DaveFJ
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| posted on 26/7/05 at 02:46 PM |
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Linux - what version ?
OK - cavanssing opinion
What version of Linux do people (who have an opinion on these things) prefer ?
currently considering Red hat, suse or debian but am open to suggestion.... oooer
cheers
[Edited on 26/7/05 by DaveFJ]
Dave
"In Support of Help the Heroes" - Always
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Dillinger1977
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| posted on 26/7/05 at 02:50 PM |
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as a newbie i tried fedora 3, mandrake 10.1 and suse 9.
i thought mandrake was the nicest 'out of the box'
-Rog
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Peteff
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| posted on 26/7/05 at 03:09 PM |
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I've had a go with Mepis. It is easy to understand and detected all the drives and graphics card straight away and has a good selection of
software built in.
yours, Pete
I went into the RSPCA office the other day. It was so small you could hardly swing a cat in there.
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andyharding
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| posted on 26/7/05 at 03:19 PM |
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I have 20 odd machines running RedHat/Fedora.
Are you a Mac user or a retard?
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David Jenkins
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| posted on 26/7/05 at 03:47 PM |
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I've tried a few - Ubuntu and Mandrake (now called Mandriva) come out the best, IMHO.
Ubuntu is good if you have very little experience and want a rock-solid and fully tested system. It uses Gnome as its windowing system, which some
people find strange. If you prefer the MS Windoze look-and-feel then Kubuntu is better, as it uses the KDE windowing system (all the rest is the same
as Ubuntu). The BIG advantage of ubuntu/kubuntu is that you can get a CD-ROM with a live system that can be run from the disk, without affecting your
current hard disk setup - this allows you to try it out.
My main system is Mandriva 2005 LE - it's really easy to install, and flexible enough for me to play around with it occasionally.
cheers,
David
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britishtrident
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| posted on 26/7/05 at 03:50 PM |
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If you are using the complete hard disk try
PCLinuxOS or Mepis or Kanotix
All three Debian based with good hardware detection
Unbuntu also very good but dosent come as completely configured for a newbie.
If you want to try living along side Linux on you hard disk Fedora/RedHat and Mandrake/Mandriva have the best tools for partitioning the disk. But
what I do is use Fedora to partition the disk then install Mepis/PCLinuxOS/Kanotix to the partitions created by Fedora.
A big downside of both Fedora/RedHat and Mandrake/Mandriva is they don't come with 3d graphics drivers for the most popular cards, and
installing them isn't for a noobie so you are stuck with basic 2d graphics drivers.
With Fedora Core avoid version 4 -- Version 3 is a lot less buggy.
Mandrake/Mandriva is good and solid but quite slow compared to the other distros I have mentioned.
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phelpsa
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| posted on 26/7/05 at 04:01 PM |
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If you want a couple of Ubuntu discs (live CD and install) then U2U me your address and I'll get them in the post.
It includes Mozilla, Openoffice, music player and everything and probably has most things you will need.
Adam
[Edited on 26-7-05 by phelpsa]
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britishtrident
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| posted on 26/7/05 at 04:14 PM |
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I meant to add the best place for info on Linux distros is Distrowatch http://distrowatch.com/index.php?dataspan=4
Also if you PC is short on power or memory make sure you stop OpenOffice loading at startup. Openoffice is a version of Star Office an MS office
wannabe it runs in Sun Java and on some PCs it loads so slowly it has put a lot of users off Linux.
Personally I ditch it altogether and install Abiword and Gunmeric, together with KOffice instead.
[Edited on 26/7/05 by britishtrident]
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ChrisW
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| posted on 26/7/05 at 04:28 PM |
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I have around 150 machines online, the majority of which run either Redhat (legacy versions or Fedora) or CentOS (which is white labelled RedHat
Enterprise)
This site runs on a CentOS server! 
Chris
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ethomas
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| posted on 26/7/05 at 04:41 PM |
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If you want a desktop installation, I can recommend Ubuntu without reservation. It has the benefit of being Debian based, so you can install
upgrades/patches and additional software with a single terminal command (eg. 'apt-get install wine' ) or use a simple GUI package
manager.
It detected all my hardware including wireless network, usb camera and with GTKpod installed it detected my ipod.
If you want to go for a server system, I would recommend Fedora or RH Enterprise from experience, as both are better supported by 3rd party software
like BlueDragon.
Hope this helps.
Ed
[Edited on 26/7/05 by ethomas]
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daz
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| posted on 26/7/05 at 05:13 PM |
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i use linspire 4.5, installed it no problems attall in 10 minutes and set itself up with my sound card and network card without clicking a thing, went
from no operating system to a home internet ready multimedia pc in 10 minutes! not bad i say! comes with all the multimedia and word processing apps i
need 
i forgot to mention, its debian based
[Edited on 26/7/05 by daz]
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Gav
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| posted on 26/7/05 at 05:14 PM |
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I use SUSE 9.3 its shiny
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chriscook
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| posted on 26/7/05 at 05:25 PM |
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Mandrake 10.1 here - installed MUCH easier and quicker than XP did when I had to install that on my GF's pc.
