Linux OS's

[DSwain]

I just wanna know what some good Linux OS's are. I'm new to this, and I want to learn it, but I need an easy OS to use. I found ELX linux, but I'm having video problems with that. Any idea's?

[Parcival]

Mandrake 9.1 and SuSe 8.2 are currently said to be the easiest Linux distros. Redhat 9.0 is very popular, too, but I haven't had any experiences with it yet.

[APwrs]

I would recommend Mandrake 9.1. It has been built with ease-of-use and the desktop in mind, and once you've become familiar with it and are ready for more advanced things, it also has all the power of any other Linux. Plus, it's optimized for Pentium processors instead of 386 processors which makes it quite a bit more speedy.

[DSwain]

Well, I have Mandrake 9.1, so I'll see if I can get used to it. I just have a lot to learn about commands and certain things of linux. Also, I am not very good with drivers. I have an ASOUND 10/100 Fast Ethernet Card, and have drivers, but I have no idea how to make them work. But I'm getting a new mobo with LAN that's supported, so that will help. Thanks for your help.

[DSwain]

And another question- is it possible to get SuSE 8.2 ISO files? I never could figure it out from there site, too many files, and i wouldn't know which files to burn to which cd.

[Parcival]

I'm sorry, I can't find the SuSE ISO files anywhere either. I bought the distro so I don't know exactly how the FTP install works. However, a friend of mine installed the 8.0 version via FTP install and said it's easy. You just need to download a small software, boot it, have it configure your ethernet card to have your broadband internet access, pick the packages you wanna install, and the rest's being done automatically.

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

You can't download SuSE isos.

Their license restricts it. You can, IIRC, do an FTP install of it. They would like you to buy their distro to support their business. Personally I used to be against an idea like this, but now I realize There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch(TM). If I used SuSE, I would definitely buy it. I love FreeBSD, so I dropped $70 bucks on a FreeBSD 4.6.2 Toolbox set recently. Once FreeBSD 5.0 becomes the -STABLE release, I'll probably drop another $70 on that, just to support a cause I'm for.

[DJBanaan]

I have done a SuSE 8.1 install through FTP. It was just as easy as installing it from CD, the only thing is that it takes much longer and you need a broadband internet connection. Best thing is to start the install, select your packages and go to bed, wake up the next morning, et voila! :D
I installed it through FTP and went out to get the boxed version 2 days later.

[APwrs]

Just incase it matters to you, Mandrake 9.1 is newer than Suse 8.2. Personally, I prefer Mandrake, but if I was going to use something other than Mandrake, I would use Suse.

[DSwain]

Alright, then I'll probably use Mandrake then (or try to.) I like the idea of ISO files better than FTP installs, being that Linux can't seem to recoginize my network card, it probably wouldn't work anyway. Thanks for the help.

I may also buy eventually, when I really get an idea on how to operate it well. Besides, Linux distros are so much cheaper than MS products.

[scott_R]

And you get lot's of goodies to play with, too! :D

[APwrs]

Another little tid-bit of info that may interest you... Mandrake is supposed to support the widest variety of hardware of any Linux distro, so if you have a network card that you haven't been able to get working in Linux yet, you may have better luck with it in Mandrake.

[DSwain]

Sadly I've already tried Mandrake, and it does not support it. I already have a thread in the hardware asking about it. But other than that, yes all my other hardware has worked with mandrake.

[El_Cu_Guy]

SuSe has been seen by reviewers to have beaten out Mandrake. The current crop of software labeled for desktop use is top-notch. Also given questions about Mandrake's stability in the future those same reviewers see SuSE as more of a long term choice (as most average users probably won't switch distros every 2 seconds).

[DMR]

Originally posted by DSwain
Sadly I've already tried Mandrake, and it does not support it. I already have a thread in the hardware asking about it.Check that thread again, you've got mail.

;)

[Lemming]

Arklinux (http://www.arklinux.org) is one the the easiest distros I've seen so far, u even get a game of Tetris to play while installing it:D

[DSwain]

I'm not using Mandrake at the moment. I was also thinking about trying ark, but I have found it isn't maintained anymore. But maybe I will give it a try.

[xxispawn01xx]

TRUST ME MAN you want to go with Redhat Linux 9 from http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/rh9.html the reason for this is, Redhat is everything Mandrake is plus 10x more, you have to understand most jobs will ask for Redhat and most major servers are run on Redhat, it also has great hardware support, when you get more advance u may look at other dstros such as building a linux kernel from scratch!

[Brocket99]

My ISP uses Mandrake.
I thought they'd be gurufied tech heads running 2.5.x.x kernels and running the servers in Machine Code, (machine code overdoes it, but eh? what the hell) never looking at a GUI.
But, nope they use Mandrake.

What kind of Certification is required to administrate a Mandrake ISP or buisiness network?

what do i do when i'm the one writing the patches to the software they use? lol.

[DSwain]

Well, I guess I'll try RH9, I was kind of afraid of it, I always thought it was for much more advanced users. But anything is worth a try.

[APwrs]

I find the comment that Red Hat is Mandrake plus 10 times more rather interesting. It is (or at least has been) generally believed that Mandrake is a lot like Red Hat extra, having all the good of Red Hat plus extra, because Mandrake used to be directly based on Red Hat with extra things thrown in. Of course now however they're not solely based on Red Hat anymore, they're much more of their own individual distro with enhancements over Red Hat that would cause them to not follow Red Hat too closely any more (such as being optimized for i586 instead of i386) and this is especially true of Mandrake 9.1. But, as long as what you have works for you and as long as it's Linux, then to each his own.

