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Linux Software

The Best Linux Distro for a New User? 246

Posted by Cliff from the an-age-old-question dept.
GhostCypher asks: "I've been a Mac user for nigh on 12 years, and recently made the reverse-switch (yes, Mac to PC) due to an unfortunate accident to my PowerBook. Now that I have this spiffy new HP laptop, I want to run Linux or Unix of some flavor on it, but I don't know the best one to run. I've been considering FreeBSD and OpenBSD, as well as SuSE Linux, Fedora, and Mandrake. Could the wisened Linux gurus here offer some insight as to the best package for a former Mac user to introduce him to the greater world of Linux without major headaches in setting it all up?"
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The Best Linux Distro for a New User? More

The Best Linux Distro for a New User?

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  • Fedora (Score:4, Insightful)

    by FedeTXF ( 456407 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @01:14PM (#9217451)
    Fedora, but adding apt-rpm and a sources.list pointing to where the mp3 and flash suport is.

    • Re:Fedora (Score:2, Informative)

      by tolan-b ( 230077 )
      I'll second that.

      More to the point *install apt from fedora.us!!!*.
      Excellent a job as Dag, Freshrpms, newrpms etc do, you won't necessarily get the packages that have been customised to integrate with Fedora (Firefox and Thunderbird's integration with preferred apps springs to mind). If you include other repos in their sources list then they'll end up replacing your apt with theirs, god help you if you get atrpms, which seems to default to giving you unstable rpms.

      Also, get them mplayer for fc2 from fresh

  • Knoppix (Score:4, Interesting)

    by n1ywb ( 555767 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @01:14PM (#9217454) Homepage Journal
    Knoppix [knoppix.org] is your friend.

    • Re:Knoppix (Score:3, Funny)

      by linzeal ( 197905 )
      Don't listen to him knoppix is the most difficult distro in the world to install. What you want is Gentoo [gentoo.org].

      • Re:Knoppix (Score:3, Informative)

        by Descartes ( 124922 )
        Ok, I know that this is a joke but I would seriously recommend Gentoo to anyone who has the patience to install it.
        Better yet, if a noob can get an expert to either show them how to do it or do it for them, Gentoo is much easier to use in the long run.
        If people would just take the time to follow the step by step instructions for installing Gentoo, they would realize that it isn't daunting, just a little tedious.

        When I switched to Gentoo from Redhat I wasn't expecting it to really be functional. I just wan
    • Here I was going to suggest Debian, but you're right Knoppix is one of the best introductions to Debian out there.

      I realize I'm going to get flamed and modded as flamebait or troll for this...

      Debian is a great first distribution for the hobbyist. The installation is wonderful for anyone who likes to tinker. And they'll only have to do it once.

      The installers are getting easier and easier as time passes, too.

      The hardest part is still Xwindows. With Knoppix, a working XF86Config-4 can be created and copied

    • Re:Knoppix (Score:2, Interesting)

      by LincolnQ ( 648660 )
      My MOM (who is a geek, but she's a mom nonetheless) was able to hdinstall knoppix on a laptop. It worked great.

      I'm always impressed with autodetection and autoconfiguration of hardware. Knoppix does this great out of the CD.

      Boot knoppix, insert orinoco-cs wireless PCMCIA card... see 5 messages on console: recognized type of card, probed module for it, added interface, brought interface up, got IP address from DHCP. And then everything just worked. Awesomeness.

      I recommend it

    • Cygwin (Score:3, Interesting)

      by GCP ( 122438 )
      I think Knoppix is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure that the questioner really needs a whole different operating system that requires shutting down whatever you're doing and rebooting whenever you want to do a little "grep" or "wc" or whatever. (If Knoppix now works as just another application without requiring a reboot, please respond and correct me.)

      As an owner of Macs, Windows PCs, and a Linux server who uses Solaris at work, what I find I need on my laptop is the customized drivers and other goodi

      • Re:Cygwin (Score:3, Insightful)

        by damium ( 615833 )
        Better than this would be Cooperative Linux. [colinux.org] With coLinux you can run a full distro under windows. Add VNC and you can even get GUI apps to work.

        This of course is assuming that you are not going to go through with setting up a dual-boot system or such. Personally I run Linux 90% of the time and only run windows to get to the very few apps that I need that don't run in wine or have a linux equiv.

        For a linux distro I reccomend Mandrake for laptops because they have a somewhat cleaner support for odd hotpl

  • depends... (Score:5, Informative)

    by rusty0101 ( 565565 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @01:17PM (#9217497) Homepage Journal
    ... If they just want to play around with it, get a feel for how it acts, looks, etc. without changing the contents of the hard drive, Knoppix.

    If they are comfortable with using space on their hard drive, even free space on a fat32 partition, I would recomend Mandrake.

    But that's just me. They could use the Mandrake Move CD for non-harddrive breaking as well.

    -Rusty
    • follow up, forgot to read the lead.

      If you want to use an old PPC Mac for this, look to either Yellow Dog Linux, or Mandrake 9.1 for PPC. There are a few other ppc distributions of Linux, including Debian and possibly Gentoo, but I am not about to claim that either of them are user-friendly to a former Mac user.

      BSD is obviously an option as well, but I think of it at the same level as Gentoo or Debian. Some others may think otherwise.

      For that matter you may be able to work with Darwin and X for Darwin. I

    • Re:depends... (Score:2, Informative)

      by l1nuxpunk ( 738263 )
      Mandrake is definitely good for a beginning user, however I've found that there's certain issues when installing on a laptop.

      In my experience, Mandrake's auto-detection isn't up to snuff when it's getting installed on a laptop, and that can raise some issues (no sound support, X displaying oddly, etc.).

