Posted: 7/27/2005 10:05:30 PM EDT
| I've been working in the IT field for close to 8 years but never really broke into linux. I've done some playing around with Redhat but always ended up putting winblows back on my machine. What is a good distribution for newbies? Easy install etc. |
Yeah, right! A newbie install and run a non-stable release?  A GOOD newbie flavor is something like Ubuntu: http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ There are quite a bit more newbie Linux flavors, but Red Hat's Fedora Core isn't a great choice for those new to Linux. |
Bah, I started with RH 5 and I did just fine. FC4 is much more friendly than RH 5 (or any other distro) was at the time. Either you want to learn it, or you don't. It's that simple. If he gave up on Redhat numerous times, he's not serious about learning Linux. Sorry. |
What makes you think I'm not seruois now? |
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What do you want to do with the system? If it's to run an e-mail server, web server, DNS server, C programming, etc., then you can't beat Debian. If you want bleeding-edge versions of GUI software and the X-Windows setup to be easy, then stay away from Debian.z |
The fact that you're limiting yourself to a distribution suitable for "newbies" and that you've given up on a popular and well supported distribution in the past, for which information is plentiful. |
You have to start somewhere. I'm not paying for another release of windows. |
Well, all right then. Opinions are like, well you know. Discussing distributions is like arguing religion. I won't be party to a distro pissing match, myself. Since you mentioned paying for another release of Windows, I assume you're looking to install a distro for personal use, rather than for a server at work. For me, Fedora Core 4 fits the bill nicely. There is a TON of information out there if you get stuck, the user community is very helpful, software installation is as easy as it gets, package availability is outstanding, I use it myself as my primary OS (since FC1) and it's proven to be quite reliable, the install is a piece of cake (easy as Windows, I dare say), and - as with most distro's - you're free to tweak it as little or as much as you like. If you want it to be all nice and GUI, fine. If you want to scrap all that and be a hard core CLI using 133t h4x0r freak, you can do that too. As a server for personal use, I have a server running FC3 on a DS3 hosting email, web, MySQL, DNS, MUD, IRC, etc for over 80 domains. It works great. Plus, if you get stuck, alot of us use it here on ARFCOM. Who better to lend a helping hand than gun-toting geeks, eh? 
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Try Ubuntu or Kubuntu (Gnome and KDE defaults, respectively). www.ubuntulinux.org/ Still exploring my system, but so far has been a decent platform for me to learn on. It lets me play around from within a functioning operating system, rather than learning while setting it up--which I don't have time to do these days. Jim |
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If I can install RedHat and a LILO option, you will probably do OK as long as you study a bit. All I had before that was a Unix shell account at an ISP and a couple of books of Unix commands. If you can't live without a GUI, that may spell trouble because thats a little more advanced, but lots of folks have done that successfully, too. My biggest hangup was mounting the CD drive , and that was not really that hard. It would help to have another computer ( borrowed?) you can use to get on the web to seek help. As someone already said the big question is what apps you're going to want it to run, and what for. |
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FreeBSD if you want to work on a real *nix and do it man-style or OS X if you want the benefits of a real operating system without the annoyances of Win-ders. Linux (particularly Gentoo, Debian and Fedora) drove me to OS X. FreeBSD is very well documented and consistant from version to version. It's like it's written by adults and not a bunch of develpers being distracted by shiny things. I used to run a CounterStrike server on a FreeBSD box along with an email, http and ftp server. It was a great setup and very secure. |
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there is no mandrake linux anymore... it's connectdriva or some crap. Get a knoppix ISO and burn it to a cd. Then boot to it. If you have a flash drive, mount it as home. Done. Knoppix 3.8 is stable as a rock. www.linuxiso.org distrowatch.com/ www.linux.org/docs/ Enjoy! |
The only reason i still use windows, is i cannot get my Quickbooks to run on linux yet, 
Well it isn't like he was emerging Gentoo, you might forget you own a computer by the time it's done. Well, at least that's what it seemed like on the 300mhz PII I tried it on... Jim |
DOH! |
Yum is the answer to satisfying dependencies on rpm based distros. It's one of the reasons I suggested Fedora. |
+1. i can't ever find the packages i'm looking for with debian. YMMV |
Yeah but you first need to know how to install Yum? This is going to take a few days :) |
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I tried to install the Skype software by doing the following. I'll just post all that I have. Maybe you guys can make sense of it. [root@localhost skype]# rpm -U skype-1.2.0.11-fc3.i586.rpm warning: skype-1.2.0.11-fc3.i586.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID d66b746e error: Failed dependencies: libqt-mt.so.3 is needed by skype-1.2.0.11-fc3.i586 [root@localhost skype]# yum install skype-1.2.0.11-fc3.i586.rpm Setting up Install Process Setting up repositories updates-released 100% |=========================| 951 B 00:00 extras 100% |=========================| 1.1 kB 00:00 base 100% |=========================| 1.1 kB 00:00 Reading repository metadata in from local files primary.xml.gz 100% |=========================| 289 kB 00:02 updates-re: ################################################## 798/798 Added 0 new packages, deleted 5 old in 0.82 seconds Parsing package install arguments Examining skype-1.2.0.11-fc3.i586.rpm: skype - 1.2.0.11-fc3.i586 skype-1.2.0.11-fc3.i586.rpm: does not update installed package. Nothing to do [root@localhost skype]# |
Mepis has a tool that searches Debian repositories, quite the cool tool. Here is a link to a screenshot of the tool. Synaptic Package Manager |
To get rid of the "DSA signature: NOKEY" warning, do: # rpm --import http://www.skype.com/products/skype/linux/rpm-public-key.asc to import Skype's public key. When installing a package, rpm checks the package's signature against a known list of public keys. The above code puts skype's key in the known list. It looks like the Fedora skype RPM requires the shared library for the Qt GUI toolkit. Download the qt libraries and install the package with: #rpm -i qt-3.3.4-15.1.i386.rpm Notice that I used the -i (install) option instead of the -U (upgrade) option. That should resolve the libqt-mt.so.3 dependency. After downloading and installing the qt libraries, use the rpm command again, with the -i option instead of the -U option with the skype package. It should install without complaining about not having libqt-mt.so.3. I'm using Mandriva LE 2005 with urpmi (kinda like yum) as a package manager and I'm not too familliar with Fedora's quirks, so I hope my suggestions work for you. |
WOW! You da man! It works! Thanks for your help!! |
Synaptic is in Ubuntu as well, and if you open up to the community-maintained repositories you can get a ton more software. |
Haven't played with Ubuntu but I have opened the Synaptic tool up to other repositories and the amount of programs available is astounding. |