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Which Linux to use?

There are about 60 distro's out there so you have a lot of choice.
My choise right now is SuSe they will install it for you right over the internet, it takes about 4 hours or so on a good connection.
Go Here and choose

Bleep
 
My personal favorite is Slackware. Debian is good too but it doesn't have the same feel to me. If you want an easier distro then I'd go for SuSe as Bleep has suggested. That's a good basic MGMorden's preferences summary.
 
2.4

2.0 is way old, 2.2 is showing some age, and 2.5 is development release. Stick with 2.4 and you should be fine.
 
Most of the current commercial releases of Linux are based on the 2.4 kernel. I like SuSE, Caldera and Mandrake modified Red Hat. Caldera is aimed a business and software developers, Mandrake is more personal (home/home office/small office) user oriented, and SuSE tries to cover all the bases. You get more in the SuSE Deluxe distro- it comes as either a DVD or a large number of CDs - than just about any other but it may be harder to get your head around. The manuals used to lapse back and forth between english/german/germanglish. I haven't seen the latest (v.7.3 or 8 I think) to find out whether that shortcoming has been resolved or not.. Good luck on the quest.
.bh.
😎
 
Originally posted by: sciencewhiz
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
2.4

2.0 is way old, 2.2 is showing some age, and 2.5 is development release. Stick with 2.4 and you should be fine.
Click to expand...

I can't find 2.4 at http://www.distrowatch.com. Found 2.5, 2.2 and a few 2.0

The more important question is, is it considered a troll if its a geeky one?
Click to expand...
Is it considered a NEF if a question has been beaten into the ground? BTW, I found 2.4.19 at kernel.org...
 
RedHat, Mandrake, or SuSE will all be fine if you just wanna get it up and running as easially as possible.

Debian and Gentoo are both excellent distro's if you wanna learn a bit about how stuff actually works, and dont mind getting your hands a little dirty, but if you go this route, READ THE INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY!
Then read them again, then you can begin 😉

Not to say that you don't need to read the instructions when using the other distros, only they tend to help you a bit more and be more forgiving, while Debian/Slack/Gentoo will always assume you know what you're doing, nad assume you're doing it for a good reason, so if you do something stupid, they won't stop you.

I find it hard to recomend Slack to anyone, seeing as it lacks a half decent package management system or ports system, compiling your own from tarballs is fun for a while, until you have a system cluttered with all kinds of software and you feel the need to clean it up.
 
Originally posted by: Sunner
I find it hard to recomend Slack to anyone, seeing as it lacks a half decent package management system or ports system, compiling your own from tarballs is fun for a while, until you have a system cluttered with all kinds of software and you feel the need to clean it up.
Click to expand...

You have a problem with pkgtools? Those are fighting words 🙂

 
Originally posted by: Arrgghh
Originally posted by: Sunner
I find it hard to recomend Slack to anyone, seeing as it lacks a half decent package management system or ports system, compiling your own from tarballs is fun for a while, until you have a system cluttered with all kinds of software and you feel the need to clean it up.
Click to expand...

You have a problem with pkgtools? Those are fighting words 🙂
Click to expand...

Well, can't say I have a problem with it, but OTOH I don't have too much good to say either 🙂

I guess Im just spoiled by stuff like APT, Portage and Ports 😉
 
Redhat, in my opinion, is the best all around for getting started. Have implemented this distro at work as a mail server, file server and router. Use it at home from time to time for web surfing, e-mail and RC5 cracking on a dual cpu box. Redhat will run for months without a reboot while processing thousands of e-mails a day.

Mandrake is a good choice as it has easy GUI interfaces to get started with. Both the Mandrake site and the Mandrake newsgroup on Usenet are good sources of reference.

Have also used Slackware, Debian and Caldera. Haven't used Suse yet - yeah, I will one day. Had a heckuva time compiling a new kernel on Caldera once, but that was due to operator error.
 
I can say this, I have been a windows guy for a long time and like many of you out there want a change. After reading lots of information and posts like this one I decided to go for Mandrake. I found out that the best place to find it was by searching for Linux Mandrake in yahoo. The first site that came up, which name I don't remember was the fastest. I tried several others from Mandrake.com I believe.

I got the three cds and and started installing it in my spare 40 gb WD. The installation was very nice and simple and in less then one hour I was searching the net. At that point everything was fenomenal, I had a word processor, a spreadsheet and many other things that were automatically installed, nice.

The only problem, and the one responsible for making me give up for now (I have been spending more time on it then I have right now) was when I put a music cd in one of the drives. Guess what, I didn't have rights to access it. I found very little or almost none information in how to resolve that issue. There is information, but as someone said in an other thread, that information is for people that know more then some us. I tried several things without any success.

I am not saying that I didn't like the program, what I am saying is that Mandrake, since this is the only one I have tried is for people with a some knowledge on Unix and not for the average user.

So, my next step is to go to Borders and pick me up a Linux for Dummies book and start from there. I think that it even comes with a copy of Redhot. That would be interesting and maybe the book will tell me step by step how to make my cd-roms work.

 
To what use do you intend to put the Linux box?

What are your Hardware constraints? (processor speed/ RAM/HDD space, etc.) Based on these questions, you should try to look for a good distro.

Some distros are Desktop-oriented, others are server-specific, etc...

Redhat, Mandrake and Lycoris would be my choices for Desktop use ( I "learnt the ropes" @ Linux on the first two, still use Mandrake 8.1)

Besides Distrowatch, Linux.org has a good search engine where you can look for distros suited to your need (filters such as Language, procesor-specific, etc.)

I also suggest that you read a good book on Linux before deciding on what distro to use. A Practical Guide to Linux is one of them

Good Luck!
 
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