      But, if you know your exact hardware during install, then you shouldn't have a problem.
    • Good general advice, but it may be worth skipping Mandrake 10. I tried installing the full powerpack edition on my home computer and the darn thing just doesn't work. Yes, I verified by MD5sum of the burnt CDs, they all check out fine. Whenever I boot up, it is unable to load any of the modules, keeps on complaining about QM_MODULES or something. I've tried installing it inside of VMWare and it worked fine there but for the life of me, I cannot get it on my system itself.

      There were a number of other an
    • Live distros hardly ever work on laptops.

  • There're a thousand good distros out there, but there's really no competition - Xandros is the best newbie distro out there. You don't need command line. It's got most stuff bundled.

    • Re:Xandros (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Gigahertz ( 768208 ) *
      There're a thousand good distros out there, but there's really no competition - Xandros is the best newbie distro out there. You don't need command line. It's got most stuff bundled.

      Sounds like someone hasn't tried Fedora. If theres one problem in the linux community, it's people who try 1 or 2 distros, and blindly carry the flag as if it's the only one that does the job. Fedora is simply the best, and I've tried nearly every distro over the past 6 years.

      • Re:Xandros (Score:3, Interesting)

        by sethadam1 ( 530629 ) *
        No, I've tried Fedora. I've tried FC1, and before it the "TEST" releases, I downloaded and installed FC2T2, then yummed up to test 3, and have since installed FC2 on another machine. Fedora is nowhere near as slick as Xandros. Not a complaint, but I've yet to meet a Red Hat install that could function as a desktop sans command-line. If I had to choose number 2, it would be Mandrake. 9.1 was my desktop for months without a single boot into anything else.

        Since 1998 or so, I've used scores of Linux distro
      • ...and I've tried nearly every distro over the past 6 years.

        And your opinions from 6 years ago about a distro are still valid for that distro today?

        If there's one problem in the linux community, it's people who try 1 or 2 distros years ago, and blindly carry that opinion forward indefinately.

      • I tried to get Fedora to install on an old cyrix box. If failed. Same with damn small Linux, knopix, and SuSE 9.
        I am a suse user but I will tell you that getting KDE 3.2 installed is a PAIN in the butt.
        This is a fromer Mac User he might just want something that works. Xandros would be worth a try. As might Madrake, Fedora seems like a nice system but I have yet to get it up and working. but I have not tried it on any of my better machines yet.
        Suse has worked pretty well for me. Knoppix except that it would

        • Re:Xandros (Score:5, Informative)

          by cloudmaster ( 10662 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @03:47PM (#9219387) Homepage Journal
          How I installed KDE 3.2 on SuSE 9:

          download all packages in "SuSE9.0" dir on ftp.kde.org (ftp.us.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/3.2/SuSE/ix86/9.0/)
          change to directory containing all packages
          type "rpm -Uvh *.rpm"
          enjoy KDE 3.2

          It wasn't hard at all. What gave you problems?

          BTW, I recommend SuSE to newbies because the installer's pretty easy, the KDE's pretty well integrated (K3.2 comes with SuSE 9.1), and pretty much everything they'll want to run is already compiled and available for SuSE. I've used Xandros (yeah, I've *also* used all of the distributions as of a couple years ago when a bunch started showing up, been Linuxing for more than a decade, etc, and prefer SuSE) and wasn't all that impressed. I think SuSE's better.

          Good advice for a newbie? Figure out who you're gonna ask questions of, and run what they run. The same stuff runs on all of them, but not everyone can provide support for all distros. :) For people who ask me what to run, I say SuSE because that's what's on my desktop right now. The servers are a different story, but no one asked about them...
          • I have to agree that SuSE's pretty much the best distro out there.

            My experience has been that Suse has the best newbie retention rate, by which I mean that everyone I know who started out on Suse was using *nix primarily, and in some cases exclusively, within 2 years. Those that didn't stick with Suse have gone to Gentoo, LFS, or one of the BSDs.

            I don't want to disparage the work done by the other distros, because I think it's all valuable, but all the people I know that gave up on Linux, or refered to it

  • OS X on x86 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @01:20PM (#9217548) Homepage Journal

    Could the wisened Linux gurus here offer some insight as to the best package for a former Mac user to introduce him to the greater world of Linux without major headaches in setting it all up?

    Well, I love and advocate Linux use all I can, but know more than a few Linux desktop users that lean hard on their MacOS X Powerbooks. They're "UNIX", they have Word, Powerpoint and the usual Mac "it just works" stuff.

    But if you have some influence with Apple, mebbe you could suggest an x86 port of OS X...:)

    Realistically, any modern Linux distro is reasonable, but will lack a lot of the multimedia niceties that come out of the box with your Mac.

    Maybe if you get CrossOver Office or Lindows it would help ease the pain of your loss.

  • Sun's JDS is a well put-together desktop solution. It still won't give you the power management that you were used to on your Powerbook, though. For that, you'll need to go to windows - linux power management is still quite primitive.

  • hmmm can we say flamebait? (Score:5, Informative)

    by shaitand ( 626655 ) * on Friday May 21, 2004 @01:24PM (#9217599) Journal
    It's a legitimate question but definately flamebait starting distro religious wars.

    To answer though, I'd say fedora is the best choice. You'll definately want to go to the dag site and install the apt rpm and then use that from now on. Also use Fedora Core 1, Fedora Core 2 is very new and was released extremely buggy.

    Next up would be Mandrake, which is a little more user friendly but you'll have alot of trouble installing software. The reason is simple, 90% of rpms out there are made for redhat/fedora and expect the core libraries and such to match up with the names redhat has given them. All the core rpms for mandrake have different entries in the rpm database (even if the rpm is otherwise identical they've changed this for some odd reason).

