLackware, but a power surge took out my harddrive partitions, (freak accident type thing), And I just installed Gentoo (SWEET, but damn long install) this weekend.

For a instant messenger, check out GAIM for all your instant messenger needs. It's supports multiple services. AIM, Yahoo, IRQ, and several others.

Of course you'd want to try out several different styles of DIstro's to find what suits you. But if want something easy and without all the work, go ahead and use Mandrake, SuSE, or Redhat. Nothing inherently wrong with any of them, Redhat is a bit bloated, but their newest revision seems to have fixed that a bit. SuSE is the slickest install I've ever seen (kicks XP's ass), and I never tried Mandrake so I don't know.
 
Switching for no good reason is a great reason. OS ideology aside, trying out new things is always good for you, no matter if it turns out good or bad, you will have at least learned something. If you want people to say "WTF" when they look at your desktop, you can do a pretty good job of that with most window managers, just keep away from kde and gnome and you should be good to go. Here's a waimea screenshot of mine, definitely doesn't look like windows 😉
 
Ya tweaking your desktop is pretty much a past time for many Linux users. Getting it all color coordinated, having nice contrasts and translusent terminals. Snazzy blinking icon-like doo-dads showing various states of hardware, time, networkload and other stuff. Finding/creating (Gimp is da-bomb) the best and most interesting backgrounds. Finding the most astheticly pleasing/usefull positions and sizes for movie players, tv windows and other media players. Lots of icons, windows, multiple taskbars and menus, with various colors and gradiants and several different virtual desktops with different backgrounds inditcating their chosen use. OR no icons or clutter at all.

I got sucked into it for a little while, it's like PC moding, or getting a show car... All about customization. Check out different screenshots from different window managers and see what people are creating.
 
Slackware... why? you will learn unix terminology, and you will learn it fast, you need to to be able to control the system...

No, it isn't pretty, no, it doesn't come with flashy sounds and background images... it is Linux, basic and the way it was meant...

If you REALLY want to learn Linux/Unix, go slackware, it follows posix and goes along with unix standards... this isn't a distro for bells and whistles, this is a distro for those who actually want to configure their system... (and no, gentoo will NOT let you configure it further than you can (if you want to) configure slack...
 
I mostly agree with Drag, try RH, MDK, or SuSE if you want something to get you started quickly, then you can move on to other distros if you feel the urge to get your hands a little dirtier.

If you wanna get dirty first thing, I'd go Gentoo, but that's coming from a Gentoo lover, so it's definately personal preference.
Debian and Slack are other obvious candidates, or if you're not specifically after Linux, the BSD's are candidates as well.
 
From what's been said and what I found on my own, I'm thinking of trying out Gentoo. Is there any kind of guide someone can point me to that would make the switching process easier?
 
Try (not necessarily in this order): RedHat, Mandrake, SuSE, Gentoo, Debian, Slackware, and Knoppix. Pretty much find all of the distros you can, and while one is downloading, try out another one. Try them all or stop when you find the one you like.
 
If you want a nice, snazzy interface then KDE3.1 will fit the bill nicely; it even has transparent menus and so forth.
 
Gentoo install is a very involved proccess. It requires much manual intervention...

Basicly you do the install completely manually, no wizards and dialogs to help you. Goto www.gentoo.org and check out the install guide. It's a step by step guide on what you have to do, miss any of them or don't read thru it well and you will mess it up. But if you follow it religiously you'll get it right. Gentoo is something i still have a little bit trouble with, mainly because I don't bother reading the directions well and I usually end up forgetting stuff.
 
Originally posted by: drag
Gentoo install is a very involved proccess. It requires much manual intervention...

Basicly you do the install completely manually, no wizards and dialogs to help you. Goto www.gentoo.org and check out the install guide. It's a step by step guide on what you have to do, miss any of them or don't read thru it well and you will mess it up. But if you follow it religiously you'll get it right. Gentoo is something i still have a little bit trouble with, mainly because I don't bother reading the directions well and I usually end up forgetting stuff.
Click to expand...

Hmmmm, gentoo has a nice guide. When I finally get around to checking it out I'll probably just print the whole thing out and put it in a nice binder or something like that. I have atleast 40 of those lying around the place 😛
 
I plan on giving Gentoo a try this weekend also, after I print out some of the documentation. I'm getting bored with red hat. 🙂
 
That gentoo install guide looks pretty intimidating. How good is the autodetect features? It would be annoying to have to go through each and every one of those...

EDIT: my other question is: How much space should I allocate for the linux partition. I have 2 80GB HD's (one for 2k, one for XP). Most of that it filled with games that I could continue to play on XP. A good chunk is mp3's and movies which I assume linux will be able to read and play (is that true??)...How much does the basic set of apps (browser, office, resource management) with the OS take up? (note: both hard drives are currently NTFS)
 
Originally posted by: cleverhandle
Geez... if you want to make things difficult, why not just go all out with Linux From Scratch? No ports, no emerging... just good old fashioned tarballs, ma'am.
Click to expand...

yeah....let's not do that...

Questions still remaining from previous post(s):
1) how good is gentoo autodetect during install?
2) What would you recommend I allocate to the linux partition?
3) Linux has no problem reading video/mp3's on the NTFS partitions, right?
 
1) how good is gentoo autodetect during install?
Click to expand...

