Linux Distro Guide

[bulio]

Hi guys, to make things easier for Linux noobies, I have decided to post a guide to help you choose what Linux distro to get.

Linux Distro Choosing Guide

Welcome to Linux, my friend! The Linux os' in general are very alike, and different than Microsoft. Many people have decided to move to Linux because it is more stable, and open-source. Unlike MS, Linux has many different distributions (or distros). Each distro has it's '+'s and '-'s. Here I will try to cover as many different distros as I can.

Red Hat (http://www.redhat.com)

Red Hat Linux is a very popular distro of Linux. It comes packaged with many different free applications for you to use, such as the Mozilla browser and Open Office (Linux alternative to the MS Office package). It also comes with a fairly easy to install system that lets you install KDE or Gnome (depending on your choice).

Pros:
-Popular
-Fairly easy for the novice
-Comes with loads of Linux software

Cons:
-Sometimes gets too easy for the Linux guru
-Lacks a bit in mp3 and dvd media

http://www.davidgillham.com/tech/screenshots/screenshot.jpg
Red Hat interface



Gentoo (http://www.gentoo.org/)

Gentoo Linux is a lot harder for the noobie Linux person and is more focused on the guru group. I do not recommend this distro for noobies.

Current version:

Pros:
-- Completely customizable distributions
-- Programs compiled optimized for your hardware
-- Excellent support from the Gentoo forums
-- Portage, my personal favorite method for managing dependencies in any distro
-- Free, as in both
-- Untainted desktop environments. You get GNOME and KDE the way they were meant to look and behave


Cons:
-- One of the more difficult installations of any distro I've used
-- Long compile times, especially on slower machines
-- Lots of downloading. Broadband is more or less a necessity
-- No "true" tech support

http://www.gentoo.org/images/shots/luke-jr.png
Gentoo screen



Slackware (http://www.slackware.com/)

Current version:
-Slackware 9.1
-Gnome 2.4
-KDE 3.1.4

Slackware is a pretty good distro, coming with the installations to install Gnome 2.4.0, or KDE 3.1.4. If you want you can easily install the 2.6.xx kernel if you like beta kernels. The installation is text-based, so some users may find it a bit hard, but if you've used FreeBSD or Debian Linux then you should be fine. Overall, it's a pretty solid Linux distro to use.

http://img.osnews.com/img/4637/slackware7.png
Interface of Slackware 9.1 Gnome



Mandrake (http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en-us/)

Current version:
-Mandrake Linux 9.2

Mandrake is an excellent distro to get started with. It has an easy installation method and is graphical. The interfaces while using Mandrake makes a Windows user comfortable. It also comes installed with many different Linux things to use, wich makes it really nice.

Pros:
-Easy installation for new users
-Comes pre-loaded with great software

Cons:
-Easy for the Linux guru
-Some of the stuff installed you don't really need

http://img.osnews.com/img/3116/mdk2.jpg
Mandrake interface



Suse (http://www.suse.com/us/index.html)

-To start us off, Suse comes in two different types, professional and personal. Personal is free while professional comes with a cost. Suse pro is more business-oriented while the home edition is geared to home users. The installation is graphical, and fairly easy to do. Suse also has excellent detection rates for scanners, cameras and any external devices. It uses KDE 3.1 wich is pretty nice. It is really easy for the novice Linux person, while still challenging for gurus. Suse is probably a good distro to choose if you're totally new to Linux.

Pros:
-Great ease-of-use
-Easy install
-Good software

Cons:
-Not a ton of new features since 8.2

http://img.osnews.com/img/5157/suse2.png
Suse interface



Debian (http://www.debian.org)

-Debian Linux is great and a very stable linux os, but definitely not for the Linux newbie. Debian was developed 100% by volunteers and not just one company, like Suse or Red Hat. It can be sometimes very hard to use but in the end it's excellent for the Linux guru.