    • Re:hmmm can we say flamebait? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by alienw ( 585907 ) <alienw.slashdot@ ... inus threevowels> on Friday May 21, 2004 @02:00PM (#9218125)
      Whatever. Mandrake has about 10x more packaged software for it than redhat. Download all 4 CDs + add contribs + add PLF, and you will have a hard time finding a program that isn't packaged. Plus, you won't have to hunt down RPMs -- just do "urpmi " and it will download and install it automagically. That includes things like MPlayer and DeCSS.
      • Ummmm. Mandrake only had 3 CDs unless you pony up to become a member. And $120 - $130 for their "recommended" level seems a bit steep. Win XP Pro OEM is that much, and it is not "free" software in ANY sense of the word.

        This is slightly off-topic, but if YOU were buying a new vid card, what would you recommend for a person who has never re-compiled a kernel. Would an nVidia or an ATI be easier to get working?
      • If a user does what I just said and gets the dag rpm it will automatically setup 4 different repositories and give you an install base FAR FAR larger than Mandrake.

        Let's cut the crap, you won't be hard pressed at all to find packages that aren't in EITHER place though. Spend 30 seconds on sourceforge and you'll find dozens regardless of what you search for. 90% of the time the only rpm option (short of building one yourself). Also about 90% of the time there are rpms linked or googlable from the site. G
        • Spend 30 seconds on sourceforge and you'll find dozens regardless of what you search for.

          I generally found that programs which Mandrake contributors do not package are not worth using.

          Apt does everything urpmi does and then some.

          Too bad it's not the redhat standard.

          If you do a apt-get install perl-video-dvdrip it can and will install all dozen programs you need for 100% functionality for that as well (pity Mandrake urpmi doesn't).

          As the other poster rightfully pointed out, you are talking out you
    • I am the perpetual Linux newbie, and I have used everything from RedHat to SuSe to Knoppix and even tried to install Gentoo (Lordy), but I keep coming back to Mandrake. I honestly think that all the distros I tried had merit, but mandrake seems the most willing to forgive my ignorance while still encouraging me to learn. I must say that in the 5 years I've been dabbling with Linux, I have seen immense improvements in practically everything except the nagging problem of consistent hardware support (for exa
  • Free BSD [freebsd.org]. I don't recommend OpenBSD [openbsd.org] for a Unix beginner, unless you're building a firewall.

    As for Linux, well, you did ask for ease of use. I've tried several Linux distros, and they all failed in one way or another. RedHat was the worst -- the installer got into a nice graphics mode just fine, but somehow couldn't tell XFree86 what settings it used, and subsequently XWindows was a pain in the ass. Perhaps Fedora is better, but somehow I doubt it. Mandrake couldn't recognize my network card to save it's ass (but RedHat could, so a driver is available). SuSE wouldn't let me try without buy (no ISO), so forget them. I wouldn't touch Debian with a 20 foot pole because 1) they're so damn political, and I don't need that crap I just need an OS; 2) they're way behind on the kernel releases; and 3) they're so damn political.

    Basically, I'd stay away from any distro that calls itself "GNU/Linux" because their political statement is their #1 priority, and you want the distro to be their #1 priority.

    • I don't recommend OpenBSD for a Unix beginner, unless you're building a firewall.

      A unix beginner really shouldn't be building a firewall, at least not a production one. Use something else that somebody else set up instead. Firewalls can be tricky to get right.

      And OpenBSD is possibly the least user friendly *nix distribution out there, and it lacks much of the hardware support that FreeBSD and especially Linux has. I don't suggest it for a beginner.

      Basically, I'd stay away from any distro that c

      • The reason is, there can be no confusion between "FreeBSD the kernel" and "FreeBSD the operating system". One kernel... one "distro".. even if you are confused, it doesnt really matter. Linux on the other hand is very import to make the distinction between "Linux the Kernel" and "Linux the operating system". There will be a day when the Linux kernel powers an OS that isnt just a Unix wannabe. Then what? Poor grandma just knows Billy told her to get Linux... and she sees all of these boxes with Linux on it..

      • A unix beginner really shouldn't be building a firewall, at least not a production one. Use something else that somebody else set up instead. Firewalls can be tricky to get right.

        A beginner shouldn't build a production anything. That said, I built my household firewall using Coyote Linux when I was a Unix beginner, and it worked fine. There's enough information out on the internet for any reasonably intelligent person to build their own firewall. I switched to OpenBSD because it's more secure and it's ea

    • But they ARE GNU/Linux. If I were to take the Linux kernel, and magically craft a win32 compatible OS out of it... or a BeOS clone, it wouldnt "Be Linux" to coin the bastardized term. You need to seperate the kernel from the whole operating system... then it will all make better sense.
    • I used to use Mandrake, but have now switched to FreeBSD. Although I'm happier personally now with FreeBSD, I'd still probably recommend Mandrake for a beginner. The Mandrake installer, when I used it, was wonderful -- really easy for a newbie to run, and did everything right with no fiddling. The FreeBSD installer has some bugs (such as the graphical setup of X, which gives bogus error messages in 4.8 and 5.2), and you really need to have a book open in front of you to understand what you're doing, even if

  • Let the flamewar ensue... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rmohr02 ( 208447 ) * <mohr.42NO@SPAMosu.edu> on Friday May 21, 2004 @01:27PM (#9217645)
    I can't compare any of the BSDs with each other or with Linux, but I would personally recommend Debian or one of it's derivatives (Libranet, Xandros, Knoppix, etc.), but there are bigger issues than that, IMO.

    If you have a friend that's a Linux/BSD guru, pick the same distro as him so that it's easier for him to help you when you have a problem. If not, then start looking at the advice presented here.

    Disclaimer: I recommended some distros, but my recommendations are not necessarily right nor wrong. Don't flame me for my own opinions.
    • So if I have a Linux/BSD guru friend I should see them. But I should only follow your advice if I haven't. So I shouldn't get advice from a friend and instead I should get advice form /. But the advice on /. is that if I have a Linux/BSD guru friend...

      Ow! My head hurts!

