Linux Choose me a distro

[nleahcim]

Hi - I know this has been asked 1 million times (well now 1,000,001 times ) but well I didn't really find an answer to my question...

So I have been meaning to get familiar with Linux for quite some time now. I've played around with Mandrake on my computer a bit - but I really never got into it too much. Also Mandrake always felt like it was over simplified for the new Linux user or something - so I never really felt like I was getting anywhere with it.

Anyways so I'd like to find a distro that will be good to learn on. I was thinking about Redhat - as that seems to be a good "all around" distro - but I'm not sure. Gentoo sounds good too - but at this point I think it would be *way* too hard to even get running.

BTW my computer is a Dell inspirion 600M laptop. I am planning on dual booting xp pro and whatever linux distro I choose.

So does Red Hat seem like a good choice? Any others I should take a gander at? Thanks!

[PsychoI3oy]

Originally Posted by nleahcim

Anyways so I'd like to find a distro that will be good to learn on. I was thinking about Redhat - as that seems to be a good "all around" distro - but I'm not sure. Gentoo sounds good too - but at this point I think it would be *way* too hard to even get running.

So does Red Hat seem like a good choice? Any others I should take a gander at? Thanks!

ehwww rpm hell. trust me you don't want redhat or fedora or suse or any other rpm based distros

do not be afraid of gentoo, the instructions on the website spell out very specifically what you need to do to get up and running, wether a stage1, 2 or 3 install. A stage 1 or stage2 install will take a while but once it's set up the system will be faster than any other distro.

what's rpm hell? rpm is the redhat package manager. it's a way to install programs that are precompiled. rpm hell is when you go to install a program, and it depends on 3 others, and they depend on 4 others each, ad nausaeum. i started on redhat and got very frustrated at times with this syndrome.

how does gentoo eliminate rpm hell? the portage system. portage is a list of several thousand (8k i think, if not more) programs that you may want to install on your computer. if you decide to install program foo, you just log in as root and type 'emerge foo'. if foo depends on bar and baz, and bar requres flummox and zoom, it will download and compile any and all of the programs necesary to get foo running. no fuss no muss. and since it's all compiled specifically for your computer, each program runs better and takes advantage of your processor's architecture (things like sse2 or 3dnow, or even athlon64) to run as fast as possible.

anywho, i'll stop rambling now, but seriously, try gentoo. it's far from leaving you n00bish feeling, but not complicated with the documentation provided on the website, not to mention the forums on their site, or the #gentoo channel on irc.freenode.net. plus here

[Xipher]

Personally I use Slackware.

[[cibyr]]

I love my debian boxen to bits. APT roxxors your soxxors

Funniest thing at a lan, messing about with a friend's debian box, someone says "Install samba already", so I type "apt-get install samba". Someone else says "I think it's slightly more complicated than that", but what do you know - it worked

[Hamish]

emerge/portage > apt

[trigger]

apt-get dist-upgrade

Or something like that. That'll go off and download all the available updates and install them for you! One freakin command! That's why I use Debian (Oh, and it r0xx0r!)

Also debian has strict rules about the filesystem, and where things go, this makes for a nice and easy to understand structure to all your directories, etc.

[Hamish]

or in gentoo 'emerge -U world'

[PsychoI3oy]

Originally Posted by trigger

apt-get dist-upgrade

Or something like that. That'll go off and download all the available updates and install them for you! One freakin command! That's why I use Debian (Oh, and it r0xx0r!)

Also debian has strict rules about the filesystem, and where things go, this makes for a nice and easy to understand structure to all your directories, etc.

emerge sync; emerge -uDv world

seems pretty simple to me, and it is one command for those gentoo users that have emerge sync tied to a cron job.

I have a habit of making it several commands
emerge sync
emerge -uDvp world -> to see how much it has to do
emerge -uD world -> fire it off then go to bed

[edit] doh i was beaten by 2 minutes [/edit]

[RTT]

A vote for freeBSD (not linux i know) or slack

[PsychoI3oy]

Originally Posted by RTT

A vote for freeBSD (not linux i know) or slack

if not gentoo, then freebsd

i will never install a new 'nix OS without ports or portage or something darn similar. (freeBSD's 'ports' is what Gentoo's 'Portage' is based off of, though portage is considered easier to use by some/most that have tried both)

I started with freeBSD a couple years ago and was very pleased, but started getting annoyed when i'd find cool little programs that wouldn't work with the Linux compatability mode. Gentoo is Linux, and has the same great application installation method as freeBSD, so I went with that about 6 months ago and never looked back.

the only slack i've tried is zipslack and this was a while ago. i have never heard anythign bad about it though, and all of my friends that don't use Gentoo use Slackware.


just pick one and start having fun, anything that's not windows is good

[ST8]

debian gets my vote as well.

