Which Linux Distro?

[fuzzynavel]

I am seriously thinking about seeing what all the hype with Linux is.... I know my way around windows very well but moving to linux is a bit daunting as it will all be totally new to me...

I don't know which distro would be best.....I have no real purpose in mind other than general use and getting to know linux, i.e web browsing media playing etc....getting used to command lines again..etc etc..

I would also like to know some decent linux help sites that will teach me about linux...

any help will be appreciated

thanks

One question I have is

My windows partitions are all NTFS.....is linux able to access ntfs so that I can access my media??

 

[fuzzynavel]

Have just searched back through the forum and found some info....

http://www.linuxquestions.org is a site that pops up....

any others??

 

[n0cmonkey]

Linux should be able to read NTFS.

 

[Enfer Singe]

Linux questions is good, I would recommend irc though because they can give you immediate feedback. Just go to freenode and type in pretty much any linux distro and there is a channel for it. As for websites, try The Linux Documentation Project, linux.org, and the websites of the specific distros.

Which one is right for you...everyone will tell you something different. Some good ones to start with are fedora or mandriva but just look around the distros site to see which one you want. You can also try a live cd which boots from a cd and doesnt touch your hard drive. Nowadays, almost every distro has one. Here is a list of most of them.

e: forgot to say, linux will be able to read from NTFS, but won't be able to write to it.

 

[PoopyPants]

anything red hat related wont read ntsf out of the box you have to download a driver and install it then mount every ntsf drive you have. the only distro right off of the top of my head that does read ntsf is suse.

to be real honest with you dude.

there is no hype with linux,, and im gunna get flamed for that but the one and only thing linux is good for, for the normal pc user is a desktop os.
your not gunna play games on it for the simple fact that getting hardware excellerated graphics is a bitch and dont work most of the time. then you gotta search all over for games besides Quake 3 that actually have linux versions.

its a a Linux programmers OS,, or a desktop internet word processing and email machine,, nothing more.

i have it only for the reason of the types of jobs im after, learning it is almost a must as it sets you into the world of Unix, which is different but linux is a nix os, its derived from Unix.

anyways. if you want to learn and spend many hours getting really pissed off then try linux otherwise just avoid it. It has absolutely no use for everyday computing. there is nothing that linux does that windows cant do 100000 times better.

personally id use Suse. its the most windows like.
but be careful wtf your doing when you install it otherwise your gunna have a blown out reformatted hard drive that maybe you didnt want to.
id unplug any hard drive that you dont need until you get linux loaded.
the Partition part of linux is confusing as you have to set a mount point which means creating the parttion you want then telling it to us / as a mount mount yes just a back slash. you'll see it when you get there.

the rest of the install is just common sense. and after the install... alot of hair pulling.

and when it asks for a boot loader tell it to load on the MBR of the disk your using do NOT load it on the PARTITION that your using otherwise it will never boot. lets say HDA is your hard drive and HDA1 is the partition. (hard drive a partition 1) when it comes time for a boot loader tell it to use the MBR of HDA.

thats just a start there is alot more to it. and linuxquestions.org is your friend, they are a great bunch of guys but be careful. A fix that worked for one guy 99% of the time isnt gunna work for you. and you end up royally screwing up linux and you end up reloading.
welcome to the world of linux.

 

[Nothinman]

getting hardware excellerated graphics is a bitch and dont work most of the time

It's simple as long as you have an nVidia card and I setup the ATI fglrx drivers on a friend's notebook once and they didn't seem too difficult either.

which is different but linux is a nix os, its derived from Unix.

Linux isn't derived from anything. It acts like unix and attempts to adhere to standards when they make sense, but to say it's derived from UNIX is wrong.

there is nothing that linux does that windows cant do 100000 times better.

Name one? I use Linux on every machine I own from my home servers to my laptop and I can't think of a single thing Windows does better. Sure more games run because developers choose to limit themselves to Windows, but the games that do run on Linux run better, IME.

just a back slash. you'll see it when you get there.

It's a foreslash.