Pros:
-One of the most stable Linux distros
-Made entirely by volunteers

Cons:
-For the guru only
-Sometimes extremely frustrating

http://gama.fsv.cvut.cz/~soucek/cv/prace/2003/chip-debian/screen-debian1.png
Debian interface


Fedora Project (http://fedora.redhat.com/)

What is Fedora you ask? Well, Fedora is a distro of Linux sponsored by Red Hat that is said to be made to make a complete os built entirely from free software. Here is a small quote from the fedora site:


The goal of The Fedora Project is to work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from free software. Development will be done in a public forum. The project will produce time-based releases of Fedora Core about 2-3 times a year with a public release schedule. The Red Hat engineering team will continue to participate in the building of Fedora Core and will invite and encourage more outside participation than was possible in Red Hat Linux. By using this more open process, we hope to provide an operating system that uses free software development practices and is more appealing to the open source community.

Overall, Fedora looks quite promising for a venturer in the Linux field and looks like a good challenge for the guru.

Pros:
-Going to be a full os system

Cons:
-Still in beta
-A few problems that come up during install and first boot that need to be fixed

http://mbone.petra.ac.id/mypages/ichtus/fedora/Screenshot-3.png
Interface screen of Fedora



http://freebsd.kde.org/img/screenshots/en_jon-d_screen3.png
KDE interface on FreeBSD


[SIZE=2]**this guide was written 100% by bulio and there is no copy-and-paste whatsoever.**


Lynx - Edited some screwed up links

[h1]

:lol: OK, what's the source? :P

[bulio]

Written by me 100% and I ain't lying

[LSA]

Originally posted by bulio@1 April 2004 - 18:53
Written by me 100% and I ain't lying
Nice job :D

[bulio]

Originally posted by LSA+2 April 2004 - 01:43--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (LSA @ 2 April 2004 - 01:43)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-bulio@1 April 2004 - 18:53
Written by me 100% and I ain&#39;t lying
Nice job :D [/b][/quote]
thx, but it ain&#39;t quite done yet, I gotta add a couple more distros
:lol:

[bulio]

Now it&#39;s done :P

[Ariel_001]

Coming from a Linux noob (more or less) it looks good. Glad to see it did not degrade into some windows bashing post like I seen in some other guide. Anyways why not also just go into a bit more detail. Pretend you are trying to sell me a Linux Distro. :lol: Well maybe not....


Off topic.. Anyone here find the Mac OS is the complete opposite of Linux and Windows is somewhere in the middle.

[DWells55]

What about Lindows? I downloaded a copy from them for free. I typed in coupon code ImaNVUfan or something like that and let me download the developer&#39;s edition free. I haven&#39;t bothered to install it yet, as the PC I was going to try it on doesn&#39;t have the specs to run it. Is it any good or should I just go grab a copy of Mandrake? Also what&#39;s Mandrake need for Specs? I&#39;ve got a 350 MHz PII with 320 MBs of ram and an 80 GB hard drive running Windows XP Pro (legal OEM version I got for free before most of the public :D) smoothly. That 80 GBs isn&#39;t being used, could I partition it and install Mandrake on it? Are there any good tools for partitioning some space for Mandrake?

BTW, Ariel, it seems to me that MacOS is the opposite of Windows and Linux is in the middle. Seems like Linux might be the healthy blend a lot of us are looking for. I won&#39;t be installing Linux on my primary computer though, seing how it is a heavy gaming machine with one purpose: games. And the occasional music or one of my 328 (all) Simpsons episodes :).