[nleahcim]

Originally Posted by RTT

A vote for freeBSD (not linux i know) or slack

Yeah I was planning on trying to learn how to use OpenBSD as soon as I get comfortable with Linux. But I hear it's very different from Linux so I thought I should start with a Linux distribution.


Edit: So both Debian and Gentoo sound nice. How are they different? Gentoo is compiled from the ground up and has a different system for installing/upgrading software. But what other differences are there? Thanks for all your help!

[nleahcim]

Oh also - for debian which discs would I download? (from here: http://linuxiso.org/distro.php?distro=4)

I'm thinking disk 1 US (being that I'm in the US) and disc 2 vanilla - and is that it? What about 6 and 7?



And for Gentoo - I would just need the minimal installer correct? Or should I get the universal installer? I'm guessing that the universal has all the common files already on it (like kernel and whatnot) so that you don't have to download them. Is that right?



Thanks!

[ST8]

debian comes in 3 flavours: stable, testing, unstable. Stable is as is says well tested stable software for production servers really and hence is a little outdated. Testing is what will become the next stable release, and is proberbly your best bet, it is reasonably up to date and a lot of stuff is back ported from unstable into testing. Unstable is the cutting edge development release and is constantly being updated.

If your in the US you will have to download the US cd 1, the non US cd 1 contains better encryption and other bits which you arnt allowed in the US

So my recommendation is US testing, you prolly wont need more than the first few cds as pacakges are ordered most popular -> least, first few cds should have everything you need.

Can download cd images with jigado here:
http://www.debian.org/CD/jigdo-cd/

CD:
http://cdimage.debian.org/pub/cdimag...cd/jigdo-area/
DVD:
http://cdimage.debian.org/pub/cdimag...vd/jigdo-area/

You'll prolly hear testing referred to as sarge btw, sid is unstable and woody stable.

[[cibyr]]

Or if you have a fast connection, you can just download the first CD (which will have most of what you want) and install everything else straight off the net.

[Hamish]

for gentoo just get the universal livecd and follow the install handbook on gentoo.org
not that hard really

[nleahcim]

Originally Posted by [cibyr]

Or if you have a fast connection, you can just download the first CD (which will have most of what you want) and install everything else straight off the net.

You're talking about Gentoo correct?

[PsychoI3oy]

Originally Posted by nleahcim

You're talking about Gentoo correct?

actually from what i understand, that'd be true of both gentoo and debian

for the gentoo, pick the minimal iso from here: ftp://ftp.ucsb.edu/pub/mirrors/linux...2004.1/livecd/

(uc santa barbra mirror, should be fast enough for you in oregon, it works great for me in denver)

and follow the install instructions for stage1 from here: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handboo...?part=1&chap=1

note that this will take the better part of a day/weekend depending on your bandwidth and cpu speed. if you're testing on a slower computer and want it to compile faster, look into distcc which sends jobs out to other computers for compiling. though if your main computer is windows, distcc can be made to work but is often more trouble than it's worth.

your other options are stage2 and stage3. stage2 is much like stage1 but has a few of the basics precompiled (everything that's done by bootstrap.sh in the stage1, your compiler, glibc, and friends) so it's a bit quicker, but you still compile the kernel and any apps you want. stage3 is precompiled everything and is processor specific to a point. it will still be faster than the average x86 distro, but you learn less of the guts of the system.

I started with a stage1 on my (ehww slow pII333m) laptop about 7 months ago, with only basic knowledge gleaned from redhat linux and freebsd. The installation process was not dificult at all, just time consuming waiting for things to compile. with only 256/256 dsl I was able to complete the install (i.e. get to where the computer's booting without the cd) in a couple days, and had X (the gui in linux, also called xfree, xwindows, and xfree86) and fluxbox (my window manager of choice, small and fast, others may suit you better like kde and gnome but will take much longer to compile) installed over the next couple days. basic apps like xchat (gui irc client), gkrellm (system monitor), gaim (aim/msn/yim/etc) didn't take long to compile.

the desktop (then an athlon 1.1ghz) only took about 5 hours to get up and running, and another 2 or 3 to get x, fluxbox, xchat, firefox (then firebird, mozilla's standalone webbrowser), thunderbird (mozilla's standalone email client), and a handfull of other little things up and running. my cpu is now a barton 2800 and compiles things rather fast (less than 6 minutes to compile a 2.6 kernel, it was ~15 with the 1.1 and half an hour or more on the laptop)

ultimately it (gentoo stage1 install) is a rather large time investment, but well worth it for both the knowledge gained and speed of the system after install.

[lunix_user]

I use SuSe, and I don't plan on switching.
whats wrong with rpms?
they work fine for me!

I think SuSe is the all around best linux distro for someone who isn't ready to go to Gentoo or Debian 3 Unstable...
plus, if you ever need support, it rocks!