Need OS advice

T3C

Diamond Member
Jun 3, 2003
5,324
0
0
I just got done building myself a new machine, and now im deciding what i want to put for an OS on the old one.

It is a p4 2.4ghz
512 SDR
40gb HD

everything else is standard

Anyway, I want to put something other then Windows on it and have been looking at a few options. Im wanting something linux based like mandrake or lindows, i have basiclly No experince with linux, or anything other then Windows. Any suggestions? what is the easist to use? has the most feature, would be the best for me to start off with?

Thanks
-CybPnk
 

digitalman

Member
Apr 27, 2000
167
0
0
you probably will to give mandrake a try. it is one of the easiest flavors of linux to install and use. after you get familiar with it then you can give other ones a peek.
 

spyordie007

Diamond Member
May 28, 2001
6,229
0
0
another vote for Mandrake, and than once you are comfortable with it you should also try Red Hat and Debian, slackware is nice too.

-Spy
 

spyordie007

Diamond Member
May 28, 2001
6,229
0
0
"best" is very subjective, but in my opinion if you want to get started with Linux Mandrake is a very "good" place to start.

-Spy
 

spyordie007

Diamond Member
May 28, 2001
6,229
0
0
well you asked for linux so that's all we were mentioning, if you want other OSes to try I would try FreeBSD or OpenBSD as well.

-Spy
 

Flatline

Golden Member
Jun 28, 2001
1,248
0
0
But for a "noob" I would definitely recommend Mandrake or SuSE before one of the BSD options, since they are a bit more difficult to install and configure.
 

ProviaFan

Lifer
Mar 17, 2001
14,993
1
0
Originally posted by: cybpnk
any other alternatives other then linus for me to look into?
Aside from Linux, there's always OpenBSD, NetBSD, and FreeBSD to check out. If you're feeling really masochistic, you could try HURD, but no one in their right mind would run that on a work machine (let alone a development machine). QNX is interesting, but it sucks for anything other than what it was designed to do (real time stuff) IMHO.
 

T3C

Diamond Member
Jun 3, 2003
5,324
0
0
thanks for the suggestions so far everyone, i think im going to go with mandrake on that box. Im looking forward to working with something other then windows for a change.
 

Bleep

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
3,972
0
0
Download KNOPPIX and run it from the CD Rom if you like it load it on the HD it is pretty good.

Bleep
 

simonsky

Junior Member
Jun 27, 2003
17
0
0
Deninitely Mandrake 9.1 to get started.

I have enjoyed a few quirks with it, but they are easily corrected.

The ones I saw :

- You need a patched XFree86 server for ATI Radeon 7000/7500 (and possibly others) to correctly work. (Display is fine until you either log out or shut down the X server, then it freezes the machine) This might not be specific to mandrake.
- It will not install the PHP-INI package by default when your are installing PHP/Mysql/apache etc. You will need to install it afterward if you want PHP to work correctly. (The package is included though)
- You cannot change the GNOME (UI) widget (buttons and stuff) theme with the standard package. It will let you install and select another, but it will not change visually. An updated package fixes this.

These are all I have seen to date, I would be glad if others could share other glitches/fixes.
 

Matt84

Senior member
May 21, 2003
241
4
81
Red Hat 9 is very easy as well. Everything in the menus is well structured and labeled so a new linux user can pretty much configure most required things without going to the commandline.

If you want a linux based distro then Red Hat with the apt4rpm addons will give you a good and easy to use desktop machine. I currently triple boot 98,xp and red hat 9 and i'd have to say red hat 9 is the easiest linux distro to use at the moment.