Which distribution for a newbie?

MarVeL · 30-08-2004 11:44am #1

Ok so I'm a complete neophyte in the world of Linux and I'm going to be setting up a box in the next week or so. Anyone any suggestions as to which distribution would be the best to get? Looking to run it as a basic desktop (for learning purposes) and possibly an email server.

mneylon · 30-08-2004 12:02pm

Hi

If you are new to linux I would recommend you try one of the following:
Fedora
Mandrake
Suse
Whitebox (redhat enterprise clone)

They all come with easy to use graphical installers and will guide you through the entire installation process.

DO NOT try:
Slackware
Gentoo
Debian

Although you may hear a lot about the above they are not really suited to beginners.

Capt'n Midnight · 30-08-2004 1:37pm

knoppix - no install needed.

Fenster · 30-08-2004 6:22pm

Fedora gets my vote and I'm an utter newb

Syth · 30-08-2004 6:29pm

I have Fedora Core 2 and it was easy to install and use. Quite suitable for a newbie. Though there are reported problems if you dual boot with Win XP, there's a way to fix it, but it's something you should be aware of first.

I'm starting to think this whole newbies shouldn't touch linux idea is wrong. Linux is very userfriendly now.

Fenster · 30-08-2004 7:22pm

Syth wrote:

I have Fedora Core 2 and it was easy to install and use. Quite suitable for a newbie. Though there are reported problems if you dual boot with Win XP, there's a way to fix it, but it's something you should be aware of first.

I had that problem. What happens is that Fedora more or less removes the XP partition from the MBR. You have to edit the MBR manually to add it back in. Of course I'm a lazy SoB who was reinstalling anyways so I just formatted the HD.

I'm starting to think this whole newbies shouldn't touch linux idea is wrong. Linux is very userfriendly now.

I disagree sorta, I would recommend that anyone here trying out Linux for the first time be a power user of Windows and have a grasp of their machine's innards and of PCs in general.

Using Linux is frequently challenging, more so as most of the guides on the net are utter tripe. They assume a level of expertise that just won't be there with new users or provide half-assed explanations. What's that point in telling us to enter command xyz without telling us why we use that one.

Syth · 30-08-2004 8:35pm

Fenster wrote:

I disagree sorta, I would recommend that anyone here trying out Linux for the first time be a power user of Windows and have a grasp of their machine's innards and of PCs in general.

Using Linux is frequently challenging, more so as most of the guides on the net are utter tripe. They assume a level of expertise that just won't be there with new users or provide half-assed explanations. What's that point in telling us to enter command xyz without telling us why we use that one.

You're right. The main problem is when things don't work. Mainly hardware. The you'll have to have a bit of knowledge about PC and hardware to get it to work. And if something goes wrong prepare to do a lot of reading. There is hardly ever a quick fix.

However that's if things go wrong. You don't really need to know all this stuff just to use the PC. Then again what would you do if your windows machine broke? If there weren't shops which you could leave in broken (Windows) PCs and not have to think, you'd be kinda screwed.

nadir · 30-08-2004 10:49pm

blacknight wrote:

DO NOT try:
Slackware
Gentoo
Debian

Although you may hear a lot about the above they are not really suited to beginners.

hehe, i disagree, if your going to learn linux, go for it full on, no point in half measures imo.

I guess it boils down to how much you want to learn, if you just want to use email, web stuff and services without getting into the innards do as blacknight said and follow his recommendation.

But if you really want to learn Grab the gentoo live cd and install.

