Posted: 10/16/2005 9:30:39 AM EDT
Hoi zämme I'm sick and tired of Windows XP (for MANY reasons) and have been thinking of switching to Linux a while ago. So now which Linux Distribution should I get? Ubuntu, Mandriva, Red Hat  Note: I'm a newcomer to Linux. Thanks guys |
You can load the live version and try it out before you commit to it over Windows |
I just can't get past that homepage, no way I could put that lib distro on my equipment! 
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Hahahaha I have to agree, I does have a socialist touch to it. Anyway I think i'm going with Kubuntu, since I have a LITTLE experience with KDE from a SuSe demo a couple of years ago. As for the games, I'll probably buy a massive hard disk and make a windows partition. Hope it works Thx again |
+1 on the window manager. Try out a few different live distros with different window managers. Some people prefer Gnome, some people prefer KDE. Then again, some people like fluxbox or fvwm or whatever, but that's a little more than you need to worry about right now. Try taking a look at MEPIS. Their live CD version is called SimplyMEPIS. |
I tried the live version on my laptop and it worked fine, except it couldn't find my modem. That sucked because I mostly use the laptop to surf ARFCOM.  Vulcan94 |
my understanding is that few if any linux distributions will work with most pci or built into the motherboard modems as they are usually "win modems" best bet is an external that connects to a serial port |
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go dual boot. save your data. clean your harddrive. reformat and make windows 10-15 gigs. a 20 gig, fat partition for data to share between both systems. leave the rest unformated for now. get windows running and then install your linux distro on the remaining space. best of both worlds. your gonna need windows in certain situations. john |
I've heard that too. You would think that someone would figure out how to drive one of those winmodems with linux by now. I bet more people would switch to linux if their modems would work under linux. Vulcan94 |
Note, RHEL is payware. I'm using RHEL myself, I'm sick of having huge ass dependencies problems because there's no central source of updates, typical fenonomen when I used Ferora. The amount of packages avaiable in the up2date repostery is limited though, but it covers the most frequently used vital stuff. |
a.) not enough people are using 56K anymore. b.) blame the manufactures trying to protect their uber secret 56k modem technology. |
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I'm surprised nobody has suggested Mandrake for a first time user. It's a great system to learn on as well. However, in your case, I would suggest a live linux CD first...knoppix is the one I use. It lets you explore and get the feel of the linux operating system without having to go through the problems of installing it, and as an added bonus, you can't mess anything up. Once you get your feet wet with knoppix, I'd say Mandrake or Fedora would be an ideal learning environment...hell I have been using linux for years, and I choose Fedora for most things...it's just a great setup. |
I would have, but Mandrake is no more. It's Mandriva now. :) I've run Mandrake, Red Hat, and Ubuntu, in addition to a handful of bootCD distros. For absolute ease of use on an installed system, I'd say Ubuntu, Mandrake, Fedora in that order. Ubuntu even set up my dual-boot system properly so that XP loads without problems. Jim |
Last mandrake I downloaded was 10.something .. Everyone's changing names and distros and blah. |
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I agree with the previous posters about the LiveCDs. Pretty much every current distro has a LiveCD version. The LiveCD versions give you a good taste of what the actual hard drive installed version will be like without actually having to format and install anything. And these days there are so many distros coming and going it's almost hard to keep track. Check out distrowatch.com as they have links to all the distros on the Linux and BSD scene. I personally use and prefer Ubuntu/Kubuntu and Suse. Have fun! |
Yeah, well not everybody lives where DSL and cable are available. Sometimes living in a rural area sucks, but at least I can shoot all day long off of my back deck.  Vulcan94 |