  • OpenBSD? (Score:3, Informative)

    by ErisCalmsme ( 212887 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @01:27PM (#9217651) Homepage Journal
    My friend, I'm no guru, but don't install OpenBSD on your laptop... im pretty sure it will not give you the experience you are looking for... As for linux, I liked mandrake for my first linux distro.

  • For the love of god... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ameoba ( 173803 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @01:27PM (#9217652)
    Don't go with OpenBSD. OpenBSD has many noble design philosophies however "make the system usable" is possibly at the bottom of their list. I think they view "unusable base system" as the same thing as "confuses hackers if they get in & prevents them from doing any damage".

    FreeBSD is considerably better but I'd still not suggest it for a unix newbie.

    As far as user-friendly Linux distros go, I've had good luck sending friends to Redhat/Fedora and Mandrake (I'd assume SuSE is in the same boat but I've never given any real consideration to dropping the $$$ for it). Currently, I'd say that Fedora's the strongest option, it's more recent & seems to have more development energy than Mandrake.

    Your best bet, however, would be to bite the bullet and go for Debian (or try a HDD install of Knoppix); once you actually get it up it should stay up & up to date (unless you're running unstable and try to update on a day when they're pushing seriously broken packages...).

  • As always, it depends... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dmayle ( 200765 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @01:28PM (#9217669) Homepage Journal

    Why do you want to switch to Linux?

    • Is it because you want to be able to tell other people that you use Linux? Try Xandros.
    • Is it because you're just sick and tired of Windows, and you're sure there is something better? Try Mandrake
    • Is it because you want to be sure that there is no closed source software on your system? Try Debian
    • Is it because you want to put something on your CV (resume) for a potential employer to see? Try RedHat/Fedora Core
    • Is it because you wish to learn all the deep internals of Unix systems? Try Gentoo

    It really depends on your needs. Though I personally recommend Gentoo to all (yep, I'm a zealot :), because of it's great documentation, strong system control, and ease with which it teaches you Unix systems in general

    • Re:As always, it depends... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by E_elven ( 600520 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @01:36PM (#9217821) Journal
      I don't see a point in starting with an 'easy' distro. It'll just get you in trouble when you need to do something under the hood.

      First, if you haven't used Linux (properly, more than a few hours), I suggest you download either Knoppix or the Gentoo LiveCD and play around with it, get used to the CLI (and you can load a GUI as well.) You should get one of these anyway, preferrably in two copies, in case something goes wrong at any time.

      For a permanent installation I second Gentoo -it's simple enough to get started with the manual and Portage (the software package manager) is better than any of the alternatives.

      If Linux isn't really what you want, go with FreeBSD.

    • Is it because you wish to learn all the deep internals of Unix systems? Try Gentoo

      Heh, I'd disagree with you there. Don't get me wrong, I love Gentoo, but I actually lose skills the more I use it. Ever tried to set up printing on a unix box? Then try and set it up with Gentoo? No comparison. I have no idea how to configure any of the CUPS stuff anymore; it just happens for me. No more dicking around with getting drivers for X or anything, no more hassling around with dependencies and libraries and

  • Whatever distro you get... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kenthorvath ( 225950 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @01:28PM (#9217672)
    ...make sure it makes use of an apt repository. For a newbie or anyone for that matter, there is nothing easier than typing "apt-get install INSERT_PACKAGE_NAME_HERE" when you need a certain piece of software. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Fedora has an rpm based apt solution, but I still think that debian is the best distro, once you figure out how to install it with the options you want.

    My advice, start out with Mandrake, and after you screw it up or it screws you up, switch over to debian - with a little patience you will never want to use anything else.

  • Sorry this just depends on too many factors. I agree with everyone saying for you to try knoppix. It's the best way to get a decent look at linux, on top of which you can use it to install debian.

    I recommend debian to everyone since it's my favourite distro by a large margin. Try it out, if it's not to your liking there are other distros. Debian used to be a pain to install, now they have a fancy new installer and knoppix it's much much better. But it was never a hard distro to run. Just get familiar with

  • "Accident"? (Score:3, Funny)

    by repvik ( 96666 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @01:32PM (#9217733)
    I bet this is what happened to the Powerbook [p-p-p-powerbook.com] :)
  • Linux from Scratch! [linuxfromscratch.org]

    Just a joke, honest!. Actually, any of the major distributions will almost certainly do you just fine. Each have their ups and downs. My very first was slackware, about 10 years ago, but I wouldn't suggest it to a new user today unless you are very comfortable with command line configuration and post-installation setup. I still use it because I like it.

  • Friday afternoon, huh? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Otter ( 3800 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @01:34PM (#9217766) Journal
    ...and tech worker productivity in North America ends early for the week, as everyone gets sucked into a straight-up Linux distro war. And then people will post comments referencing vi vs Emacs or KDE vs GNOME, and those will be taken up in all seriousness, as well.

    My advice is:
    1) If you have a high-speed connection and a CD burner, download a bunch of ISOs (Fedora, Mandrake, SuSe, Knoppix) and try them out. Probably half will detect your hardware correctly and half won't -- that can be solved but at this stage just use what worked. ** Put /home on a separate partition so you can reformat and reinstall easily! **
    2) Maybe try some of the new friendly distros like Lycoris.
    3) You said your PowerBook is dead, but if you have another Mac around, I'd strongly suggest trying Yellow Dog on it.
    4) And once you've been through all that learning experience, you'll be ready to switch to Gentoo!

