Set sail and hope to land

K12

Hi guys,

Thought this might be as good as any place to begin my mission. I am an avid windows user who has become slowly disillussioned and tired of it. I am now embarking on the journey with Linux....I have purchased a box to solely get a grip on this OS.
It's actually more exciting than Win2k could ever wish to be !
So what I would like is some information as to what version would be the best for a newbie.....I was contemplating Red Hat 7.0 ...but I would welcome some debate and advice here and also some documention about the setups, shells, etc....

Waiting with a smile and the sooner I get away from MS the better...

tHE vAGGABOND

if your totally new I would go for Suse 7.2.

its got a nice friendly install, its got support for everything linux supports and has everything you would want right there on the CD's

Im sure the people who like the other distro's say the same, but for 1st timer's I would say Suse

Praetorian

Ive also wanted to venture forward into the realm of everthing NON microsoft, I couldnt wait to get my little grippers on linux...

But

WIN XP 2600 is SOOO Sweeet!

Stable, fast, reliable, works with everthing and you can change it from standard blue to sexy silver!! :P

for me its like the mercedes of operating systems. GWAN MS you's did something right!

Cake Fiend

Mandrake 8 is nice and easy to install, auto-detected practically all of my hardware.

yellum

Mandrake 8 switches on everything though from the start which isn't very safe for newbies and its also a ram hog.

The install itself is very good and helpful. It held my hand all the way through.

Hobbes

RedHat 7.1 is good for most machines. The installer even has a newbie install option which will disable stuff that cause let people tinker with your machine.

Enygma

I like SuSE too, not only is the install easy but the administration of the box is nice and simple too. I'm sure YaST has its critics but I think it's great.
Go for it!

K12

That's for all the advice guys....I have decided to go for Suse 7.2.
I will get my way about there first and then launch at RH7.0...
Next thing is where can I get this software ? And instruction manuals ?
Appreciated...


Terrible thing yesterday.

flamegrill

Stay away from Red Hat as its setup is not a typical as other distros and other unices. By setup i mean directory structure.
d.g /etc is your config directory and red hat seem to wonder away from the standard format.

I know mandrake is also setup very similar to Red Hat as i have in the past used both. May i just add that i quickly moved away from them just as quick as i installed thme. If you want to get away from Fancy Micrsoft GUI's etc then go for a distro from the BSD family or from Slackware or debian. Slackware and Debian are probably some of the best setup and support Linux distrobutions available. These distros stay away from fancy installs and use easy to use text based installs.

FreeBSD would be the favourite of most BSD users, its stabilty and *Securness* is probably uncompareable to other unices. But yet that is not just provided by the distro itself but the administration of the box.

I would like to point out that slackware is a fine, easy to setup and easy to use Distro. I have used it since 7.0 (not that long ago), and i am now up to 8.0. I find it is very versatile and i now use it to host my web page and many friends webpages in the US on a cable inet connection.

So in closing stay away from fancy GUI based distros or you will never learn the beauty of a true Multi Tasking OS and never actually get to like or dislike the linux console and or learn all about administration.


just a wee note:

all documentation about linux and its various programs, packages have many Howtos and manuals available to you on the web.

Typedef

Hmm and linus said "let there be slack" and there was slack
SLACKWARE

don't wuss out and install red-head linux or suse , if you have installed windows98 from dos then why wouldn't you be able to do slackware plus if you have any problems we will help you with the install ok?


Here's my first contrib if I may?

get this XINE

and once you have xine get the plug in that allows you to watch encrypted dvd's on you linux box this one ?= CAPTAIN_CSS
and spend saturday night impressing girl with unix knowledge and ability to watch dvd's on unix because as we all know , CHICKS DIG UNIX heh.


In fact now in slackware & xine is the only way i can view a dvd without changing to a cpu that operates on a 100mhz front side bus due ostensibly to a fault in windows (evidently) as I can run full screen xine flawlessly with my current cpu in linux .... hmm can you believe?


anyhow if you want flawless stability - then it has to be Slackware running linux 2.4.5 or better (and watch your dvd's or play your opengl games) or *BSD I rekon?


'windows 98 has detected you have moved your mouse'.
'you will have to reboot for the new settings to take effect'
-Steve Bymer 'just now'

phaxx

Just like to add my voice chanting "slackware" slowly and deeply in the background.


SLACKware, SLACKware *stomps feet*

Trojan

Originally posted by flamegrill
Stay away from Red Hat as its setup is not a typical as other distros and other unices. By setup i mean directory structure.
d.g /etc is your config directory and red hat seem to wonder away from the standard format.

What distro do you guys consider to be most like the standard UNIXs, e.g. Solaris? Esp concerning file locations etc.?

iirc Mandrake used to be "RH++" up until v7, when they branched out on their own.

Al.

flamegrill

The most unix like of all id say in my opinion would be slackware. I know debian is just about the same, but they add their own special touches which make it that lil less Unix like.

Also FreeBSD would be very similar.