MarVeL · 01-09-2004 12:13pm

Thanks for all the tips guys. Looking at either Mandrake or Fedora so far (I know I'm chicken but I don't fancy the learning curve of Gentoo et al).

theciscokid · 01-09-2004 1:03pm

Mandrake 10..

then after a while (when you're comfortable) try debian

Diddy Kong · 01-09-2004 1:26pm

But if you really want to learn Grab the gentoo live cd and install

send to that, but if your too chicken to learn loads, mandrake 10, its fast and easy

Cake Fiend · 01-09-2004 8:55pm

A bit too easy if you ask me - I find Mandrake makes people lazy. I've known several people to install Mandrake to 'try linux' who then don't actually learn bugger all about linux due to Mandrake's ease of use - it does everything for you!. It's a great distro for what it does, don't get me wrong, but I wouldn't reccommend it for someone who really wants to learn linux. Last time I installed Slackware (Slackware 10 is out now btw), I cried at how easy it was, recalling what I had to do in the bad old days to get a linux distro installed. Anyone could have done it after 10 minutes of howto reading. Same with Debian, and Debian has the n00b-friendly advantage of apt.

Dar · 01-09-2004 9:37pm

Originally Posted by blacknight

DO NOT try:
Slackware
Gentoo
Debian

Although you may hear a lot about the above they are not really suited to beginners.

I'd have to disagree as well. I started with slackware, and I still consider it the most straightforward distribution around. Other distrubutions try and protect you from the 'hard' stuff with GUIs, but the 'hard' stuff isn't actually that hard. You just have to get used to using the setup files. And all the standard files included with slackware are HEAVILY commented, so if you have half a brain you'll have no problem figuring out what each of them does.

If you want my advice, I'd say install slack using the full option, set that up how you want it, and use it for a few weeks. Once you have some experience you'll be in a much better position to decide what you really want. Trust me - you'll learn more in those few weeks using slack, than a year or two using fedora, etc.

OfflerCrocGod · 02-09-2004 4:08am

MarVeL wrote:

I don't fancy the learning curve of Gentoo et al

The documentation available at gentoo's site is perfect for installing all you afto do is read through the x86 installation guide and you should have no prob with it ( have a copy of it available during the install so you can consult it ). In the end with gentoo you can dirty your hands, Mandrake is for.....well windows ppl, really I think it's as brainless as windows. Gentoo 4ever Homiez :cool:

Chad ghostal · 02-09-2004 9:10am

id have to go with slackware aswell, i started with SuSe but found as sico said, when the distro does everything for you, your not actually learning how to do anything and when you actually have to do something hard, its too much of a learning curve..

slackwares simple, has a nice gui but still makes you do stuff that will help you learn, and nothing is seriously hard even for a newb.

mneylon · 02-09-2004 9:16am

Dar wrote:

I'd have to disagree as well. I started with slackware, and I still consider it the most straightforward distribution around. Other distrubutions try and protect you from the 'hard' stuff with GUIs, but the 'hard' stuff isn't actually that hard. You just have to get used to using the setup files. And all the standard files included with slackware are HEAVILY commented, so if you have half a brain you'll have no problem figuring out what each of them does.

If you want my advice, I'd say install slack using the full option, set that up how you want it, and use it for a few weeks. Once you have some experience you'll be in a much better position to decide what you really want. Trust me - you'll learn more in those few weeks using slack, than a year or two using fedora, etc.

Rubbish
Slackware puts files in very odd places and makes maintenance of a system a real PITA compared to RH variants, MDK or debian.
We have servers and desktops running most variants of *nix and the most awkward to maintain is the one running slackware.
Learning != getting a headache

BenH · 02-09-2004 8:58pm

Seconded, although slack was the first distro I installed way back when, it is not suitable for a newbie or in a production enviroment.

Personally I really like Suse, support is excellent and the management tools superb, heck I like it so much I'm dual booting 200 machines with it for tuesday.

Raskolnikov · 02-09-2004 9:37pm

Keep away from FreeBSD too, the range of hardware supported by it is rather limited, I'm reasonably experienced in Unix but had a nightmare trying to find and setup a driver for my network card (it still doesn't even work as I want it to).

Red Hat is nice and user friendly, Knoppix is also handy for complete Linux beginners.

Don't confuse things, FreeBSD is not in anyway associated with Linux, so the mention of it in this thread is irrelavant.

Cake Fiend · 02-09-2004 11:32pm

Hrm, maybe we need a poll

I suppose it comes down to how much you want to learn about the inner workings of linux.

