"The" Best Linux Distro

phobos

OK, I know this topic has been covered a million times before, but having said that newer distros are being released every couple of weeks. Right now I don't have a copy of Linux on my box, and want to code & test some n-Tier javaware on the platform.

So what I'm looking for is a distro that

1. Won't cost me much
2. Is easy to install
3. Will detect my hardware
4. Has a decent GUI interface (I used SuSe in college, and thought it looked good, but knew I could get better)

I have a 10GB disk that I can devote to the OS and its apps. Is this enough? (knowing that you can never have enough, but still?). The system has a 700MHz intel chip, and 384MB PC133 DIMMs. I will also want to dual boot it will Windows 2K which will be sitting on a separate disk (60GB). This setup should remove the need for partitioning, since each disk will have its own version of file system.

Will I get away with that setup on the above spec. I am not a massive gamer, more of a programming geek/music person.

feedback appreciated guys!

;-phobos-)

sisob

the speck sounds ideal for linux.

As for choosing the distro - well you are likely to get a flood of "X is my favourite distro" posts. The whole point of distros is that each has a different target audience.

Personally I prefer Mandrake because I'm too lazy to configure everything by hand but if I want to I still can.

dahamsta

As for choosing the distro - well you are likely to get a flood of "X is my favourite distro" posts.

But X isn't a distro!

heh

Phobos, do you have access to a fast net connection? If you have, all distros are inexpensive, as you can just download them. In fact, even if you don't, you can just ask for CD's on ILUG, or even here, and people will send them to you in exchange for blanks. As for the distro, I would go for Mandrake or Red Hat, they have excellent hardware support -- unless you have something /really/ new or odd, they'll pick it up.

adam

phobos

I am looking @ Mandrake 8.1 and it looks sweeet, exactly the kind of OS I would like ATM. I went to:

ftp://ftp.compsoc.com/pub/os/Linux/mandrake/8.1/i586/

which looked like the pretty obvious place to look. FTP server is hosted here in Eire, and yes I can access a broadband net connection. The combination of the two should get me it fairly quick. But everywhere I look on that site it assumes you are installing from a CD. Do I simply download the contents of the above directory, burn it, and install from the CD. Does it come with it's own LILO boot manager?

Has Linux evolved to a typical wizard installation routine, or if not, could someone point me to a step-by-step install guide. I installed Red Hat Linux 5.1 ages ago on a 486, and I remember the installation to be a pain in the ass. Has the situation improved with the more modern distros.

Also I thought X was just short for Xwindows which is the GUI front end to Linux, or am I totally off?

;-phobos-)

Typedef

The 'install' iso will probably be bootable and thus if you simply boot from this disk and follow the Mandrake instructions you should at least get to the partitioning stage.

Once there and assuming that the 10gb disk is your primary ide slave simply select /dev/hdb as the device you are using and I guess allow the Mandrake install system to take care of making partitions and swap space and so on.

The pertinant partitioning program is called 'diskdrake' and will function either as a gui or as a cli menu driven version of same, so you 'probably shouldn't' have any troubles.

Also there are probably a whole raft of tweaks you will want to do once you have X setup, like say getting opengl hardware acceloration working etc.

dahamsta

Do I simply download the contents of the above directory, burn it, and install from the CD.

No, get the ISO's:

ftp://ftp.compsoc.com/pub/os/Linux/mandrake/iso/

Does it come with it's own LILO boot manager?

Yes, Mandrake has LILO. It may also have Grub, but I'm not too sure.

Has Linux evolved to a typical wizard installation routine

Yes, it's a piece of widdle.

Also I thought X was just short for Xwindows which is the GUI front end to Linux, or am I totally off?

It is, I was taking the mick.

adam

sisob

check out http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/demos/Demo/ to see mandrake in action and what the installer Is like.

:rolleyes: I ment 'X' as a variable - as in insert you distro here.

Mandrake can use either Lilo or grub: grub is better, but lilo is prittier.

