Linux

PiE

I'm planning on buying a copy of Linux very soon. Could anyone tell me which version I should try? I've never used any before. I was planning on getting RedHat, but I've heard it's not too easy for beginners to use?

Anyone got any advice on which I should try first? Bearing in mind I intend to use it mainly for learning purposes.

Oh and Enlightenment!

Thanksinadvance.

Kali

nah go with redhat, its one of the easier distributions to install and get up and working to scratch, and if its for yourself to get to grips with unix shells and the like then its your best bet as it comes with pretty much everything you'll need on the cd.

just don't pay over the top for it as your basically just paying for the manuals and documentation considering every second person has a copy of redhat on cd

as with any dist. problems can occur with hardware drivers, modems/cdrw/graphicscards etc. but redhat is fairly sorted for the majority of them (has a limited hardware auto-detect which makes life a lot easier).

Lenny

well I was thinking mandrake would be better ?
anyways go to www.linux.ie and you can borrow and get cd's off people there and ask questions
the people would meet you somewere in town or something and give you a loan of a booklet and a cd for a few weeks
but as Kali said, don't go ott with the manuals

Hecate

mandrake and redhat are both basically the same thing

Anyway I found that SuSE 7.1 would be a good choice for someone just testing the water with Linux; its installation (yast2) is quick and painless, and it detected everything on my system with very little fiddling (even usb stuff).

The only gripe would be thats its a bit expensive (£40 for personal edition), but you get what you pay for, 3 cds full of apps and some really good manuals.

you get get it from cheapbytes.com or hodges figges computer books dept. I'm pretty sure micromail have copies too.

Enygma

My vote goes for SuSE 7.1 too.
Been using SuSE for almost three years now and I have to say that this one is just fantastic.

YAST is brilliant, for installation/uninstallation and general setup.

KDE 2 is a really sweet desktop manager too.

I'd say SuSE 7.1 woul be well worth it.

PiE

Thanks folks, giving considerable thought to opting for SuSE after reading up on it.

btw, does NoLimits work with Linux? Or can anyone point me to where I might find a script for it?

Thanks again.

Skeptic1

Nolimits works with linux. Pretty much the same as any ISP. Username is nolimits, password is nolimits. I use the rp3 utility in redhat to connect. The kde utility kppp also works.

PiE

Sweet, thanks!

tribble

Mandrake = Redhat
but Mandrake is a bit more flexible
both very easy to install

Caledera intallation is smoother than a very smooth thing but partitioning software they supply is not ideal for beginner.

Full install of SuSE is huge and good for people with equally huge hardisks who want to play with every part of Linux.

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that's all well and good, but where are all the monkeys gone?

flamegrill

The awnser to u is there is no best distribution of Linux. There are many good ones, the Main players bein RedHat(gay), Mandrake, Slackware, Debian and Suse. all of the above are great, get the latest version and update it so u can go on the net securley. and u say u heard linux is not too easy for beginners, well the case here is beginners will only use the GUI X - windows.
where as the real power of linux is in the console. a real 32 bit multitasking Operating System. u can do a lot of great things with it, and of course X is great with all its nice Managers, KDE, Gnome.
which one to choose, well if ur a complete beginner, id go for mandrake 7.2, the latest, itll run on almost any machine and support almost all of ur hardware, SBlive!, Voodoo cards for quake 3.

now for nolimits, the problem with nolimits, is that not a software thing, its a hardware thing, uv porbly got a winmodem, as as the name says it aint goin to work with Linux. unless by the off chance uv got a Lucent LT winmodem, which just so happens to have full V.90 support in linux, which is great, if uv got one. i have 5 modems at the mo and the lucent one is the only one that works, apart from my external one.

on the matter

Skeptic1

Be carefull of the "workstation" or "server" options on the Red Hat distro if you are planning on retaining your windows partition.

These options analyse your system, partition it, and install the packages ignoring any partitions that may already be on the system.

If you have a windows partition, you should really opt for manual partitioning using Red Hat's "disk druid" program or the linux fdisk program (you are prompted for this during the install).

Cake Fiend

It would probably be better to try out various distros from magazine covermounts, friends, etc before actually shelling out cash for the full package - get a feel for each distro sort of thing. I used to buy Linux Format regularly, that generally has a full distro of some sort every second issue or so, so it gave me a chance to play around with different distros and see what kind of pros and cons each one had.

PiE

Redhat 6.2 landed on my doormat yesterday so I installed it today and got it running...somehow! =]

But damn you sh¡tty Winmodems! cant get online with it =(

Oh well...

Thank You for all the advice though folks, very nice of you'se