If you want to learn the absolute bare minimum, have the OS do everything for you, and get hold of an OS that's easier to install than Windows, go for Mandrake. I have a pet hate for Mandrake, having had so many mates and colleagues asking my how to do x, y or z with it without bothering to learn themselves!

The next step up (barely, RH distros tend to be very newbie-friendly as well) would be something like Fedora. I haven't used RH since 9.0, but I hear good things about Fedora. I'm also not a big fan of the RPM system, especially having been introduced to Debian's apt, but then again I used to prefer to install from source on RH systems anyway. I've never used Suse for long, so I can't comment on it, but Suse users seem to like it.

Up one more step would be Debian or Slackware, Debian being the easier to maintain (apt). Slackware has always been a firm favourite with me for a desktop and learning system, being one of the first distros I installed way back when. They used to say that if you run Red Hat, you'll learn Red Hat; if you run Debian, you'll learn Debian; but if you run Slackware, you'll learn linux

Yeah, it's a bit unorthadox, but it's great to learn with and once you've learnt the Slack way of doing things, you'll have no trouble with any other distro you use.

If you really want to get meaty, get a hold of Gentoo :eek: You'll automatically grow a beard just by installing this OS.

An easy way to get quickly acquainted with linux would be to download one of the many 'live' CDs (Knoppix would be my preference) and play with it for a while. You can usually install a full system from one of these CDs if you choose to.

BenH · 02-09-2004 11:53pm

Sico wrote:

If you really want to get meaty, get a hold of Gentoo :eek: You'll automatically grow a beard just by installing this OS.

Since when has Gentoo been harder than slack. Sure you'll grow a beard with gentoo, but thats more due to waiting for glibc to compile

Im surprised no-one has recommended Solaris for the x86 yet, perfect if your a fan of Java (a really big fan!) and dont particularly care for a dual boot system, cause solaris sure doesnt.

Heck lets forget about linux totally. What you really want to learn on is AIX, you can play about with linux once your out of the nuthouse after paying big blue several hundred euros for a mouse

Fenster · 03-09-2004 12:21am

Well I certainly have a fuzz of stubble from using Fedora.

Azza · 03-09-2004 2:33am

I'm newish to linux and my first 3 distrabutions where eh Slackware Gentoo and Debain how abotu that

Must say have had difficulty with Gentoo and Debain but slackware was the one I liked the best and easist to use and I also tried Red Hat 9.0.

halenger · 04-09-2004 1:18pm

BenH wrote:

Im surprised no-one has recommended Solaris for the x86 yet, perfect if your a fan of Java (a really big fan!) and dont particularly care for a dual boot system, cause solaris sure doesnt.

"Solaris sucks".

I could quote many other of my friends and their Solaris experiences. I've not a newb really. I've been using linux more or less for about 7 years and very regularly for the last 3. I use Debian entierly but that's me etc.

Solaris is not fun in my experiences. It's different from linux, like BSD is different. But that's not a problem in itself. I never successfully installed it. Neither version 7 or 8 liked any of my computers (think I tried it on 3). When Prodigy (Sparc server) was Redbrick's (DCU NetSoc) main server I really grew to loathe Solaris. Though I still wanted to install it to give it a go and try to learn it etc. Every admin I ever talked to about it said "don't bother" etc. That it was no good and pretty pointless to install it on x86 as it was really built for Sparc. Thankfully we're now running the (almost) twin Poweredges on Debian. So I'm a happy bunny.

As for beginners. Hrmm... I started off with SUSE personally. I got it free on a magazine CD, as one does. Moved onto Redhat (5 I think it was), messed around with a few others (Mandrake was dismal back then. It just didn't work properly. Installed nicely and fancy and very Windows easy like but basic things didn't work so I'll never touch it again). Settled on Storm until they stopped making it (Debian clone) and then onto Debian and have been Debian since. The new installer is a vast improvement and is still being improved pending Sarge's upgrade to Woody. (Sarge = testing, Woody = stable)

A live CD seems to be a good way to go to get your claws into it and now wipe your PC etc by accident.

