n00b distro of linux?

[hooligan]

I've got some time on my hands and an old emachinese PC sitting around at my house. I think I want to learn how to do some stuff with it and I was wondering which of the linux distros you all recommend for a complete n00b like myself.

I don't have a programming background and I barely know how to cout << "hello world" << endl; So, what's the best one? The only one I've come across that looks really good is Ubuntu, but is there anything else that's decent? Thank you!

Peace.

[ism]

SuSe is popular in Europe esp. corporate, it's RedHat here in America. I'm not really a fan of RedHat though. Slackware if you want to learn BSD-style and wanna really know how the system works -- I use that on servers. Debian has a nice package management system and I use that on workstations now (sorry, Slack and Pat). Gentoo... well... I think it's going to take forever to install with your setup.

[kimpossible]

We use SuSe. I like the little penguin balloon-shooter game that comes with it.

[sinisterpanda]

holy shit, i'm using Knoppix linux right now! What a coincidence that i was about to ask a question and YOU MADE ONE ALREADY! But anyway, if i'm running knoppix off a CD will it save the settings onto my computer so i don't have to reconfigure my internet again.

Oh, i suggest Knoppix, you run it from a CD, it's pretty cool. A lot of stuff is already installed on the CD so no installation required...

[YuheiCarreau]

holy shit, i'm using Knoppix linux right now! What a coincidence that i was about to ask a question and YOU MADE ONE ALREADY! But anyway, if i'm running knoppix off a CD will it save the settings onto my computer so i don't have to reconfigure my internet again.

Oh, i suggest Knoppix, you run it from a CD, it's pretty cool. A lot of stuff is already installed on the CD so no installation required...

I don't get the whole Live CD thing. I mean, I know that Linux distros are much less graphically sophisicated than, say, OS X, but it still must run a lot slower than if it were on your HD.

[hooligan]

Yay, I'm slowly joining the linux movement.

[sinisterpanda]

I don't get the whole Live CD thing. I mean, I know that Linux distros are much less graphically sophisicated than, say, OS X, but it still must run a lot slower than if it were on your HD.


I think it's more used for if you need to just run one program a couple of times and don't want to take up the memory on your harddisk. The only thing that sucks is, the Knoppix cannot save it's system info on a NTFS harddrive (aka...my harddrive). It's fun, i think it runs okay.

[DaMuo]

I like SuSE 9.2 Pro if you want to pay for it, but it seems to be kinda weird paying for OSS. I use it because of work. I'd go for some of the free distributions like Gentoo or Debian. Good communities and ... well... free.

I didn't like the Limited Free editions from SuSE or commercial companies because you have to do a lot of work to get some of the features for software development and the likes. If you just want to play with Linux, I heard good things about the Xandros Open Circulation version. Never played with it tho'. I just never got into Fedora... it was kinda weird.

[ism]

I tried Fedora and the installation was fantastic. But like the Redhats before, getting non-rpm software on it is still a pain and god help you if you fall into broken dependency hell.

The newest Debian -- sarge -- has an awesome installer, if you remember dselect and how confusing it was. sarge makes installation as easy as Fedora, and maintenance is a dream. I was a hardcore Slackware guy and that's what it took to convert me for workstation use.

[sinisterpanda]

how do you know which ISO to download?

[DaMuo]

I tried Fedora and the installation was fantastic. But like the Redhats before, getting non-rpm software on it is still a pain and god help you if you fall into broken dependency hell.

Yes, RPM dependency hell! I think that's why I diliked Red Hat. On the surface it looks nice and easy. Installation is easy with RPM, maintenance over a long period of time is a freakin' nightmare.


The newest Debian -- sarge -- has an awesome installer, if you remember dselect and how confusing it was. sarge makes installation as easy as Fedora, and maintenance is a dream. I was a hardcore Slackware guy and that's what it took to convert me for workstation use.

Thinkin' about migrating to Debian in the next couple months on my workstation/server at home. I like the Debian team a lot. Been talking to their project manager and they do a great job supporting the project.

jc

[ism]

how do you know which ISO to download?of... ?

For Debian, get the new net-install debian-installer for sarge: http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
If you would prefer the more stable distribution, and the whole install rather than netinst if you have low bandwidth, you can download torrents for ISOs here: http://www.debian.org/CD/torrent-cd/
With that you will get stable and can upgrade to unstable if you feel your are up to it. From that you can upgrade to testing (sarge) as well. If you have Serial ATA then I highly suggest sarge (I'm not sure if SATA has been backported to stable).

Fedora here: http://fedora.redhat.com/download/
Slackware torrents: http://slackware.com/getslack/torrents.php
SuSE Personal FTP mirrors: http://www.novell.com/products/linuxprofessional/downloads/ftp/int_mirrors.html
Gentoo downloads: http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/where.xml

[Yeahman]

For a noob, I would highly recommend Mandrake. It's the easiest that I've tried. Synaptic (GUI for apt-get) handles packages well. It's available for Debian, Mandrake, Fedora, and others.
I'm sure Fedora is great for noobs too. I only have experience with it under AMD64 which makes things a bit more complicated.

If you have a broadband connection, I would suggest just doing a net install. No need to download all those CDs when download a small boot image, burn it, reboot, and enter a ftp or http location to install from.