  • Too many variables (Score:5, Informative)

    by sfjoe ( 470510 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @01:34PM (#9217772)
    There are so many variables involving your needs and preferences that there is no really good answer to this question. One solution would be to visit http://www.linuxiso.org/ , burn a couple of distros and install them to see what you like.
    Personally, I have used three different distros: SuSe, Debian and RedHat. I like the Debian ethos and, if you're setting up a server, it is hands-down my preference.
    RedHat used to be the leader but has stopped supporting desktop version and has been replaced with Fedora. When RedHat went public, they replaced their loyalty to customers with loyalty to shareholders - much to the detriment of their product. They had made several Microsoft-style moves to lock users into their product. I don't know if any of these maneuvers currently affect Fedora. If they do, you should avoid it.
    SuSe is my most recent experience. I take my own advice and try different distros occasionally and I must say I am extremely happy with the usability and look-and-feel of Suse 9.0. You could certainly do worse.

  • Scale up (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Apreche ( 239272 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @01:36PM (#9217807) Homepage Journal
    When I first started with linux I used whichever Red Hat was out 6 years ago. After a year I switched up to Mandrake. Mandrake had newer packages and supported my hardware better. As I used linux more and more I learned more and more about it. About 6 months ago I switched up to Gentoo. I wouldn't reccomend going to Gentoo or Debian right away unless you are particularly adventurous. But if you are the kind of user who really wont settle for less they are the only distros that give you "real unadulterated linux".

    So what you want to do is use Knoppix Mandrake Suse, etc. And learn as much as you can from those. Eventually you will reach a point where you aren't learning anything new. You'll also start getting frustrated because things wont work, and you wont be able to change certain things. RPMs are easy, but overall fickle and confining. When you reach this point, set aside a weekend and print the gentoo installation handbook and get a livecd. Or go the debian way, either is good. Anything harder core than those two distros is more difficulty with little reward for it. Lunar Linux is about as far as you want to go.

    Anyway the point is if you want to be a real linux guy and get the full experience and whatnot, start small and work your way up.

  • My distro progressions (Score:4, Informative)

    by OmniVector ( 569062 ) <see my homepage> on Friday May 21, 2004 @01:37PM (#9217839) Homepage
    First I started with mandrake, since everyone told me it was really simple to install. And it was, i'll definitely say that. After a few weeks i got SICK of rpms. they really are the devil. My friends raved about gentoo but said the install was hard. Well, for a newbie linux user with only 2 weeks experience i still managed to install gentoo just fine. If you can follow directions it's really not that hard.

    However, i recommend Fedore Core 2 now. Redhat's installer, bootloader, and everything is absolustely gorgeous. It's without a doubt the best looking distro. With yum and apt-rpm now i here most of my complaints about the lack of good rpm support is gone.

    Once you feel you're a bit more experienced though, you should try making the switch to gentoo or debian because they cater far more to the power user than a distro like fedora, mandrake, or suse ever can. It's harder to setup, but once you do you know everything about your system down to the config files which makes your life *much* easier when you need to debug random-problem-x with hardware-component-y. The do-it-all for you distros are harder for power users to use simply because we don't know how our system is setup!.

    • However, i recommend Fedore Core 2 now. Redhat's installer, bootloader, and everything is absolustely gorgeous. It's without a doubt the best looking distro. With yum and apt-rpm now i here most of my complaints about the lack of good rpm support is gone.

      Agreed. I've been a Debian user for 6 years and I've been sorely tempted by Fedora Core 2. The install is beautiful but that's not important (you only install once). The real beauty of FC2 is every common management task - add a printer, open a firewa

  • Sun's SuSe + Java Desktop (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DynaSoar ( 714234 ) * on Friday May 21, 2004 @01:42PM (#9217907) Journal
    It's not the best distro available, but it's easy to set up and run, and comes with installation, migration and operation support as part of the selling price. List price is $100, but it might still be selling for half that as the intro sale. It'd be my "For Dummies" pick.

  • SuSE 9.x (Score:5, Informative)

    by Elledan ( 582730 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @01:50PM (#9217997) Homepage
    In the past few weeks I've installed SuSE 9.0 on a number of systems (PI 166 - Athlon 600) using the FTP install option. Assuming the system has at least 96 MB of RAM it's a breeze to install (using a temporary swap file gave many problems when I tried it).

    Other than that, all hardware in those systems (ranging from proprietary OEM to self-build systems) was detected without issues. YAST is the best admin tool I've used with any distro (including Mandrake and RedHat (now Fedora)).

    YMMV.

    • Re:SuSE 9.x (Score:3, Insightful)

      by pnutjam ( 523990 )
      I have to second this, I really like Debian builds, both Libranet and Knoppix are good ones to try, but for ease of administration I have to recommend SusSE. It's been the only distribution that handles wireless like wireless was meant to be handled.

      I tried Fedora Core 2 but I went running back to SuSE. Libranet is good for a desktop but I think you should really take a hard look at SuSE for a notebook install.
      • I am not usually one for "Me Too!" posts. I've tried most of the major distros at some point or another, and on this laptop I've got to recommend SuSE.

        I have installed both SuSE 8.2 and then 9.0 on my HP laptop, and it runs beautifully, with support for all hardware features except sleep (IIRC this is a limitation of the 2.4 kernel, not the distro)

        For a new user, just go with the installer defaults.

        YaST is a godsend to users, in that you don't have to know how to edit config files by hand to get your sys

  • Madrake (Score:2, Informative)

    by smurf975 ( 632127 )
    If you just interested in something that works and has everything that a linux distro may offer. I would go Mandrake.

    And don't forget to use irc.freenode to ask questions on the #mandrake channel and they will help you with any problem.

  • "Hard" Systems (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Brandybuck ( 704397 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @02:17PM (#9218362) Homepage Journal
    As people have already told you, it depends on the user. If they want to learn Unix, learn the OS and environment inside and out, how it works, etc., then stay away from the newbie distros. The hard systems are the way to go.

    Slackware, FreeBSD, or Debian. Without the handholding, they'll actually learn the system. They'll be forced to drop into the command line to configure some stuff. They'll come to understand how it all fits together. This is a Good Thing(tm).
    • Why should someone be forced to learn something?