Play around with it, a lot. If you insist on installing I guess Mandrake seems to have improved (from other peoples opinions). I like to dive in at the deep end a bit more though. I don't really think Debian's new installer is much more complicated than anything else out there...

BenH · 04-09-2004 7:29pm

halenger wrote:

"Solaris sucks". I could quote many other of my friends and their Solaris experiences. I've not a newb really. I've been using linux more or less for about 7 years and very regularly for the last 3. I use Debian entierly but that's me etc.

Solaris has 'issues' especially with the x86 port, however running on sun hardware it is a very good unix with the edge just over linux in regards to stability, at least until 2.6 matures or 10 really delivers, and security. Also the tools that are likely to ship with 10 such as dtrace look to make it very interesting for the enterprise enviroment. Theres also the issue of running Oracle, iirc only SLES8, 9 and the next release of RHES are certified to it.

As allways its the best tool for the job that must be chosen, and linux isnt quite yet the best tool for every job.

nadir · 05-09-2004 4:10am

blacknight wrote:

The question is what is suitable for a newbie, not what is a "better" package management system

erm, that's what I was saying. I think portage is a much more user friendly system than rpm and you will learn lots more in the process.

My point is if you want to learn linux properly , but still want to be able to do it in a user friendly enviornment go for gentoo.

BenH · 05-09-2004 10:51am

Theres no such thing as learning linux properly, heck glorious leader is rumoured to use Suse, and I think that Linus knows linux a little better than all of us combined

.

The commercial distros are ideal if you just want a linux enviroment that you can get working and just use with the minimum of fuss or require the possibility of commercial support and gurantees. And at the sametime avoid the Xp competitors such as Xandros or Linspire.

Community distributions such as gentoo tend to be picked up after people have gotten comfortable with the way things are done in the *nix world and either have plenty of time on their hands or have a very specific need to have a highly optimised system.

gnu · 05-09-2004 11:05am

I'm a Linux beginner and I've set up various versions of Red Hat and Mandrake with no probs. Didn't feel I learned as much as I'd have liked though. I'm looking at Suse next.

Emboss · 05-09-2004 10:18pm

It's time for a sticky on this as it's getting rather boring.

no one can tell you what to use no one here knows you better than you.

get a few cd's install/setup and stick with the one that does what you want.

As for staying away from FreeBSD, It's what I started on and never looked back,
never had any hardware issues from old 386's to the latest and greatest

We have no idea what problems you might come across with YOUR hardware or YOUR brain or lack of.

Experiment and google.....

Azza · 10-09-2004 12:09am

Just had to post something in this forum as its my first time online on a linux system. Man I feel so proud!

ishnid · 10-09-2004 12:08pm

gnu wrote:

I'm a Linux beginner and I've set up various versions of Red Hat and Mandrake with no probs. Didn't feel I learned as much as I'd have liked though. I'm looking at Suse next.

If the reason you're switching from a distro like RH or Mandrake is to learn more, SuSE wouldn't really be the logical choice. SuSE has an excellent GUI-based configuration system (YaST2) but for as for learning more, I'd recommend (as has been done in this thread) Debian, Slackware or Gentoo. I'm running Gentoo at the moment and the community over in the forums at www.gentoo.org is excellent. So good, in fact, that I haven't actually had to post any questions there yet, 'cause they all seem to be answered somewhere already.

Edit: Bloody 'ell. I knew I'd registered here ages ago but hadn't realised this is actually my first post.

RE*AC*TOR · 17-09-2004 6:11pm

Have to say, try Yoper. A little bit less user friendly with the install but its really nice once its installed.

Dustpuppy · 17-09-2004 6:58pm

Take a look at Yoper and you can see that it is another Suse. And Suse is ****. God for install and leave it without changing anything.

RE*AC*TOR · 17-09-2004 7:54pm

I agree that suse isn't great from my personal experience, but I truely like yoper. Its faster out of the box than fedore, mandrake or suse. I've had fewer problems/errors etc. I think for a newbie its perfect, synaptic package manger is very intuitive. Then there's the apple-ish yopperconf - a child could use it.

