[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Best version of Linux? (Page 1 of 2)
Posted: 3/12/2010 8:03:50 PM EDT
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I'm thinking about giving the Linux OS a try, what's the best version for a casual user, not gonna do anything super complicated.... Preferably with an attractive desktop.
thanks in Advance... |
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Quoted: Ubuntu is simple enough and looks good. I predict you will get recommended some realy geeky verisons though. ubuntu is the best if you go to their website and enter your address they will mail you the latest release on CD for free. I challenged myself and used only ubuntu as my OS for a year, I was impressed. |
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slackware Seriously, why would a question like this ever pop up. What are the advantages over Ubuntu? I'm a bit bored with windows and trying something new, my only experience with Linux is that my father used to use Redhat linux back in the day at work... I'm just trying to goof around a little. |
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slackware Seriously, why would a question like this ever pop up. What are the advantages over Ubuntu? I'm a bit bored with windows and trying something new, my only experience with Linux is that my father used to use Redhat linux back in the day at work... I'm just trying to goof around a little. Slackware is a very minimal distribution... most fans of Slackware moved on to Gentoo. Gentoo claims to be a little faster because everything is compiled on the system from source code. However, the performance benefits on a modern system are minimal at best. Ubuntu + Yakuake drop-down terminal FTW. |
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You'll want to try Ubuntu. It's the easiest to use.... Just download it and burn it to a CD...the instructions are right on the site. I have been using it at home for over a year now....it's ALL I use at home...even use it at work. Very stable, secure, fast and comes with the Open Office Suite (compatible with MS office). I have not had to reload my laptop ONCE since I switched to it (had to do it several times with Windows). Also...try Google Earth for Linux (runs so much faster in Linux)...and Opera for Linux (better than Firefox IMHO |
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Ubuntu - probably the most complete and easy to use Linux distro out there.
I use Kubuntu on my desktop at work, and aside from the crappy hardware the company gave me flaking out on me, the OS is pretty good. Wasn't able to get a third monitor running using a USB to VGA adapter... it knows it's there, just doesn't know what to do with it. |
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ubuntu beryl
worked good for me, but never figured out how to get it to do all of the cool shit  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD7QraljRfM
did a dual boot, and after i didnt figure it out i uninstalled it if anyone can tell me how, drop me an IM |
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Linux Mint (ubuntu remix with most common drivers, flash, java etc already installed). or Debian Stable (this is what Ive used for years) All of the *buntus are based on Debian but they make some minor changes to the way things work nothing a noob would really care about though. eta: Linux Mint is a live cd, you can boot off of it and play with before you install it to disk. eta2: distrowatch.com is your friend. |
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If you're talking about distros, thats like saying who makes the best handgun. There's one for every kind of user. I currently use Debain for my servers and Ubuntu for my PC. For old hardware or KISS, you can't go wrong with Puppy. In the past my favorites were Knoppix and Mandrake. If I were you, I'd probably go with Ubuntu's WUBI installer; its the easiest way to safely install it, and it boots just like a normal system. (Just don't upgrade the kernel or you might break the bootloader till the new version comes out.) |
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For n00b who is looking to use Linux on a desktop or laptop, and wants everything to work out of the box without too much tinkering. I've found Ubuntu (or Kubuntu) and Linux Mint to be the best. Fedora is pretty close behind. I currently have a 5 or 6 year old Dell Latitude D600 at work running Linux Mint 8 which I use for running Wireshark and capturing serial console logs from embedded equipment, using PuTTY. Everything worked right out of the box. I like Mint's out of the box UI better than Ubuntu's, but that's a personal preferance.
I haven't tried Mepis. (My first Linux install was Slackware 3.4.  )
As an aside, anyone interested in learning how to admin a Linux server in a large enterprise should download CentOS, which is a Red Hat Enterprise clone. RH is the most common Linux flavor in big companies. CentOS works virtually the same but for free, and makes a great server OS itself. My $0.02. |
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DL the free PDF of the Ubuntu Pocket guide. It will be helpful to starting with Ubuntu, and relevant to Debian, MINT, and somewhat to MEPIS...