 

[rmrf]

Originally posted by: PoopyPants
anything red hat related wont read ntsf out of the box you have to download a driver and install it then mount every ntsf drive you have. the only distro right off of the top of my head that does read ntsf is suse.

to be real honest with you dude.

there is no hype with linux,, and im gunna get flamed for that but the one and only thing linux is good for, for the normal pc user is a desktop os.
your not gunna play games on it for the simple fact that getting hardware excellerated graphics is a bitch and dont work most of the time. then you gotta search all over for games besides Quake 3 that actually have linux versions.

its a a Linux programmers OS,, or a desktop internet word processing and email machine,, nothing more.

i have it only for the reason of the types of jobs im after, learning it is almost a must as it sets you into the world of Unix, which is different but linux is a nix os, its derived from Unix.

anyways. if you want to learn and spend many hours getting really pissed off then try linux otherwise just avoid it. It has absolutely no use for everyday computing. there is nothing that linux does that windows cant do 100000 times better.

personally id use Suse. its the most windows like.
but be careful wtf your doing when you install it otherwise your gunna have a blown out reformatted hard drive that maybe you didnt want to.
id unplug any hard drive that you dont need until you get linux loaded.
the Partition part of linux is confusing as you have to set a mount point which means creating the parttion you want then telling it to us / as a mount mount yes just a back slash. you'll see it when you get there.

the rest of the install is just common sense. and after the install... alot of hair pulling.

and when it asks for a boot loader tell it to load on the MBR of the disk your using do NOT load it on the PARTITION that your using otherwise it will never boot. lets say HDA is your hard drive and HDA1 is the partition. (hard drive a partition 1) when it comes time for a boot loader tell it to use the MBR of HDA.

thats just a start there is alot more to it. and linuxquestions.org is your friend, they are a great bunch of guys but be careful. A fix that worked for one guy 99% of the time isnt gunna work for you. and you end up royally screwing up linux and you end up reloading.
welcome to the world of linux.

damn. so your the person that put's linux/UNIX on their resume just to get a job.

I use linux everyday, and haven't found anything it can't do yet. I just got finished playing a bit of HL2, and now will probably play some BF:V. I haven't done anything out of the ordinary to get those to work either, I am using a stock Dell Dimension 4600 system, so it's not like I had to really shop around to get the best parts I could.

If you like linux, you like it. If you are just learning linux to put another section in your resume and take jobs away from the people that actually like to use linux/UNIX on an everyday basis, please stop and go get your mcse.

</rant>

to the OP, I used to always recommend going with an rpm based distro, because they used to have the easiest installers, and were easy to navigate and learn. I now recommend ubuntu. I would say it has the easiest installer, and package management system is nothing less than awesome.

Good luck.

 

[keeleysam]

Fedora Core 4

 

[fuzzynavel]

Thanks for the help guys......

Will probably end up with something like knoppix live CD so that I can mess with linux without the risk of messing something up to start with.......don't really want to be deleting my windows partitions by mistake!

Thanks again


Doesn't UT2004 have a linux version on the CDs?

 

[OffTopic1]

There are Live Distro such as Knoppix, Damn Small, Gnoppix, Kanotix, Mepis, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Mandriva, Monoppix, Morphix, Big Linux, Slax, etc... that you can try with out hdd intall. Then do a bit more research to see which technology that you looking for in Linux, and then install 1/2 a dozen distros that you like to find you niche.

 

[R3MF]

i personally use/like SUSE, but Ubuntu is also good IMO.

 

[nweaver]

I just installed Ubuntu, it seems nice.

And to the flamebate ms wh0ring bastage.......

I would reverse that, and say that anything I can do on windows I can do in linux 10000 faster, and I get $120 Ice cream licensing fees for each ms box I can replace.

tbh, I do use both, they are tools to accomplish a task. I prefer the linux way of config files and init 3 to really free up resources.

 

[AmigaMan]

Another Ubuntu user here. I tried Fedora Core 3, Suse 9.2, and finally Ubuntu and the last one just worked right out of the box...errr install. Anyways, my laptop (Inspiron 9200) was a little finiky when it came to it's video since it uses an ATI chipset (Mobility 9700). But Ubuntu was able to cope with it and just work. For a beginner that what you need, something that works right after you install, where you can play around in it to tweak it. I now have my Ubuntu connected to an external Dell 2001FP and I'm running dual screens which is pretty cool. It didn't work automagically like Windows does, but it did help me understand how stuff works. My wireless worked well too (at 54Mbps w/WEP) but since this replaced my desktop at work, I now just have it hardwired to the network.

 

[Colonel C]

I'll probably be using Suse linux 9.3 soon.

 

[TGS]

Originally posted by: nweaver


tbh, I do use both, they are tools to accomplish a task. I prefer the linux way of config files and init 3 to really free up resources.