It is easier to burn the ISO's and do an install that way - but you can just stick the ISO's on your hd and do and install from their with a boot floppy

Feeno

Of course if you net connection doesn't stretch to it there's always http://www.linuxemporium.co.uk/, http://www.cheeplinux.co.uk/ or one of your local LUGs, http://www.linux.ie. The cost in the first two for Mandrake 8.1 will work out at about ?12-?17

po0k

I have a bit of hardware in my box, getting a new 80GB hard drive to work with my current 30GB (has Win98SE on it atm)
Want to have a choice at boot-up between win98se, Win2K and Mandrake (or whatever Distro i get).
At the moment I haven't a clue how to do this, or even how to go about it.
I'm thinking of giving 10-15GB to the Linux partition, though I don't know what format is best (I'd like to ahve it FAT32 so every OS can read it).
As for the config of the drives i was thinking of putting the 80GB as primary master, 30GB secondary master with a 16xPlextor as slave (all running at UDMA33 - the highest me mobo will support).
I don't really want to have to use floppies, a boot menu would be lovely, which will auto boot the last choice automatically unless a key is pressed in 5 seconds or whatever. Does LILO work like this?
Will I have to make a load of logical 'virtual' partitions insidde the linux primary? I'd be putting win2k on the rest of the drive in FAT32.

Also, is Mandrake compatible with the following hardware:
GeForce2Pro64MB DDR
Lucent 1646 DSP (I think there are drivers available for this - not sure though) or a Rockwell DSP chipset modem
Adaptec 2903 PCi
Epson Perfection 1200S
Plextor 1640TA
SBLive 1024
Realtek 8139 or 8029 PCi (two different NICs I have)
3Com 3c595 PCi
?
The modem, SCSI, 3Com and scanner are my biggest concerns.
Is it easy to swap hardware around, here I specifically mean NICs, though can you temporarily disable a card, plug in another in its place to use the free IRQ or whatever, then uninstall(both software and physically) it when your ready, plug in the first card and re-enable it?

flamegrill

SyxPak:

First off 2 paritions will do for linux for now. One primary one which will have to be ext2 filesystem, ie native linux. type 83 i believe in fdisk. the other will be a swap partition. that will be type 82. dont worry about the types to be honest as the likes of mandrake and redhat will do the filesystem types for you.

What i would do and have done is install windows 98 SE first (i used ME, same thing really), then I installed win2k and finally Linux slackware 8.0. This way win2k will handle all dos based boot options and lilo or grub will actually handle the initial boot. thus givin you 2 menus. first one given you a choice of Linux or Windows and the second menu givening you the choice between you different windows versions.

You can mount all your windows disks into the linux filesystem on boot if you wish. using simple commands like the following:

mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/win2k -t vfat

/dev/hda1 is say the first partition on your primary hard disk.

GeForce2Pro64MB DDR should work fine on linux. what you may like to get is the nVidia kernel module and the GLX driver. both available from nvidia.
you can ask later about install these.

Lucent 1646 DSP may work. ill post a link for this later as i have it bookmarked at home.

Adaptec 2903 PCi will work with a standard kernel.

actually everything but the scanner will work. There may be a few problems but they should all work with or without some tweaking.

The nic issue is fairly simple to be honest. in /etc/rc.d/rc.modules you can comment out and add modules to be loaded. even if you leave both nic modules uncommented, one will fail and the other will load and what ever device you have in there will become eth0 or shoudl anyway . and the boot process will bring it up no problems.

as usual if you have any questions or you are not clear on any of my post, dont hesitate to ask

Regards,

Paul

po0k

That is a great response Flamegrilkl, thanks man

Btw, you know Mordeth don't you?

The scanner isn't a big problem. in fact the only reason I'm bringing Win98SE into this at all is cos *some* of the scanner software won't work in Win2k and I like to play a bit of DOS classics now and again
Getting DOS 5 for that reason too

I'll get Mandrake to start off with, I use a Debian Shell in college through PuTTY, but I'd imagine Iw on't see much difference from that aspect

Thanks again lads (and lassies/misc)

po0k

Originally posted by phobos

ftp://ftp.compsoc.com/pub/os/Linux/mandrake/8.1/i586/

;-phobos-)

Do you still have them there weston?
How did you log in?
I can't seem to connect to them (or any ftp server) at the moment.
What's the public log-in pass?
I can do it through frink I reckon, but need authorization

flamegrill

username: anonymous
password: empty or your email address.


and yes i do know mordeth.

Regards,

Paul

po0k

Yeah, i copped that soon after posting
twas Cillian actually who showed me the error of my typing

I had an erroneous n in anonymous.
/me hangs his head in shame.

Rev Hellfire

I use http://www.mslinux.org/ and find it to be a fine fully featured stable os.

Typedef

www.slackware.com
Honestly these trolls