[shn]

Originally posted by Ariel_001@1 April 2004 - 21:27


Off topic.. Anyone here find the Mac OS is the complete opposite of Linux and Windows is somewhere in the middle.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/architecture/

OS Foundation

Beneath the easy-to-use interface and rich graphics of Mac OS X is Darwin, an open source UNIX-based foundation built on technologies such as FreeBSD, Mach, Apache, and GCC. Darwin provides a complete UNIX environment, with X11 and POSIX services comparable to Linux or FreeBSD, including familiar kernel, libraries, networking and command-line utilities.

http://www.cs.rose-hulman.edu/~yerricde/homenodes/foot-in-mouth.jpg





@bulio -- Great Guide http://www.scapenotes.com/notes/econs/t-up.gif

@DWells55 -- Lindows no longer has the free coupon codes available I don&#39;t think, so since you took the time to download it go ahead and give it a try. Your specs are pretty minimal but Linux handles memory and processing speed a lot better than Windows so you should be ok. Juts don&#39;t give that pc more than it can handle.

If that does not work to your liking then just keep trying distros until you find one that is right for you. :)

[h1]

Originally posted by bulio@1 April 2004 - 19:53
Written by me 100% and I ain&#39;t lying
My bad. :)

BTW, how&#39;d you edit without leaving watermarks?

[bulio]

Originally posted by DWells55@2 April 2004 - 03:49
What about Lindows? I downloaded a copy from them for free. I typed in coupon code ImaNVUfan or something like that and let me download the developer&#39;s edition free. I haven&#39;t bothered to install it yet, as the PC I was going to try it on doesn&#39;t have the specs to run it. Is it any good or should I just go grab a copy of Mandrake? Also what&#39;s Mandrake need for Specs? I&#39;ve got a 350 MHz PII with 320 MBs of ram and an 80 GB hard drive running Windows XP Pro (legal OEM version I got for free before most of the public :D) smoothly. That 80 GBs isn&#39;t being used, could I partition it and install Mandrake on it? Are there any good tools for partitioning some space for Mandrake?

BTW, Ariel, it seems to me that MacOS is the opposite of Windows and Linux is in the middle. Seems like Linux might be the healthy blend a lot of us are looking for. I won&#39;t be installing Linux on my primary computer though, seing how it is a heavy gaming machine with one purpose: games. And the occasional music or one of my 328 (all) Simpsons episodes :).
I had a couple minor problems on lindows, and I will add it later if needed. For system specs, you only need 128 mb of ram for kde desktop and not much computing power

@haxor,

I didn&#39;t, pol edited it out when he pinned it for me

[DWells55]

According to help.lindows.com, the minimum requirements are: Intel, AMD, or VIA processor - 800 MHz or higher
Minimum 128 MB RAM
Minimum 2 GB of available hard disk space
Yikes&#33; I don&#39;t think I&#39;ll be able to run that on my old system&#33; It&#39;s got: Intel Pentium II 350 MHz
320 MB RAM
65 GB hard disk space
Oh well, I guess I can try :( .

[bulio]

that&#39;s for linows. Suse linux (easy distro for noobies) needs the following specs:


Main memory

&nbsp; &nbsp; * At least 64 MB are required for the installation with YaST2 in graphical mode; 128 MB recommended

Hard disk

&nbsp; &nbsp; * 400 MB to more than 3 GB (Personal Edition) or 6 GB (Professional Edition) for the installation of all packages; 2 GB or more recommended
&nbsp; &nbsp; * LBA48 hard disks are supported

[LSA]

:o It turned out pretty good, Bulio. Nice work.

Edit: Spelling error

[bulio]

Originally posted by LSA@2 April 2004 - 23:56
:o It turned out pretty good, Bulio. Nice work.

Edit: Spelling error
thx, it was my first guide and took me about 2 hrs. I plan to write a couple more for some other worlds if I think of anything guide-worthy

[aoyv73]

A mag here in uk gives out a free DVD with Linux on most months better than downloading

[bulio]

Originally posted by aoyv73@5 April 2004 - 11:34
A mag here in uk gives out a free DVD with Linux on most months better than downloading
some of us don&#39;t live in the uk :rolleyes:

[atiVidia]

u missed knoppix.