      Rather than overwhelming them by limiting their interaction to the system to the command line, I'd let them approach things on their own terms - CLI if they prefer, GUI otherwise. The interface used to set something up has little bearing of the understanding of such concepts.

  • Save yourself the pain (Score:3, Informative)

    by Hard_Code ( 49548 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @02:18PM (#9218375)
    "without major headaches in setting it all up"

    Unless this laptop was specially Linux "certified" I wouldn't even try it unless your main goal is to learn way more than you need about Linux. Save yourself the pain and just use the copy of Windows that came with it that you already paid for.

  • Mandrake.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by IpSo_ ( 21711 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @02:53PM (#9218795) Homepage Journal
    I get a kick out of many Linux zealots, how they think if something has a GUI and you can actually install it without dropping to the CLI to run some obscure command, that its too Windows like, and thus garbage.

    Nearly every mainstream distro runs the same kernel, the same XFree, the same Samba, the same Mozilla, the same Evolution. Some may be older, or newer versions, but in general its ALL THE SAME SOFTWARE!

    The bottom line, especially for someone new to Linux is to get them familiar with it, without frustrating the hell out of them, or making them dependant on the local Linux guru to do even the simplist of tasks. This will greatly increase the chances of them actually liking it, and wanting to learn more ON THEIR OWN.

    People who recommend Debian to someone who has never install Linux before is simply throwing them to the wolves. Oh, but Debian only uses open source software? If this person has never installed Linux before, chances are they don't care! Oh, but you only ever install it once, then use apt-get after that. This is mostly true, but if they get frustrated before they even install it, what good is apt-get?

    Apt-get used to be Debians one "killer feature", but that is no longer so. Every major distro has something similar, and in some cases something much better, especially for newbies. (read: Mandrakes URPMI, which is anything but new)

    If your new to Linux, and your looking for the easiest route to get up and running with it, install Mandrake. Its as simple as that. Mandrake has some of the best hardware detection, and by far the easiest install process. Not to mention, once its installed, your not left out to dry.

    It has nice GUI utilities to setup almost anything you want, all in ONE SIMPLE CONTROL PANEL. Printers? No problem, its easier then Windows if your printer is supported. Want to change screen resolutions? This is just as simple as windows too. What about a scanner? Yup, that too, simple. Even remote desktop applications like VNC/rdesktop Mandrake has simple little utilities to help you out.

    I can hear people screaming right now. "Oh, but they wont learn how to actually use Linux then." You know what, MOST people don't care. They just want something that WORKS! If the Mandrake utilities work, thats great. If they don't, they can still dig in to the configuration files and get it to work. Just because the GUI utilities exist, doesn't mean the distro is evil, it simply means there are more options.

    I've been using Linux since Slackware 3, and as the only OS on my home and work machine for the last 4 years. Mandrake is my distro of choice simply because I value my time, and when I want something to work, I don't want to have to spend hours reading man pages and forums to learn some obscure configuration file settings to just get my printer to work. I fire up Mandrakes printer utility, pick my printer, it downloads the drivers, installs them, and I print a test page. For things I care more about, like the Kernel I'm running, I simply download the latest MM patches and install them like normal.

    Simply put, it just works. For newbies though, please don't try to push your ideals on them, simply help them get up and running as fast as possible and feel comfortable. Once they've done that, they can explore at will.

    If you don't recommend Mandrake for this task, you either haven't tried it yourself, or you haven't given it a real chance. Because if you had, you would realize that NO other distro has put as much time and effort in to making Linux accessible to newbies then Mandrake has.

    • I've been using Mandrake since version 8.2... consistantly. I had never used Linux before (except for an aborted RH6.0 install), nor had I had any other *NIX experience -- strictly Windows and Macs (a long, long time ago). That said, I found Mandrake reasonably easy to install.

      One of the cool things about Mandrake is that they don't hide anything from you. Even though there is a GUI application for almost everything, you don't *have* to use them. The command-line is just a click away, and it's just as pow

  • SuSE, without any doubt. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by arcade ( 16638 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @02:53PM (#9218804) Homepage
    I know this is flamebait material, but I'll do it anyways - as it's a good question.

    The linux distros I've personally used are: Slackware, Debian, RedHat, SuSE, Turbolinux, Storm Linux and Mandrake. I've also fiddled a bit with Gentoo, but not much.

    Slackware, for me, was a bitch. I was new to linux, and that was the first distro I tried. It was hell. No good documentation at the time, and nothing worked out of the box. I fiddled with it for about two weeks, then gave up. Forget that one.

    Debian. Great system for servers. Used it for four years on various boxes. Only had a few problems with it, namely a single box when I updated from slink to potato, and a box where I attempted to upgrade mysql from 3.22 to 3.23 by using unstable on a few binaries/libraries. This was before potato was out, if I remember correctly. I've always thought that Debian sucks for workstations, but quite a few people disagree. It's neither very easy to install nor very easy to configure. When you've got it up and running it's extremely easy to maintain.

    RedHat. Used it for a few servers, and use it regularly as a workstation at the University. To be quite frank - I think it sucks as both. I really don't think it's any good at anything. Neither the installer, up2date, nor default configuration works as it should. And this is "the" mainstream linux? Blargh!

    Mandrake. I used to use Mandrake, but they fscked up a lot of things between 8.1 and 8.2 , and I've not used it seriously afterwards. I used to be a paying member of mandrakeclub - but really didn't renew the payment after the 9.0 release which stunk just as much as 8.2 for me. The problem was quite simply that 8.1 just 'worked' on my computers, while 8.2 and 9.0 was riddled with lockups, various flaws and lots of other stuff. It's a very NICE distro though, it's easy to install, shiny, and so forth.

    I'll drop commenting on TurboLinux and Storm, as it's several years since I tried them out, and they never did impress me.

