Best linux distro for a newbie that's not Lindows

[aberant]

hi all, so i downloaded rh 9 and i caused me sever grief. Being a complete linux newbie it took me ages to get anything to work, plus i'm running it on an nforce 2 board so i couldn't get the net access going. So, new iso's to download ? I heard mandrake or suse are good. Also, good newbies guide anywhere ? Its a steep learning curve but i think i'm starting to get rpm's etc, its just the dependancies that were really winding me up Cheers

 

[civad]

Does Lindows refer to the distro; or the newbie in this case ? ;0

Search the forums for similar threads.

 

[aberant]

already did, not found too much so far, couple of bits referring to lindows but nothing substantial as yet.....

 

[coolroyboy2]

Try Fedora or Mandrake 9.2.

 

[Nothinman]

Honestly if RH gave you a ton of trouble the others won't be much different, other than the possibility of a working network driver for your motherboard.

 

[diggerbucket]

I'm in pretty much the same situation, installed RH9 but can't get the onboard LAN to work (nforce2 also). I'm a total newbie so don't know how to fix it, and booting into windows just to get on the internet is a PITA, and to be honest I can't be bothered switching between the 2 all the time.

So if you find one that works with nforce2, post the solution here!

 

[Ynog]

I am not sure so I could be wrong here, but I believe that Fedora kernel has support for more network cards than the RH9.

IIRC, when I installed RH8, and RH9, the kernel didn't have support for my network card, which was a tulip, a 3Com SOHO
integrated chip. However when I installed Fedora there was support for it. So Fedora might have support for your network card.
It doesn't hurt to double check. There are alot of people with problems out there, just google for your board.

http://home.t-online.de/home/Johannes.Deisenhofer/nforce2linux.html
I did a quick search and found that for help on getting an nforce2 board and linux to work.

Like Nothinman said, if you have alot of problems with RH then your not going to find the
others to be considerably easier.

 

[Need4Speed]

why not do some searching on how to actually get the nforce2 nic to work in RH?

 

[yelo333]

just a quick note, I have an nforce2 board, and nvidia provides the network drivers for download from their website. I haven't seen a distro yet that comes with them.
nvidia is very good with the readmes, so just follow that!

 

[aberant]

yeah, i spent ages doing all of the above, getting myself nowhere. Downloaded the drivers from nvidia and installed em as per the readme, still didnt get anywhere as the nvnet module didn't show up in the network config area. looked all around, found some methods of fixing it that i tried and didn't work, and some that i didn't understand and couldn't try at the same time due to rebooting to get the net working etc. Soooo, should have mandrak 9.2 when i get home, will see how that goes. All i need is a video app, browser and chat client to be able to start using linux full time, the rest i can learn as i go along. will post back

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: yelo333
just a quick note, I have an nforce2 board, and nvidia provides the network drivers for download from their website. I haven't seen a distro yet that comes with them.
nvidia is very good with the readmes, so just follow that!

The Nvidia liscence dictates that it's illegal for people to redistribute the drivers thru free downloads(or something like that. Most distros are paraniod about liscencing issues, more so them most other software distributers.) So it's nvidia's fault, otherwise it would have the driver aviable by default. Most distros have facilities to HELP you install the drivers (don't have to use them if you don't want).. like scripts or options built into configuration tools (check out the documentation specific for your Distro).

If you can go here and burn them to a CD or have it on a windows share or whatever. The sources download is under a meg so it should fit on a floppy

The nforce motherboard drivers is for both nforce and nforce2 boards.

 

[civad]

The Nvidia liscence dictates that it's illegal for people to redistribute the drivers thru free downloads

I dont know if Xandros has a licencing agreement with nvidia or not, but they seem to allow free download of the nforce drivers

aberant, I dont know if you are familiar with a package called alien or not. Try converting the .deb file in the link posted above, and try to install the rpm. I suppose you are familiar with installing rpms.

Alien is a package conversion utility.

 

[Pocatello]

Mandrake 9.1 has been good to me. With Mandrake 9.2, you have download drivers from Nvidia for your nForce 2 motherboard.

 

[aberant]

ok, so this is really driving me mad now. Installed Mandrake 9.2, it seemed to recognise the lan mac from the nforce 2 chipset, however it wouldn't let me configure anything (IPs etc) so i got the nforce driver source from nvidia, tried to install that and its giving me lots of bizarre errors, relating to headers and no such user etc etc. Having read the readme, i tried using rpmbuild, which gave the same errors. The readme said i might have to check my kernel source is the same version as the running kernel, so i checked that and i have only one line in response, which is an mdk file, i assume the source. So what now ? I swear i'm about ready to delete the partitions i created for linux, DOS wasn't this hard to learn from scratch.

 

[geekender]

Xandros is by far waves ahead of the others for newbies.

 

[Kadarin]

Gentoo is the best for newbies. Not because it's the easiest to use, but because it forces you to learn, and the support forums are outstanding.

Easiest != Best (not always)

 

[cleverhandle]

You might check out this page if you haven't already. It seems to address the problems you're seeing.

I think Mandrake is way overrated in general, but it definitely sucks the hardest when things don't work out of the box. Mandrake is the Windows of Linux distros - it bends over backwards to make everything "just work," but when that fails, the twisted mess of tricks they used makes getting under the hood way harder than it should be. Their kernel stuff in particular is a mess. And the fact that they probably have the highest newbie percentage around makes getting good advice even more difficult.

 

[civad]

Xandros is by far waves ahead of the others for newbies.

Agreed. Its good for advanced users also

 

[valky]

hi all, so i downloaded rh 9 and i caused me sever grief. Being a complete linux newbie it took me ages to get anything to work, plus i'm running it on an nforce 2 board so i couldn't get the net access going. So, new iso's to download ? I heard mandrake or suse are good. Also, good newbies guide anywhere ? Its a steep learning curve but i think i'm

I use Mandrake 9.2 and its the most convenient Linux I have used as yet (which includes RedHat, Suise).

ok, so this is really driving me mad now. Installed Mandrake 9.2, it seemed to recognise the lan mac from the nforce 2 chipset, however it wouldn't let me configure anything (IPs etc)

I use a Router which enables the IP's configuration as 9.2 is set at DHCP anyhow...........

 

[valky]

I swear i'm about ready to delete the partitions i created for linux, DOS wasn't this hard to learn from scratch.


With Mandrake you purchase whats called the Discovery Pack that helps you threw all that.......

 

[Nothinman]

Gentoo is the best for newbies. Not because it's the easiest to use, but because it forces you to learn, and the support forums are outstanding.

I installed Gentoo on my Alpha and the only thing it explained in any bit of detail was partitioning, I didn't learn anything about the system and it still took 2 days to get X compiled and installed, let alone setup.

 

[HaroldW]

The vesa video card driver works with almost all video cards. I am using it right now on this laptop (HP ze4540us) and it works great. It would greatly help if you told us the exact model network card you are using.

 

[lowtech1]

Knoppix or Gnoppix if you want to be in linux in 2 minutes, or try Ark, Fedora, Mandrake & Xandros.

 

[aberant]

hi, thanks for all the replies so far working on the link from cleverhandle, thanks, and HaroldW i already did, its an nforce 2 board lowtech, got a clusterknoppix cd all burned and am dl'ing an iso of the new knoppix with 2.6 ( i think it is ) kernel might be good for learning if it will work out of the box

 

[jose]

Try this :

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=2U1Q8WGQ4V&isbn=0764539388&itm=4

Regards,
Jose