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Linux for begginer, reccomendations?

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Comments

  • #32
    niallb
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,775 ✭✭✭niallb


    You can often upgrade - particularly with Ubuntu and debian based distros :-)
    I usually install a new system in parallel with the old one - on a seperate partition so that if it's missing something I can just restart in my familiar
    environment, get the job done, and then add the feature to the new install.

    Planning ahead can make this easy. Keep your /home directories on a seperate partition and you'll have few worries about upgrading or reinstalling. I've had basically the same /home directories since the late '90s.

    I keep two system partitions, kind of like stable and beta, and swap between them if I want to upgrade. In the meantime, the space is there to try out other distros.


  • #33
    ZENER
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,163 ✭✭✭ZENER


    Everyone's gone nuts about Ubuntu - and that's good as it gets people interested in Linux - but there are other distros.

    For Example this months Linux Magazine has a full Fedora 7 install which is nice plus allows KDE desktop. I'm not a fan of Redhat or it's follow ups, I hate the way too much is hidden away and I found Ubuntu the same but Fedora 7 has some nice touches.

    My personal favorite is Mandriva/Mandrake. The wizards and general behavior suits me better. Stuff is easier to find and it's more GUI orientated as opposed to Fedora/Ubunto which imo require too much prior knowledge of the system in order to do anything other than basic things. Fine if you only want a taste but no good if you like to configure things and tweak settings.

    Mandrake has a central configuration panel where everything to configure your system can be found (much like control panel in windows or System preferences on Mac OS X)

    I just cannot get used to Gnome at all, I dislike its screen top menu (despite being a Mac User !).

    For a bit of interesting wardriving or network trickery you could also try the BackTrack 2 installation. Available as a live cd or a full installer.

    ZEN


  • #34
    ethernet
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,569 ✭✭✭ethernet


    bushy, thanks for the suggestion but shutdown -h doesn't work :). Tried it soon after discovering the problem.

    Speaking of Knoppix, I must say how impressed I was when I ran it live on a really low-spec PC. I'm talking about KDE on a 500 MHz processor with 192 MB shared RAM. Solid stuff. Regarding upgrades, it's always easier to do a clean install, as with Windows. Hate to leave all that junk just lurking in the background. niallb has a good point -- the Debian-based distros can be easier to update. It usually involves downloading every new package from a mirror. Needless to say, it can take a while. For all that effort, I prefer to see the fruit of the labour in the form of a freshly-burned CD! ;)

    One think rubs me up about Fedora. Don't like how it suggests using LVM when installing. I can get over that but even worse is the package manager. If you're a novice and don't have an Internet connection, good luck. Little did I know that I needed to edit sources when I first used Fedora when I was starting out with Linux. I'd imagine a good few other people had the same problem.


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