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Every Linux Newbie's First Question
croxis
I am the walrus
in Zocalo v2.0
What distribution should I get. I am only using linux for personal use.
Comments
I'm curious as to why you said "not Red Hat" Rogue?
I haven't installed any as of yet myself...
more like :
"When do I become an Uber-geek ? After I install Linux or when I actually get it working and find some apps that actually work with it ? "
[img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/biggrin.gif[/img]
I decided I liked a simple to use pointy-click interface much more [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/smile.gif[/img]
If you're going for ease of use, the latest Mandrake is very nice but makes it a little tougher to learn linux properly (too many wizards). Redhat is also good, but less wizards so you'll need to know how to find information on what you want to do (ie know where to find the howto's).
If you know exactly what you are doing, Debian is good. But you also need high bandwidth since it downloads everything it needs automatically.
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[b][url="http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/"]Required reading[/url][/b]
Never eat anything bigger than your own head.
"Nonono...Is not [i]Great[/i] Machine. Is...[i]Not[/i]-so-Great Machine. It make good snow cone though." - Zathras
[b]I have Mandrake 6.5, Red Hat 6.1 and 7.2.
I'm curious as to why you said "not Red Hat" Rogue?
I haven't installed any as of yet myself...[/b][/quote]
baaaaaaaaad baaaaaaaaaaad problems rogue had with red hat.
Plus their quickly becomeing the Microsoft of linux. I forsee many problems with them done the road....
[b]You become an uber-geek after you recompile your kernel yourself to get some weird feature and then build a server using that kernel that does all sorts of weird crap. [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/smile.gif[/img]
[/b][/quote]
What making fun of our company now are we?!
BAH! [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/smile.gif[/img]
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Chase
Web Hosting Provider for FirstOnes.com
http://www.radiusco.com/
[b]What distribution should I get. I am only using linux for personal use.[/b][/quote]
You don't, you get a real OS like BSD, (FreeBSD, NetBSD or OpenBSD)
[img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/smile.gif[/img]
[b] You don't, you get a real OS like BSD, (FreeBSD, NetBSD or OpenBSD) [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/smile.gif[/img][/b][/quote]
[img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/biggrin.gif[/img]
I used to use NetBSD on my Amiga years ago...
That 3000 Tower used to run it nicely too...
[img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/wink.gif[/img]
I never had a 3000, 2000 until I upgraded to a 4000, and then got the 4000T 060 from work [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/biggrin.gif[/img]
Why take workbench off it anyway [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/smile.gif[/img]
[b] [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/biggrin.gif[/img]
I used to use NetBSD on my Amiga years ago...
That 3000 Tower used to run it nicely too...
[img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/wink.gif[/img][/b][/quote]
Amiga is one of the few machines i never owned
I use FreeBSD as my server, it hosts my web pages, mail server, DNS server...
[b] What making fun of our company now are we?!
BAH! [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/smile.gif[/img][/b][/quote]
Actually, making fun of me. I did that just to make a home network server. [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/smile.gif[/img]
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[b][url="http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/"]Required reading[/url][/b]
Never eat anything bigger than your own head.
"Nonono...Is not [i]Great[/i] Machine. Is...[i]Not[/i]-so-Great Machine. It make good snow cone though." - Zathras
[b] Actually, making fun of me. I did that just to make a home network server. [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/smile.gif[/img]
[/b][/quote]
You think compiling a kernel is bad? try a cvsup then a makeworld.
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[b][url="http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/"]Required reading[/url][/b]
Never eat anything bigger than your own head.
"Nonono...Is not [i]Great[/i] Machine. Is...[i]Not[/i]-so-Great Machine. It make good snow cone though." - Zathras
[b]I'll pass, thanks. [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/smile.gif[/img] I've only just got it going again after Bastille killed it.
[/b][/quote]
well now that FreeBSD 4.6-Release is out, i'll be doing a cvsup and a makeworld, takes like 9 hours on my machine, course the machine's only a 266.
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[b][url="http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/"]Required reading[/url][/b]
Never eat anything bigger than your own head.
"Nonono...Is not [i]Great[/i] Machine. Is...[i]Not[/i]-so-Great Machine. It make good snow cone though." - Zathras
[b]My server is a 233. The great thing about linux and BSD is that they handle resources so much better than windows, which means they'll run just as well on much slower computers.