CuLT · 18-09-2004 1:53am

I'm a Linux noob too, though I have a mate two doors down who knows his stuff fairly well to give me a hand

.

Installed Debian SARGE there a couple of days ago. My main worry was the whole dual OS shenannigans, but the option to have a boot loader installed was nice.

I was still worried I'd feck my partitions up all through the install though

. Only problem I have now is the damn resolution, I must have missed something in the install process because the fecker won't go above 800x600 (having been fairly sure I set it to 1600x1200).

/me googles for the likely simple solution.

Dustpuppy · 18-09-2004 3:45pm

At the moment i'm making a CD with a complete gentoo stage 3 on it. When it's finished it can be used for boot and setup a very easy system without having any known of linux. As soon i have finished the CD i will inform you all.

Sarunas · 18-09-2004 3:45pm

CuLT wrote:

I was still worried I'd feck my partitions up all through the install though . Only problem I have now is the damn resolution, I must have missed something in the install process because the fecker won't go above 800x600 (having been fairly sure I set it to 1600x1200)

You want to change resolution in X or in console?

CuLT · 19-09-2004 12:18am

I wanted to do it in X, actually, I think I have resolution sorted by editing the X config, now the only problem is the refresh rate, 60Hz at 1280x1024 is a bit annoying.

I don't think my graphics card was installed properly, it shows up as Generic, it's a GeForce4. 3D acceleration would be nice.

Dustpuppy · 19-09-2004 9:35am

You have 3 tools for setup the xserver:
dexconf
xf86config
XF86Setup
Try all of them. I don't use normaly debian on PC, only on my old mac and i do all config by myself.

Cake Fiend · 20-09-2004 7:19pm

man XF86Config - all the info you need.

flamegrill · 20-09-2004 11:13pm

Lads less of the "mine is bigger than yours" type of Posts. The thread starter asked what our opinions were on what is newbie friendly.

In my opinion, being well versed in Unices, I consider Redhat type distros the easiest. However having using slackware for years since very early versions I love it, I also hate it

- there are many package management systems for it also, slapt-get and swaret are two.

Apt-get is also available for Redhat/Fedora and makes installing things very simple. Using redhat will give you an insite into the world of linux and it will pad it for you

, making it less stress full. Slackware/debian are a bit more raw and you need to take it slow and get stuck in. At the end of the day the idea is to get used to particular apps, which are common to them all and then you can work with any distro.

Paul

connie00 · 25-09-2004 10:32pm

I think if your not sure if you'll like Linux a bootable distro such as knoppix or mandrake might be worth checking out first. After that for ease of use and installation of harware and software any of the popular distros such as Redhat, Suse or Mandrake would be the handiest for a newbie. Personally I like Suse.

Capt'n Midnight · 27-09-2004 1:06pm

If you have more than 700MB free on a FAT 16/32 partition have a look at this.
http://www.knoppix.net/docs/index.php/PoorMansInstall
ie. loading linux from a CD image on the HDD - faster than a CD and still doesn't affect your partitions etc.

Or if you have ~4GB free on the HDD
Boot from the hdd - into a console and sudo knoppix-installer
http://www.knoppix.net/docs/index.php/KnoppixInstaller

versa · 30-09-2004 8:38pm

Out of all the distros that I have tried I find Xandros one of the easiest for me I also liked mepis and Suse. Have a look at www.distrowatch.org and www.xandros.com

Nick_oliveri · 28-10-2004 5:02pm

Good thread, im goin with knoppix, i found red hat (8) kind of annoying.
Why are most going for ease rather than the ability to learn a good stable distro for future reference?

PixelPixie · 05-11-2004 7:47pm

You could add RedHat 9 (Shrike) to the list - I installed it from the CDs from scratch without a hitch and it runs like a dream.

blacknight wrote:

If you are new to linux I would recommend you try one of the following:
Fedora
Mandrake
Suse
Whitebox (redhat enterprise clone)

They all come with easy to use graphical installers and will guide you through the entire installation process.

