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Which Linux should I install?

post #1 of 12
2/23/06 at 11:38pm
Thread Starter 
I'd like to learn more about the Linux OS, so I want to install it on my XSP2 and do a dual boot. Which version do you recommend? A friend of mine likes Mandriva, so I was considering using that.
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post #2 of 12
2/24/06 at 12:06am
Any really, try a few even and see the differences for yourself...

After having played with Redhat, Fedora, Slackware, Suse, Mandrake and Ubuntu I'm currently messing around with Gentoo and find I'm learning a hell of a lot more (just don't expect to get everything up and running in a couple of hours - but you want to learn don't you?).

One a side note the visual effects of the latest Xorg and KDE are amazing, pretty much what Vista is trying to be...
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post #3 of 12
2/24/06 at 12:13am
I am a slackware fan but I have a friend that swears by debian. Just pick one and go with it.
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post #4 of 12
2/24/06 at 12:29am
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the suggestions, I want to try one with cool visual affects as K9387 mentioned.
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post #5 of 12
2/24/06 at 1:53am
Ubuntu is what I'm using right now. Pretty damn good so far. Automatically detects everything awesome. Only things I've had to configure are the Wifi LED and the scrolling on the touchpad. Easy to do and they work now.
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post #6 of 12
2/24/06 at 2:12am
Debian is WAY to hard for new useres

Start with a live CD
Then go on to something like Unbutu or SLAX
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post #7 of 12
2/24/06 at 2:54am
My vote goes for Ubuntu. I liked SuSE and RH(Fedora) as well.
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post #8 of 12
2/24/06 at 10:44am
But he wants to learn, the problem with a lot of the distributions (like ubuntu) is that they do everything for you and you learn very little. Well, I 'spose you could go back and poke around a few files but theres nothing like having to do something to make you learn...

I like slackware but it takes ages for updates etc (isn't it just one man and his dog working on that?). Gentoo would be good as all you have to do is print of the manual (or just have it open in another console as you go along) and follow what is says step by step. Everything else is just a matter of doing exactly the same with a variety of HOWTOs. Thats how I did it a few months ago and am now fairly good at using linux. I could supply you with my make.conf so you don't have to use genkernel (or know what bits of the kernel you need or don't need - probably the hardest part first of all) and my xorg.conf to speed that bit out. There is also a not quite released Live CD if you want to go the easy route, but you do want to learn...

The graphical effects I mentioned are available on any distribution though, you just need a recent version of KDE (I say recent but the was transparency in 3.4, it's just that it's got better, much better)...
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post #9 of 12
2/24/06 at 4:12pm

Which Linux

I have recently installed Ubuntu 5.10 on my Dell XPS2 with no problem. It found all of my hardware and is displaying at native resolution.
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post #10 of 12
2/24/06 at 4:34pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ice_Cold
Debian is WAY to hard for new useres

Start with a live CD
Then go on to something like Unbutu or SLAX
I'm pretty sure Ubuntu is based on Debian, as is SimplyMepis (http://www.mepis.org/). Libranet 3.0 is nice too, but its future is up in the air. Haven't tried Ubuntu, but Mepis just had a new release and seems pretty up to date with hardware support. I'm a big Debian fan mostly because of apt (the updater).

If I were a newbie, I'd go with one of these "friendlier" distros to get started, and learn a little less painfully.

- Ed
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post #11 of 12
2/24/06 at 6:17pm
I'd go with Ubuntu. I recently installed it over my Fedora 4 installation just to see the difference. Desktop looks identical except for the wallpaper. Ubuntu is one disk versus several for Fedora. Seemed like Ubuntu picked up the monitor resolutions much easier.
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post #12 of 12
2/24/06 at 8:05pm
I think you learn going from Windows to any OS. Maybe some distros force you to do more, but even ubuntu/suse make you go 'under the hood' if you want to do a lot of things. For ubuntu the active community is a BIG help if you have questions. This forum and theirs are my most frequently visited sites these days.

For me, I am playing with setting up a FTP, sshd, jBoss, MySQL, and maybe LDAP for security. A lot of that is easy to setup, but you have to tweak it if you want it to do things the way you would like. Being a newbie and pretty much having to do everything myself, I am learning a lot, but it is frustrating. I guess it depends more on what you do after the OS is installed.

Samba and the print server also took some work to get working the way I wanted them too.

If you really want to learn, I guess you should just skip linux entirely and develop your own OS from scratch.
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