Click Download link at top... |
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Quoted: When you get serious about linux, give gentoo a try. Ubuntu will be a good first distro. ArchLinux is the fookin best distro EVAR, and is as 1337 as gentoo. On top of that it doesn't break like Gentoo does and you never have to rebuild world. Portage sucks (not as bad as RPM, dpkg or apt though), but I say Pacman/Yaourt FTMFW <––- absolutely the best fookin package manager I have ever used. Building packages is as simple and reliable as you can get with a simple PKGBUILD and if you choose you have the ABS system too, along with a user repository accessible through Yaourt, for just about any package you could ever want. Here is the list of distros I have used: Redhat Fedora Debian Suse Mepis Ubuntu Gentoo Mandrake Mandriva Slackware Slax LinuxMint Archlinux Since I switched to Arch, I have not had the slightest inclination to keep searching, as I have found the ultimate in reliability, function, and KISS That said, for the OP, Ubuntu or LinuxMint is your best bet as a noob, but after you find out that it is absolutely inferior in many ways to other distros, try Arch. You will not be disappointed. |
| Try PCLINUXOS. It has a live cd and I've found it to be the easiest to deal with if something doesn't work properly. Very good distro for noobs. Very underrated distro. |
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If you're talking about distros, thats like saying who makes the best handgun. There's one for every kind of user. I currently use Debain for my servers and Ubuntu for my PC. For old hardware or KISS, you can't go wrong with Puppy. In the past my favorites were Knoppix and Mandrake. If I were you, I'd probably go with Ubuntu's WUBI installer; its the easiest way to safely install it, and it boots just like a normal system. (Just don't upgrade the kernel or you might break the bootloader till the new version comes out.) oo thanks, im running this right now. Cause i was wanting to run linux in addition to windows 7 on my laptop but since i just installed windows 7 a few months ago and forgot to make a partition for linux there i didnt want to redo everything. This may work out great. |
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Quoted: Yes. I use a distro called TeenPup linux on a flash drive. Quoted: I've got ubuntu on a USB , so whenever a PC crashes, i just stick it in and boot it up...couldn't be simpler. you can boot off of the usb? It comes in handy when there is a catastrophic failure of the hard drive or when the computer won't boot for some reason. Sometimes I boot into it just for fun. Screenshot of TeenPup  |
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I've got ubuntu on a USB , so whenever a PC crashes, i just stick it in and boot it up...couldn't be simpler. you can boot off of the usb? Yup. Go to http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ for a better creator than what's included on the disc. I don't know other distros, but Ubuntu was easy for me, and on the thumb drive I put it in a number of different computers which all worked, drivers and everything. |
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I've got ubuntu on a USB , so whenever a PC crashes, i just stick it in and boot it up...couldn't be simpler. you can boot off of the usb? Yup. Go to http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ for a better creator than what's included on the disc. . You can do a full install to a USB flash drive. It will run faster than a Live CD-type install (which is what pendrivelinux does). I run Ubuntu off a USB drive on my work laptop when I take it home. That way The Man can't see what I'm up to and if I break anything, there's no danger of losing my important work files. |
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Quoted: I'm partial to debian, but a no-nonsense, works out of the box distro today is ubuntu (based on debian). It really comes down to two things, package management and their associated repositories. Debian (apt) is probably my favorite means of package management. Ubuntu does a good job staying on top of software releases/bug fixes. Its really a win win. This is from a guy that has ran everything from BSD to Debian to Gentoo to Ubuntu. |
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Mint . Linux Mint. Think of it as Ubuntu in a different set of clothes. I thought is was a little easier for Windoze dummies to install and get going than Ubuntu. he is looking for something to start with , figured that would be the best way to go cant get much easier. |
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Mint . Linux Mint. Think of it as Ubuntu in a different set of clothes. I thought is was a little easier for Windoze dummies to install and get going than Ubuntu. he is looking for something to start with , figured that would be the best way to go cant get much easier. Thanks for the help everyone, I didn't realize we had so many Linux users on here! I'm currently installing Ubuntu, but if it turns out to be a pain i'm going to try Mint, I appreciate all the responses, and am looking forward to seeing what this OS is capable of, I hear good things! |