[xxispawn01xx]

that is very true, but you have to know that mandrake has the best stuff for newbies i mean i really want it, but redhat is used more often and business and has more potential for power(i didnt really install mandrake because i'm too lazy to run to my room to grab the cds) :)

[DSwain]

Haha, nice. Well I'm using mandrake 9.1 now. I love it, besides the fact I can't get my network card working. I don't know how to install drivers or anything like that, so it makes it hard. And, nobody has replied to my network/hardware threads about it. But oh well, I'll get a new network card eventually. Thanks for the help.

[RaGe2012]

I'm currently using Red Hat 9 and it does video very nicely IMHO and it supports alot of hardware out of the box.

I will be truthful though, Red Hat 9 has a few small quirky bugs that I have encountered, but its nothing you cant work around without too much trouble.

[SolKarma]

Knoppix installs into RAM off a CD-ROM. There's no need to muck up your hard drive until you learn all about Linux.

Based upon my analysis from data at Distrowatch.com. Here are the global market share figures based upon all countries that have Internet usage penetration of 3%.

TOP Distros

14.1% Red Hat
14.0% Mandrake
13.5% Yoper
11.3% Gentoo

TIER TWO Distros

8.4% Debian
8.2% Knoppix
6.8% Slackware
6.7% SuSE

The Rest

4.9% Lycoris
3.6% Xandros
3.1% Sorcerer
3.1% Vector
2.2% Vine

[Brocket99]

"I'm not using Mandrake at the moment. I was also thinking about trying ark, but I have found it isn't maintained anymore. But maybe I will give it a try."

damn man! unmaintained? it's in "Alpha" stage, developer stage. It's as maintained as can be. I get 100+ email per day from their dev lists. i'm too lazy too unsubscribe :0/.

it's came a long way from what i read in the emails. twas my first distro btw, just too 'easy' for me cause i wanted a challenge. this distro will be up with the best soon (was very user friendly).

Your stats were pretty cool, poster above me :rolleyes:
anybody have any idea how many people single boot linux? no windows at all?
i remember reading somewhere that that number is pretty low....

[mage492]

Gee, so many interesting things to reply to! Where should I start...?

Well, I single boot, but I have multiple computers, so I guess that doesn't count, does it?

Knoppix? I like Morphix better, personally (light GUI being the best, of course!)

RH vs. Mandrake? After using M9.1 and RH9 (which is currently on one of the family boxes), my opinion is that RH has a more "business-like" feel to it, while Mandrake seems more informal. A big part of that is what wm you use (I like Gnome better than KDE, but IMHO Ice is better than both.), but all else being equal, that's how it stacks up. That's probably one of the reasons RH is more commonly used in businesses.

[DSwain]

Ok, so I may have been wrong about the unmaintained Ark, sorry, I knew one i read near it on the linux.org site was not maintained. But yeah, maybe i'll try some of those other distros another time. For now, Mandrake is fine for me.

[xxispawn01xx]

same reason here mandrake financial future is not looking too well, and they rip off of redhat so not a good thing its not as stable as well

[DSwain]

Well, may I ask in what ways do they rip off of RedHat? I don't exactly know what they are.

[APwrs]

Mandrake doesn't rip-off Red Hat. If you were to say that Mandrake ripped-off Red Hat, then you would have to turn around and also say that Red Hat "ripped-off" KDE, Gnome, and the Linux kernel. In other words, Mandrake doesn't rip-off anyone.

Mandrake is perfectly stable. When they build a kernel for a new distro, they give it extra patches specifically for greater stability. There is nothing wrong with Mandrake's stability.

There is something I really, really don't like about Red Hat 9 though: Its threading problem. The other major distros (Mandrake and Suse I know for sure, the other I'm not completely certain about but I bet it applies to them as well) use pthread for their threading techniques. Most software is based around using pthreads as their threads. However, Red Hat 9 has switched from using pthreads to POSIX-style threads, and this means three things:

1) Red Hat 9 isn't all that compatible, in a grand sense, with the other distros out there.
2) Some software, if you want it to work on Red Hat 9, has to be compiled specially and differently than normal, so that it'll work with Red Hat's POSIX-style threads.
3) A lot of software is no longer compatible with Red Hat 9 as a result of all this.

Not only does this introduce extra unneeded splintering in the Linux world, but it also creates an environment that Linux is supposed to take care of: Vendor lock-in. If a company uses Mandrake or Suse or something else, they can use whatever software they can get their hands on. However, if they use Red Hat 9, then they can only use software specifically compatible with the way Red Hat handles threads.

I contacted Mandrake and Suse and Red Hat for their comments on this situation. I never received a response from Mandrake or Red Hat, however I did receive a response from Suse. They told me that they didn't want to see even greater splintering and incompatibility in the Linux world, and that Suse would be sticking to the standard pthread threading scheme.

[bwkaz]

APwrs -- couple of things. First, pthreads are POSIX threads. What RedHat is doing is a new thread-local storage mechanism that old C libraries and all (unpatched) 2.4 kernels don't support.

Second, RedHat is merely a little ahead of the game. Sure, it sucks for people trying to write programs for it (well actually, it doesn't, all you need to do is get its kernel and glibc, set them up for each other, and compile your program in that environment too, or just distribute source-only), but if RedHat didn't do it now, everyone would be having these issues in a couple months when kernel 2.6 is released, and when people start moving over to glibc 2.3 in bigger numbers (you need both a new kernel and a new glibc to have this TLS support).