knoppix is bootable from CD amd, as such, is excellent as an emergency boot disk. although with linux, you cannot write to any NTFS partitions, you can still read them, and thus, can burn any files on them to a cd with the included CD authoring software. You cannot burn CDs or DVDs unless you have the Knoppix bootable CD in another CD drive. Knoppix converts a small space on the RAM into a ramdrive and extracts itself in realtime to the dedicated portion of RAM. It does not copy any part of itself to the hard drive (however if a part of a hard drive is messed up it may not be able to boot at all, due to a failed attempt at scanning the drive. Knoppix is very useful as a boot CD, and can be used to recover lost files as well. It runs like any other version of linux. Just be sure to dload the English version if you speak english, and not the german version <_<. the Knoppix iso file is available at:



Pros: boots from the CD only and does not rely on the HDD at all
can be used for file recovery
can entertain you for a small while with games like Frozen Bubble and Battleship
awesome for newbies and people who have a random phobia of installing things for the first time.
comes with StarOffice, C++ dev software, etc. making for a decent OS
features enough software to play DVDs, DivXs, mp3s, etc.
can be dloaded off of bittorrent :D

Cons takes up a cd drive, and thus, the used cd drive cannot be used to do anything else during your current linux session.
may be slow at times
may be too limited for linux gurus (they could only squeeze 2 gigs (compressed into 700 megs) onto the ISO.
Settings are not retained.
VERY hard, if not impossible, to make it run off of the hard drive (this distro was intended only as a CD BOOT release)
can entertain you for a small while with games like Frozen Bubble and Battleship

Knoppix Homepage (http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html)

[shn]

Originally posted by atiVidia@9 April 2004 - 23:23
u missed knoppix.

knoppix is bootable from CD amd, as such, is excellent as an emergency boot disk. although with linux, you cannot write to any NTFS partitions, you can still read them, and thus, can burn any files on them to a cd with the included CD authoring software. You cannot burn CDs or DVDs unless you have the Knoppix bootable CD in another CD drive. Knoppix converts a small space on the RAM into a ramdrive and extracts itself in realtime to the dedicated portion of RAM. It does not copy any part of itself to the hard drive (however if a part of a hard drive is messed up it may not be able to boot at all, due to a failed attempt at scanning the drive. Knoppix is very useful as a boot CD, and can be used to recover lost files as well. It runs like any other version of linux. Just be sure to dload the English version if you speak english, and not the german version <_<. the Knoppix iso file is available at:



Pros:
boots from the CD only and does not rely on the HDD at all

can be used for file recovery

can entertain you for a small while with games like Frozen Bubble and Battleship

awesome for newbies and people who have a random phobia of installing things for the first time.

comes with StarOffice, C++ dev software, etc. making for a decent OS

features enough software to play DVDs, DivXs, mp3s, etc.

can be dloaded off of bittorrent&nbsp; :D


Cons
takes up a cd drive, and thus, the used cd drive cannot be used to do anything else during your current linux session.

may be slow at times

may be too limited for linux gurus (they could only squeeze 2 gigs (compressed into 700 megs) onto the ISO.

Settings are not retained.

VERY hard, if not impossible, to make it run off of the hard drive (this distro was intended only as a CD BOOT release)

can entertain you for a small while with games like Frozen Bubble and Battleship


Knoppix Homepage (http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html)
That second to last statement is FALSE.

Where do peole get their info from?



# Press CTRL-ALT-F1, to get a root console. You should see a shell prompt

# Type&#58; knx-hdinstall

If you call that hard and impossible theN STAY AWAY FROM LINUX. :)

[atiVidia]

Originally posted by shn+10 April 2004 - 17:13--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (shn @ 10 April 2004 - 17:13)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-atiVidia@9 April 2004 - 23:23
u missed knoppix.