Non-existent I would assume. If you have a piece of hardware, and the driver is in the kernel, it will load automatically. Other than that you figure out on your own.
3) Linux has no problem reading video/mp3's on the NTFS partitions, right?
Click to expand...
Correct.

 
Non-existent I would assume. If you have a piece of hardware, and the driver is in the kernel, it will load automatically. Other than that you figure out on your own.
Click to expand...

That can't be too bad, the debian installer is the same way.
 
Originally posted by: Spyro
Non-existent I would assume. If you have a piece of hardware, and the driver is in the kernel, it will load automatically. Other than that you figure out on your own.
Click to expand...

That can't be too bad, the debian installer is the same way.
Click to expand...

Pretty much all of the good free unixes are that way. (good meaning, my personal opinion, of course 😉)
 
Part of the installation you are to compile your own kernel. A kernel (the actual part of Linux that IS actually linux) controls access of the OS to hardware and provide basic essentials for networking and other deep-down os. Usually most distros have a bunch of modules pre-made(Linux's close equivilent to drivers) Modules are compiled kernel code that are kept seprate from the main body of the kernel that can be added and remove to affect the functionality of it.

Most Distro's have a bunch of modules built in that can be added automaticly during install and start up to match the kernel to your hardware configuration. In Gentoo you will be expected to compile your own kernel. You can have a bunch of modules, but I prefer to to keep the kernel as simple and a single unit as much as possible. Most people will trim the kernel down to the bare essentials needed to run the hardware effectively and provide the needed functionality. This will reduce the memory footprint of the OS, (usually only by a few megs at most) and provide a very minor performance boost. Mostly people do this for functionality, when you get rid of the stuff you don't need you simplify things and help eliminate and possible problems that may crop up later.

This is how the you set up the hardware. Configure and compile a kernel, and configure the /etc/modules.conf and /etc/modules.d (gentoo only) file and folder to set them up. Their is a degree of automation that happens. For instance the configuration of IRQ's and memory address's like you would have to do occasionally in win9X is gone and is taken care of usually.. even on older hardware. Unless of course you use ISA slots then you must configure those manually since the OS can't detect cards in those...

Compiling a kernel is something that is actually quite simple. It's sounds more intimidating then it actually is. You have nice configuration menus to use and everything is well documented and there are several step-by-step howtos on the internet, not to mention the README's (your freinds in EVERYTHING). It's one of the first things I learned howto do as a Linux user, but usually you mess up a few kernels before you get the hang of it, but it's safe because you can keep a backup kernel and you can have several to boot up with, which you can select using the boot-loader so you can keep a old one in the background while you experiment with a new one.


But realy for a first timer that wants to get into Linux as much as possible quickly, do this:

Go and download the install ISO for Slackware. Set aside a five gig partition plus a swap partition. Goto ahead and start the install. Pick "install everything". That will give you a bit over 2 gig of OS and various services and a few different desktops to try out. Experiment with it, go ahead and fry it a couple of times. Reinstall it a few times until you learn enough to stop accidently destroying everything and learn howto fix mistakes. Install some stuff from source code, and learn howto properly read documentation. You can't go wrong with that.

Then try different OS's. Check out SuSE and Redhat and see what sort of "comfort level" they can acheive, try Gentoo it's a real good learning experiance, see Debian and figure out why people like apt-get so much. have fun.

If you care, the main reason I choose to run linux in the first place is that your functionality on the internet increases a hundred fold automaticly over Windows. Unix is what created the internet and the internet is what created Linux. It's some good stuff.

BTW rescue floppies for are a must. Don't leave home without it.
 
try Mandrake or Redhat ... they are both easy to use and easy to install distros that work quite well.

I currently run mandrake 9.1, and use it for IP Masq (iptables), apache webserver + php and postgreSQL, eggdrop, IRC, and just playing around with scripting or coding .... pretty easy to set up, and the KDE3.1 GUI looks amazingly good. (It runs like crap on a slow box though), If you are trying to make the most out of an old pentium or 486 box, than KDE is NOT for you.
 
Originally posted by: gf4200isdabest
That gentoo install guide looks pretty intimidating. How good is the autodetect features? It would be annoying to have to go through each and every one of those...

EDIT: my other question is: How much space should I allocate for the linux partition. I have 2 80GB HD's (one for 2k, one for XP). Most of that it filled with games that I could continue to play on XP. A good chunk is mp3's and movies which I assume linux will be able to read and play (is that true??)...How much does the basic set of apps (browser, office, resource management) with the OS take up? (note: both hard drives are currently NTFS)
Click to expand...

When I first installed Gentoo, I got it all right on the first try.
I'd say this is due to three things, in order of importance:
1) I read the manual carefully before installing
2) I knew what hardware was in my box
3) I've been a *NIX user for some time, so it wasn't exactly something new, just a new way of installing an OS

I'd say as long as you have 1&2 you'll do fine.
With that P4 compile times won't be too bad at all, so Gentoo might suit you nicely.
And if you happen to run into a problem or two, I must say, the Gentoo community is the best of *NIX communities I've been in touch with for a newbie.
People are generally very nice and helpful at the Gentoo forums

Oh and by the way, drag, floppyes are SOOO 1980's, rescue CD's > floppys 😉
 
I got my gentoo install working! It wasn't as painful as I thought it would be. 😀 I emerged x last night and I'm working on gnome right now. Then I gotta figure out what other packages I need to install.
 
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