Seriously, can we get anymore excited about a machine that boots up and seeing command line. Ahh sweet sweet command line... *INIT 5* Noooooo... Come back, sweet monochrome coloring scheme... COME BACK...

Some people recommend, Fedora (got some odd quirks), Debian/Ubuntu, I'd vote for Gentoo.

As long as you aren't using Software RAID as a boot device the installation is VERY straightforward and step by step.

I wouldn't try to write to an NTFS drive, I would use partition magic, some recommend acronis and resize a small 5-10GB partition and do a clean install of linux there. A second machine will greatly help especially if you cannot get networking up. It's fun to learn new things, so give it a try if you are curious. My goal was to completely replace my Windows based PVR box, with the equivilant Linux Apps. It was fairly easy and I got hooked on RTCW: Enemy Territory for a while. :beer:

Forgot, Start here

 

[Nothinman]

Seriously, can we get anymore excited about a machine that boots up and seeing command line. Ahh sweet sweet command line... *INIT 5* Noooooo... Come back, sweet monochrome coloring scheme... COME BACK...

My CLI is colored...

 

[TGS]

LIES!

*I know, I actually prefer the changes to cli with color. Makes finding things much easier*

COLOR IS FOR THE BIRDS :|

 

[Abzstrak]

Originally posted by: TGS

Originally posted by: nweaver


tbh, I do use both, they are tools to accomplish a task. I prefer the linux way of config files and init 3 to really free up resources.

Seriously, can we get anymore excited about a machine that boots up and seeing command line. Ahh sweet sweet command line... *INIT 5* Noooooo... Come back, sweet monochrome coloring scheme... COME BACK...

Some people recommend, Fedora (got some odd quirks), Debian/Ubuntu, I'd vote for Gentoo.

As long as you aren't using Software RAID as a boot device the installation is VERY straightforward and step by step.

I wouldn't try to write to an NTFS drive, I would use partition magic, some recommend acronis and resize a small 5-10GB partition and do a clean install of linux there. A second machine will greatly help especially if you cannot get networking up. It's fun to learn new things, so give it a try if you are curious. My goal was to completely replace my Windows based PVR box, with the equivilant Linux Apps. It was fairly easy and I got hooked on RTCW: Enemy Territory for a while. :beer:

Forgot, Start here

uhm, even using software raid for a boot device is pretty damn easy, espcially for a gentoo install..... takes like an extra 60 seconds?

 

[shud]

I am pretty sure you need an NFS partition to boot with most Linux distros. It can mount NTFS drives, just not boot from them.

Might be wrong though.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: shud
I am pretty sure you need an NFS partition to boot with most Linux distros. It can mount NTFS drives, just not boot from them.

Might be wrong though.

You don't need NFS to boot Linux.

 

[OffTopic1]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: shud
I am pretty sure you need an NFS partition to boot with most Linux distros. It can mount NTFS drives, just not boot from them.

Might be wrong though.

You don't need NFS to boot Linux.

You also need a degree in CS, unshaven, and no gf to use linux :roll:

 

[shud]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: shud
I am pretty sure you need an NFS partition to boot with most Linux distros. It can mount NTFS drives, just not boot from them.

Might be wrong though.

You don't need NFS to boot Linux.

Must be BSD then. I heard that somewhere.

 

[shud]

Originally posted by: OffTopic

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: shud
I am pretty sure you need an NFS partition to boot with most Linux distros. It can mount NTFS drives, just not boot from them.

Might be wrong though.

You don't need NFS to boot Linux.

You also need a degree in CS, unshaven, and no gf to use linux :roll:

MIS, check, check.

 

[Nothinman]

Must be BSD then. I heard that somewhere.

NFS stands for Network FileSystem, it's not required for anything.

 

[TGS]

Originally posted by: Abzstrak

uhm, even using software raid for a boot device is pretty damn easy, espcially for a gentoo install..... takes like an extra 60 seconds?

I suffered from another posters problem, of being able to create the device, install grub, and not be able to boot of the software raid device.

As for NFS, it's helpful when accessing storage,... across the network.

Though of course that doesn't mean it's required again...

Looking at EXT2 EXT3 for your /boot partition and maybe the same or reiser for larger tree directories.

From what I've heard people recommend EXT2-3 for /boot to get around possibly nasty bootup problems, along with most kernels have EXT2-3 already, opposed to reiser which can take extra fiddling.