DO NOT try:
Slackware
Gentoo
Debian

Although you may hear a lot about the above they are not really suited to beginners.

paulinimus · 23-11-2004 12:08pm

I reccomend it because it does not ship with any corrupting 3rd. party software. To be honest though, if you are a very clever person I would go right ahead and install Slackware. It will be the water for your sponge so to speak - you'll learn lots about Linux..as long as you are patient..

If you do install Slackware, or Fedora, make sure to download and install the MPlayer binaries /source (great Hungarian movie player)
It has all the codecs to play pretty much any movie, but they have to be downloaded seperately. I would advide that you stay away from Gnome -use KDE instead.

aidan_walsh · 23-11-2004 12:10pm

paulinimus wrote:

I reccomend it because it does not ship with any corrupting 3rd. party software.

I don't follow what you mean by this.

paulinimus · 24-11-2004 3:55pm

As you may know, some of the big distributions (Mandrake, SuSE) include software that is provided for free "as in beer" yet is not OSS. For example Real player. Many of us use Linux not just because its a great OS but also because it is free "as in speech" and because the source code is available to the public. 3rd. party software does not tend to have this level of freedom. Im not trying to start an argument, but from a political correctnedd point of view I would direct any newbie to use an easy to set up and use distro which is in the spirit of OSS.
Ideally, Gentoo is a great choice because it is non profit organisation, but Gentoo is more for the intermediate to advanced user.

billy3sheets · 01-12-2004 1:33am

I've used the RedHat & Fedora 1 & 2 distros. No real probs with install or getting running. Probs are all around H/W. I have a 2 or 3 year old Dell Dimension 4300 system.
Probs with the Linksys 10/100 card. Changed to a 3Com one which is better supported.
Major probs with the Connexant based Winmodem. Got a free driver, but will only run at 14K !
Lexmark Z33 printer has also been a major pain to get drivers installed & running for.

Seems to me good tips on H/W are:
Use 3Com N/W cards
Use HP printers
Use an external 56K modem (3Com/USR, Multitech/Zoom/Hayes)

I don't know if any distro is better than another in terms of support for this kind of H/W.

nadir · 22-12-2004 11:42am

I dont know how people can use rpm, it's just so ..... useless.

Is it just that ye guys have never used portage or apt ???
or is there just loads about rpm I dont know??

Eoghan-psych · 07-06-2005 2:31pm

Fenster wrote:

Using Linux is frequently challenging, more so as most of the guides on the net are utter tripe. They assume a level of expertise that just won't be there with new users or provide half-assed explanations. What's that point in telling us to enter command xyz without telling us why we use that one.

Ultimately, that's the problem with Linux.

Using XP, if I want new software I click on *one* file, the one called [rather cryptically] "Install" or "setup" or even, the horror, "program x's installer". That's it - it does the rest. It asks where I want to stick the program, whether or not I want icons in certain places and away I go. In the unlikely scenario that the program needs software I don't have, it will say so. Then it will install it for me with a few clicks of the mouse. Easy peasy lemon squeezee, >90% of the time.

Arguments can be made in favour of the esoteric workings of Linux in this regard [stops workers buggering up their office systems, for example] but for home users? As long as people have to start punching the wall because they need to enter yet another password for the 47th time while typing in "commands xyz" [for reasons understood or otherwise] Linux will never make significant progress among ordinary users.

Yes, MS is an evil global corporation bent on destroying the world [well, almost] but MY GOD their software is easier for the average person to use. Why? Because programmers have to code a *product* - they're not just fannying about trying to play one-upmanship games with other coders.

Very few non commercial software providers match this. One notable exception is the mozilla project - simple, straightforward, and *better* than the alternative. Not just cheaper, or smaller, or prettier, or less capitalistic [delete as appropriate] but *better*. Why? because the code writers stopped prancing about and got on with making a program for the *mainstream*, that *mainstream* users can use, and more importantly *appreciate*.

The whole Linux experience should be like that, from install through setup, login, day to day use and adding new stuff. It's not.

Rant over.
[/edit]
I should point out that I do use Linux - it's stable, secure [on multiple levels] and free.

Which distribution for a newbie?

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