[/b][/quote]
Except when you have to compile the kernel, or worse, a make world.
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[b][url="http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/"]Required reading[/url][/b]
Never eat anything bigger than your own head.
"Nonono...Is not [i]Great[/i] Machine. Is...[i]Not[/i]-so-Great Machine. It make good snow cone though." - Zathras
[b]Yeah, but only ubergeeks do that. [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/smile.gif[/img]
[/b][/quote]
heh, thats me! [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/smile.gif[/img]
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[b][url="http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/"]Required reading[/url][/b]
Never eat anything bigger than your own head.
"Nonono...Is not [i]Great[/i] Machine. Is...[i]Not[/i]-so-Great Machine. It make good snow cone though." - Zathras
[b]And me to, unfortunately. I had to leave the kernel build overnight. [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/smile.gif[/img]
[/b][/quote]
Kernel builds usually only take me an hour or 2, but a full make world, takes like 7 or 8 hours.
[b]I have Mandrake 6.5, Red Hat 6.1 and 7.2.
I'm curious as to why you said "not Red Hat" Rogue?
I haven't installed any as of yet myself...[/b][/quote]
Mandrake 6.5 is just Redhat 6.1 with some added software. Thats about it. [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/smile.gif[/img]
*pats copies of Mandrake 6.5 and 8.1*
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"Isn't the universe a wonderful place? I wouldn't want to live anywhere else! Love to stay! Can't! Have to go. Kiss kiss, love love! Bye!" - G'Kar
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[b][url="http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/"]Required reading[/url][/b]
Never eat anything bigger than your own head.
"Nonono...Is not [i]Great[/i] Machine. Is...[i]Not[/i]-so-Great Machine. It make good snow cone though." - Zathras
The biggest piece of advice I can give is this: If possible, have another machine there with an internet connection. Using google, if/when you get stuck, within a few minutes you will be able to find a FAQ or walkthrough to help get you unstuck.
[b][url="http://www.cheapbytes.com/"]Cheap Bytes[/url][/b] is a good place to order CDs so you don't have to wrestle with downloading the images, etc.
[b][url="http://www.distrowatch.com/summary.php"]Here[/url][/b] is a nice comparison of Linux distros.
The standard starting point for many is RedHat and Mandrake because of the ease of installation. Debian seems to be prefered among the "expert" Linux community, but I don't believe that the transition to Debian is too difficult once you are comfy with RH or Mandrake. Note that Debian sticks with older versions of packages/utils and expects that the admin will be comfortable building a custom kernel.
If you want 3D, you will want XFree 4.2.
If you want a source based 'ports' style of Linux, then [url="http://www.distrowatch.com/gentoo.php"]Gentoo[/url] or one of the [url="http://www.distrowatch.com/sorcerer.php"]Sorcerer[/url] family. (Sorcerer has the hands-down coolest command syntax: cast, invoke, dispell, etc.)
[b][url="http://www.freebsd.org"]FreeBSD[/url][/b] is another one to consider. Full featured but a lot less bloated (particularly for older systems) than the commercial Linux distros.
If you want a hard-core serious firewall type of system, [b][url="http://www.openbsd.org"]OpenBSD[/url][/b] is your best bet. There hasn't been a reproducable crack of OpenBSD's default installation setup in over 3 years. (!!!)
Also, if you want to read up on directory organization, [b][url="http://www.pathname.com/fhs/2.2/"]this[/url][/b] is a nice summary and will dispell some of the confusion about what all those files and directories are for.
I hope that helps. Have fun! [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/smile.gif[/img]
-- john [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/shad.gif[/img]
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[b][url="http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/"]Required reading[/url][/b]
Never eat anything bigger than your own head.
"Nonono...Is not [i]Great[/i] Machine. Is...[i]Not[/i]-so-Great Machine. It make good snow cone though." - Zathras
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"Isn't the universe a wonderful place? I wouldn't want to live anywhere else! Love to stay! Can't! Have to go. Kiss kiss, love love! Bye!" - G'Kar
[b]Hell, I just might re-install Mandrake 8.1...just for shits 'n giggles.
[/b][/quote]
Somehow that's just a visual I didn't need...
[img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/eek.gif[/img]