knoppix is bootable from CD amd, as such, is excellent as an emergency boot disk. although with linux, you cannot write to any NTFS partitions, you can still read them, and thus, can burn any files on them to a cd with the included CD authoring software. You cannot burn CDs or DVDs unless you have the Knoppix bootable CD in another CD drive. Knoppix converts a small space on the RAM into a ramdrive and extracts itself in realtime to the dedicated portion of RAM. It does not copy any part of itself to the hard drive (however if a part of a hard drive is messed up it may not be able to boot at all, due to a failed attempt at scanning the drive. Knoppix is very useful as a boot CD, and can be used to recover lost files as well. It runs like any other version of linux. Just be sure to dload the English version if you speak english, and not the german version <_<. the Knoppix iso file is available at:



Pros:

boots from the CD only and does not rely on the HDD at all


can be used for file recovery


can entertain you for a small while with games like Frozen Bubble and Battleship


awesome for newbies and people who have a random phobia of installing things for the first time.


comes with StarOffice, C++ dev software, etc. making for a decent OS


features enough software to play DVDs, DivXs, mp3s, etc.


can be dloaded off of bittorrent :D



Cons

takes up a cd drive, and thus, the used cd drive cannot be used to do anything else during your current linux session.


may be slow at times


may be too limited for linux gurus (they could only squeeze 2 gigs (compressed into 700 megs) onto the ISO.


Settings are not retained.


VERY hard, if not impossible, to make it run off of the hard drive (this distro was intended only as a CD BOOT release)


can entertain you for a small while with games like Frozen Bubble and Battleship



Knoppix Homepage (http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html)
That second to last statement is FALSE.

Where do peole get their info from?



# Press CTRL-ALT-F1, to get a root console. You should see a shell prompt

# Type&#58; knx-hdinstall

If you call that hard and impossible theN STAY AWAY FROM LINUX. :) [/b][/quote]
lol i didnt see tht sorry.

half of the stuff i posted was on another forum :lol:

[shn]

Originally posted by atiVidia+10 April 2004 - 21:14--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (atiVidia &#064; 10 April 2004 - 21:14)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>
Originally posted by shn@10 April 2004 - 17:13
<!--QuoteBegin-atiVidia@9 April 2004 - 23:23
u missed knoppix.

knoppix is bootable from CD amd, as such, is excellent as an emergency boot disk. although with linux, you cannot write to any NTFS partitions, you can still read them, and thus, can burn any files on them to a cd with the included CD authoring software. You cannot burn CDs or DVDs unless you have the Knoppix bootable CD in another CD drive. Knoppix converts a small space on the RAM into a ramdrive and extracts itself in realtime to the dedicated portion of RAM. It does not copy any part of itself to the hard drive (however if a part of a hard drive is messed up it may not be able to boot at all, due to a failed attempt at scanning the drive. Knoppix is very useful as a boot CD, and can be used to recover lost files as well. It runs like any other version of linux. Just be sure to dload the English version if you speak english, and not the german version <_<. the Knoppix iso file is available at:



Pros:


boots from the CD only and does not rely on the HDD at all



can be used for file recovery



can entertain you for a small while with games like Frozen Bubble and Battleship



awesome for newbies and people who have a random phobia of installing things for the first time.



comes with StarOffice, C++ dev software, etc. making for a decent OS



features enough software to play DVDs, DivXs, mp3s, etc.



can be dloaded off of bittorrent&nbsp; :D




Cons


takes up a cd drive, and thus, the used cd drive cannot be used to do anything else during your current linux session.



may be slow at times



may be too limited for linux gurus (they could only squeeze 2 gigs (compressed into 700 megs) onto the ISO.



Settings are not retained.



VERY hard, if not impossible, to make it run off of the hard drive (this distro was intended only as a CD BOOT release)



can entertain you for a small while with games like Frozen Bubble and Battleship




Knoppix Homepage (http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html)
That second to last statement is FALSE.

Where do peole get their info from?