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liam.mccaffrey
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| posted on 26/7/05 at 05:45 PM |
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i am desperate to get into linux and have been trying really hard to learn. so far i have had major problems with mandrake and redhat now trying
debian early days yet though
with respect to linux i am starting to believe the gods are conspiring against me 
Build Blog
Build Photo Album
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ethomas
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| posted on 26/7/05 at 09:01 PM |
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quote:
Originally posted by liam.mccaffrey
i am desperate to get into linux and have been trying really hard to learn. so far i have had major problems with mandrake and redhat now trying
debian early days yet though
with respect to linux i am starting to believe the gods are conspiring against me
Try Ubuntu, It is like friendly Debian, it is the first distro I would be happy setting up for my mother to use.
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britishtrident
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| posted on 27/7/05 at 07:19 AM |
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This page in Distrowatch listmajor distro by class including live CD and distro suitable for newbies http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major
The big advantage of Debian/Debian based distro is that if you install any packages (programs) that weren't included in the original disk set
Debian's package tool almost always sorts out any dependancies. With Red Hat/Fedora Suse and Mandriva if you install stuff that comes from other
sources even in puka RPM form you can end up with missing dependancys and a lot of head scratching, but if you stick to the official libraries for
your distro you shouldn't have a problem,
Hardware detection used to be a big issue with Linux , Red Hat and Mandrake were streets ahead of everyone else (including SUSE) for along time but
that all changed when a Debian based distro called Knoppix hit the streets. Knoppix is a live distro that runs from CD, it can be installed to hard
disk but gives an odd ball Debian installation.
Knoppix had cutting edge hardware detection and spawned many other distros such as Kanotix that are optimised for hard disk installation. Unbuntu and
many other distro now use Knoppix style hardware detection.
The GUI in Linux comes in two main flavours Gnome and KDE other deskstops exist but Gnome and KDE are the main stream ones.
KDE is quite Windows like and has a bigger variety of programs designed expressly for it than Gnome, although most programs run under both.
Gnome is well finished, very stable and looks superb, but by defaut the current version handles windows in a rather eccentric (ie non MS Windows) way
which can put people off.
KDE is more like MS Windows so Windows guys feel more at home. Compared to Gnome also has more extra applications written for it some are excellent
but some KDE aplets tend to be rather raw and untested.
[Edited on 27/7/05 by britishtrident]
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DaveFJ
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| posted on 27/7/05 at 07:45 AM |
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Well downloaded both Ubuntu CDs last night (didn't take long thanks to my 2Mb connection ) so now it's just a matter of finding time to
install it on one of my spare PCs.
Cheers everyone
Dave
"In Support of Help the Heroes" - Always
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David Jenkins
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| posted on 27/7/05 at 08:30 AM |
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Dave,
Don't forget that you DON'T have to install it to try it out - just set up the PC to boot from the CD-ROM, put in the 'live'
disk and switch on. It takes a while to start, then it'll work almost as well as if it had been installed.
BTW: don't worry about the sh*t-coloured background - it's all configurable!
David
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ned
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| posted on 27/7/05 at 08:50 AM |
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hmm i may give ubuntu a go when i plug my linux hard disk back in! aswell as the multimedia issues i had with fedora it wouldn't recognise the
ntfs hard drive when i plugged it in alongside, so ended up reverting to windows temporarily as I needed some data off the disk. (Yes i know i should
have copied the data to another machine and then setup samba, but it didn't work out that way
Ned.
beware, I've got yellow skin
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craig1410
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| posted on 27/7/05 at 11:59 AM |
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Fedora for me - I've been running Fedora Core 1 then 2 and just a few days ago I upgraded to FC4.
Before that I used every version of Redhat from 3 upwards through 9.
As you may realise by now, I like Redhat/Fedora but it isn't really aimed at the beginner to be perfectly honest. Don't get me wrong it
isn't difficult to install but it doesn't hold your hand like some other distros like Mandrake.
HTH,
Craig.
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britishtrident
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| posted on 27/7/05 at 12:22 PM |
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I used Unbuntu for about 3 months at the stage I tried it "Hoary Hedge Hog" it wasn't ideal for a newbie as a desktop distro also
the forum support wasn't good. Running from a live CD Unbuntu is quite slow the
Knoppix Live CD boots much faster and runs pretty quickly,
Kanotix is the same as Knoppix but is designed to install from the live cd as do Mepis and PCLinuxOS. Running from Live CD Mepis however runs like
treacle.
[Edited on 27/7/05 by britishtrident]
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David Jenkins
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| posted on 27/7/05 at 02:50 PM |
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Agreed - I would only run from a live CD-ROM during the trying-out phase. Once I was happy with the system I'd want to install it properly
(which was why I wasn't happy with knoppix, although I concede that it's a good system.)
rgds,
David
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