    Now onto the distro that I really, really like.

    SUSE!

    SuSE both installs easily, and is slick, shiny and well built. It's obvious that a lot of work has gone into making things work out of the box, especially if you're a KDE user (and you should be). YaST is a really wonderfull tool when it comes to installing and updating stuff, it works wonderfully on my HP Omnibook 6100, it works wonderfully on my servers, my desktops, and all my works desktop computers.. we've also bought SuSE OpenExchange, which works like a charm.

    In short, I've got nothing wrong to say about SuSE, and I've been using it for about two years now, after using nothing but Linux the last 5 years. No other distro has shown me such ease of installation, such ease of installing other programs, such ease of security updates, such ease of maintainance, and so forth.

    A single negative and important note about SuSE though - it uses ReiserFS as default. Change it to ext3 or something else - ReiserFS is notorious for corrupting data. I've had three systems where ReiserFS has fucked up my data badly. I don't trust that filesystem. Steer away from it like a pest. It sucks. It's bad for you. It destroys your data.

    *phew*.

  • My own suggestions (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dr.Dubious DDQ ( 11968 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @02:57PM (#9218846) Homepage

    Echoing some of the other posts here: It depends what you want to get out of Linux.

    If you "just want to use it" (i.e. you just want a nice desktop system that isn't proprietary, or just want to try out some Linux programs) I'd recommend (roughly in order of preference):

    1. Knoppix [knopper.net] - don't even need to 'install' to try it out
    2. SuSe [suse.com] (Or is it SuSE? Or Suse? I can never keep it straight). They've always seemed like a reasonably decent distribution, and now with Novell's apparently-earnest-and-sincere backing, I tend to think of them as "the new Red Hat" (in that they'll be a 'default' distribution in the near future and thus useful to be familiar with).
    3. Mandrake [mandrakelinux.com] - I personally didn't much care for what I saw of Mandrake, but many people do, and this one is often suggested for "newbies".

    If, on the other hand, you actually want to learn Linux:

    1. Slackware [slackware.com] - my personal favorite. It seems to be the most "generic-Unix-like" in general style. I think that although it's fairly "manual" in terms of setup, it's not difficult. But that's my opinion. It's probably the easiest-to-install-and-configure "nerd" distribution.
    2. Gentoo [gentoo.org] - takes forever to install initially, because it actually compiles (most) of itself directly from source. You can configure it for the best compiler optimizations for your hardware and have, theoretically, the fastest-possible system. Maybe a bit of a steep learning curve to start with though - although if you're up for it, it may be worth it.
    3. Debian [debian.org] - Possibly one of the most obtuse installation procedures (at least, last time I tried it), but once installed it's amazingly easy to maintain. ("apt-get" really is as cool as they say it is). Debian's one of the "big" famous distributions also, so if you find yourself working with a wide variety of Linux boxen, it's good to be at least a little familiar with it. Debian's other downside (apart from the initial install procedure) from my perspective is that by default their software versions tend to be quite old, though you can get around this by reconfiguring your system to pull updates from the "unstable" and "testing" branches.

    Those would be my suggestions, anyway.

    • Not to start a flamewar, but Debian's installer isn't as bad as it used to be by a long shot. The 3.x branch doesn't autodetect as much as it should (give up on sound) but it does work more often than not, with little end-user knowledge. Besides the incessant babysitting required, it's pretty easy.

      Now, configuring Debian... you're on your own. Apt-Get is also very nice, but it also prevents you from knowing what is going on under the hood, which keeps you from fixing things when they break. And if you'

  • Mandrake & DistroWatch (Score:5, Informative)

    by waynegoode ( 758645 ) * on Friday May 21, 2004 @03:01PM (#9218901) Homepage
    For a lot of infomation on different distros, you can't beat distrowatch.com [distrowatch.com].

    Everyone has their opinion on the best distro. However, if your main goals are easy, stable, cheap, complete, MadrakeLinux is your choice. Ohter people will say other distros. Often I think their reasons are that everyone's goals should be speed, congiruablitiy, community-led, 1 CD install, etc. instead of easy, stable, cheap, complete. Pick the distro for your goals.

    • Gentoo: fast, configurable, community-based
    • Debian: stable, community-based
    • Knoppix: 1 CD install.
    • Fedora: cutting (bleeding) edge
    • etc.
    Madrake 10.0 official will be available free at the end of this month.

  • Gentoo (Score:2, Insightful)

    by joeljkp ( 254783 )
    I'll have to play the part of the resident Gentoo zealot...

    I like Gentoo because of a few characteristics:

    1. Up-to-date stable packages - usually released within a few weeks of their upstream releases... GNOME 2.6 just went stable yesterday, and kernel 2.6.6 was stable the day it came out.

    2. Tinker-friendly community - Gentoo is desktop-hobbyist-friendly, with a great community. I like the feeling that yes, my desire to tinker with a new X server or the latest Mozilla is fully appreciated and supported.
  • I've seen it mentioned a few times, but not nearly as much as RedHat/Fedora and Mandrake -- Gentoo.

    I started out with Mandrake, but hated the lack of applications. Everything seemed to be packaged for Red Hat, which is true. So I switched to Red Hat, and experienced "dependency hell." That's when the program you want depends on other programs that conflict with the programs you already have installed. YUCK!

    Finally, I swiched to Gentoo. Gentoo is unique for a Linux distro in that it compiles everything

  • Slackware. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Inominate ( 412637 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @03:38PM (#9219285)
    Though largely it depends on your goals.

    If you want a linux system that will be up and running with the least amount of hassle, mandrake, knoppix, rh, etc are all fairly decent.

    But if you're really out to LEARN linux, you want something like slackware or debian. Not as simple or hassle-free to set up, they tend to be lacking in simple GUI based setup utils. But you get a better chance to dive in and learn linux. As opposed to learning your distro.