# Press CTRL-ALT-F1, to get a root console. You should see a shell prompt

# Type&#58; knx-hdinstall

If you call that hard and impossible theN STAY AWAY FROM LINUX. :)
lol i didnt see tht sorry.

half of the stuff i posted was on another forum :lol:[/b][/quote]
http://filesharingtalk.com/html/emoticons/laugh.gifNo prob, Linux Section is generic anyway. Copy and paste all you like.http://filesharingtalk.com/html/emoticons/laugh.gif

[SingaBoiy]

What would your guys recomend for me....

I want to use something that is closest to xp. Easy navagation, support for many file types (rar,xvid,divx,iso, so on). But I want something very reliable that uses low resources.

[shn]

Originally posted by SingaBoiy@11 May 2004 - 07:12
What would your guys recomend for me....

I want to use something that is closest to xp. Easy navagation, support for many file types (rar,xvid,divx,iso, so on). But I want something very reliable that uses low resources.
Suse has good support for thoose various filetypes with a default install. But I don&#39;t think it&#39;s too good on resources. It&#39;s a bit bloated, but then again so is XP.

[NightStalker]

Has anyone played with Yoper (http://www.yoper.com)?

[shn]

Looks like the norm Linux distro. Although it does say it&#39;s optimized for 686 machines nd that&#39;s pretty cool.

I would give it a try but I have to install Solaris 9 for (x86) since that what some of our servers at school run I should catch up on things before school starts if I want another dead-end workstudy position....................again. I love the other students that comptete becuase they never get it and only two are choosen. Two in a row their will be pissed souls this semester. :lol:

Anyway if you give it a try let me know how it runs.

[killer04]

Do you think that it will be compatible with an intel extreme graphics graphic card?

[Fighter-X]

Hey I heard Linux was the best thing for hacking into places or people, do any of you think this is true??? If so tell me how to hack. My cousin got this guide to hacking, so im just curious.

oh yeah Imacs suck :lol:

[LSA]

Hey I heard Linux was the best thing for hacking into places or people, do any of you think this is true??? If so tell me how to hack. My cousin got this guide to hacking, so im just curious.

oh yeah Imacs suck :lol:

What a joker!

[Adster]

excellent guide helped me allot

it looks like mandrake or suse for me

[ZaZu]

Current version:
-Mandrake Linux 9.2
The current ver is 10.1 (http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/ftp.php3)

[Shiranai_Baka]

Anyone used Ubuntu yet? :)

[Damnatory]

Would also like to see a little review for ubunto as the others have been reviewed here. Suse however looks like the one I should try. :D

[ronaldinho]

Thx for grt info

[foobar2000]

I've installed ubuntu on a couple of systems. It's great. Stable. 6.06 just came out. Looks great. None of the rpm crap for installing software. Love apt

[jeniffer]

Your the best.Thanx.I dont think i am guru so Ill try SUSE for now. I would appreciate if you update anytime with some details about ubuntu.

[enviouz]

nice thread. its in severe need of an update though in my opinion. also the boot and install probs are pretty much fixed on fedora core now. well actually its just fedora as of version 7.

[zapjb]

I'll recommend PCLinuxOS-2007 as the easiest distro. :)

[grimms]

Would love an opinion on Ubuntu linux. Heard great things about that distro.

[fstrulz]

Would love an opinion on Ubuntu linux. Heard great things about that distro.
For me, it's the best Linux Distro ever built so far. It's very easy to install, fast, secure, and it has a great community -> ubuntuforums.org

[zapjb]

All Linux users are my brothers & sisters in the fight for intellectual freedom.

Having said that. PCLOS is the way I've choose.

Don't let the billions of dollars behind Ubuntu fool you.

Until you've tried PCLOS you don't know.

I've tried Ubuntu.

[trotest]

if you are a real "bad to the bone" guy, you may want to give Debian a try ;)

[JROQuinn]

http://distrowatch.com/

gives pretty good descriptions on probably every distro out there

[seanmheff]

Linux Mint 0wns!!

[DasFox]

I'm surprised no one has updated this post.

Here's a post I have here:

http://filesharingtalk.com/vb3/f-linux-software-54/t-linux-new-users-281046