  • My *nix history: (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rubicon7 ( 51782 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @03:46PM (#9219374)
    1995: SCO UNIX (I know, i know, but I had to use it at work)
    1997: Slackware
    1999: Debian
    2000?: Gentoo
    2001?: Back to Debian

    Still using Debian (mix of stable+testing) and, barring conflict.dependency issues with mplayer-k7/libvorbis, I've never been happier.

    I'd recommend starting with Slackware - it worked for me.

  • Slackware (Score:4, Insightful)

    by antizeus ( 47491 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:11PM (#9219659)
    I tends to be more secure out of the box than other distros. It has a superior package system that doesn't break your system or install lots of unnecessary crap. It has superior BSD style init scripts that are easier to manage (no need to wrestle with multiple levels of scripts and symbolic links). It puts files where software developers intend them to be instead of second-guessing them. It doesn't try to tie you in to nonstandard admin tools. These last two points make finding answers on the internet a lot more productive, since you have to spend less effort trying to adjust the information to your machine.

    • Re:Slackware (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MobyTurbo ( 537363 )
      I'll add my voice to the people reccomending Slackware, it is a great "I want to *learn* Unix" distribution. Slackware's minimalist packaging system is great because if you get third party software from a third party source you don't have to worry about side-effects because it's not in your packaging database.

      Even though it comes with slightly less software than distributions that have 3 CDs of binaries rather than Slackware 9.1's 2 (originally 1 CD but KDE and GNOME got too big), the system is well picked

  • I love my Gentoo machines... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by foxtrot ( 14140 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:39PM (#9219960)
    ...but I wouldn't recommend them for a newbie. The install's just not geared for newbies.

    Has nothing to do with the fact that Gentoo doesn't have a pretty-pretty graphical installer. The docs on the gentoo.org site are _great_, you follow the bouncing ball, and poof. You've got a Gentoo Linux system. Stuff Just Works. Cool.

    Here's the problem: Before you have a functional system, you gotta decide: What kernel do I want? 2.4? 2.6? One of the modified kernel branches like -ac or gentoo's "gaming-sources"? Which syslogger do I want? Do I want ncron or vcron?

    I'm not entirely certain your average newb has any desire to figure out how to answer those questions for his first install, so I'd recommend against Gentoo. Get 'em hooked, then they might want something like Gentoo.

    It's really quite sad, though. You have to make all the decisions, making it unsuitable for neophytes, but once you make those decisions, Everything Just Works, which'd be excellent for the newbs...

  • Go for Mandrake! (Score:2, Informative)

    by srlunsford ( 697271 )
    Mandrake's a good starter distro, plus it works well on HP Laptops, especially ones that use the Radeon IGP chips. I'd say use that distro, otherwise you're going to be doing a lot more work than you probably want to be doing at first...if you want to go a little more advanced than that...try installing Slackware, but only if you've got someone to go to for assistance... on IRC or otherwise. I've had good experiences with both. No matter what, you're going to want to pick up the skills necessary to run a
  • It works pretty well for me. A lot of the bugs that bothered me in earlier test releases appear to have been resolved.

    When booting the cd, quickly type "linux reiserfs" at the boot prompt or else you'll be stuck with installing to the slower but probably more stable ext3 filesystem.

    Choose custom package install, then where it gives you the choice of what to install, scroll all the way to the bottom and select the "everything" option.

    If you don't hear any sound during the install's sound test, it's probab

  • Free Beer (Score:3, Informative)

    by Lochin Rabbar ( 577821 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @07:42PM (#9221510)

    No Linux install will be as easy as a an OS X install, because PC's have such a range of hardware compared to Mac's. That said SUSE is quick and easy, if you get it wrong first time just try again, after all it's a learning experience. Make sure you set the BIOS to allow writing to the boot sector, that gotcha has been the my single biggest source of free beer from clueful Windows users making the switch to Linux.

  • I recommend a book actually. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jeblucas ( 560748 ) <[jeblucas] [at] [gmail.com]> on Friday May 21, 2004 @07:55PM (#9221602) Homepage Journal
    I'm also a Mac user that dabbles in Linux.

    Personally I went with Fedora Core 1 and installed from the CD in Red Hat and Fedora Core Unleashed [samspublishing.com]. (Amazon [amazon.com]. ) I got mine at the library.

    The book walks you through some trouble spots you might encounter and nudges you towards some options that may not be obvious from the Fedora literature, like having yum look at freshrpms.net instead of Red Hat (for packages that Red Hat might regard with disdain.) It even walks through installs of the UT2004 Demo and Enemy Territory.

  • Here we go again.

    1000 geeks will respond with different opinions.

    Asking this question at all is absurd to the point of insanity.

    Try different distros. Find one you can easily get into and integrate your work into. Go with that. That's the only way you're going to get an answer to your question.
  • OK, so the fans of the various distros are all comparing how big the penises of their favorites are. It's a fun exercise, but not what the guy asked about. I'd suggest that someone new to Linux look at: Mandrake [mandrakelinux.com], Xandros [xandros.com], Lycoris [lycoris.com], SUSE [suse.com], or Linspire [linspire.com]. Each of these has a company behind it that's placing a high priority on making their distro accessible to new users, and that sounds like your top priority as well.
  • I would have to say... to test out various operating systems with Linux LiveCDS. You can find an assortment here. [frozentech.com]

    Besides that though, if you just want a first clean mount, I would probably recommend MandrakeLinux. My friend, who also is new to Linux, installed it a month ago and runs it as if he still has Windows installed.

  • Depends on your objective... (Score:3, Informative)

    by a9db0 ( 31053 ) on Saturday May 22, 2004 @11:11AM (#9224767)
    If you want to USE Linux, install a Debian derivative like Mepis or Knoppix.

    If you want to LEARN Linux, install Gentoo.

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