Battle of the newbie distros

[^WarHawk]

Mandrake or RedHat?
Which one is the best for the complete Linux newbie? Or maybe there is another distro I don't know about.

[Super Bakemono]

Mandrake, from what I hear...

[cyan]

SuSE. Just as easy as Mandrake, but faster and less buggy.

Man, I've been talking about them a lot lately. You'd think I'm on the payroll or something.

[Tyr-7BE]

There's absolutely no difference. Mandrake IS RedHat. It's just RedHat with a hacked install scripts to change an alias here and there so you can get colour in your eterm and mount your windows partition right off the bat. Mandrake = extra features = extra bloat = extra bugs. Red Hat = base of Mandrake. Drake holds your hand through everything while Red Hat helps you learn a little. Both are quite easy to learn compared to some other distros out there. I tried RH 6.2 and Drake 7.2 and I liked them both...was very satisfied with both of them. Then I went to Debian for a more advanced experience.

In summation, there's no difference between the two. Well, Mandrake's pictures are a little more fruity, but that's it. Compare RH to SuSE and maybe you have some sort of thread...but this is just picking different colours of apples.

[metalgeek]

It really dpeends on what your going to do.
I use mandrake for my regular use box, and redhat for my web/email server.
I find mandrake generally has newer stuff, and is mainly focursed on KDE which I use personally. (and I'd suggest upgrading to kde 2.1 mmmm it's nice)

[hungarian]

Well, that's an easy question:

Suse 7.1 as Cyan sad, faster, more stable and less buggy ! I used all three drake 7.2 red hat 7 and suse 7 and 7.1, suse won easily for me.

SPOT ON !
:)

[bdg1983]

SuSE 7.1 !

It's less buggy than Red Hat and it's very good in auto detecting hardware.

[mychl]

I agree... SuSE 7.1 is better by far

[fallenang3l]

Grrr.... SuSe FTP is confusing. Can anyone give a newbie a hand where to download 7.1?

[Tyr-7BE]

Originally posted by fallenang3l:
Grrr.... SuSe FTP is confusing. Can anyone give a newbie a hand where to download 7.1?

Hehehe...AFAIK, you can't :D SuSE only offers an evaluation version to those who don't buy it. If you want to get the full 7.1, you need to purchase the boxed CD. I would have tried SuSE if not for that detail...seems to me to be a real financial kick in the teeth.
And Mandrake only has newer stuff if you download RH 6.2 and Drake 7.2...I don't know if you realize this, but things DO get upgraded when the version changes. RH 7.1 will have newer stuff than Drake 7.2.
As for the original question, read the Distro NHF and do a little bit of reading on all systems. I used drake and I liked it. I used RH and I liked it. I hear good things about SuSE. But I recommend Progeny or Libranet...Debian-based user-friendly...now THOSE are distros :D

[fallenang3l]

I see, does anyone here have the full version? If you do, could you make an iso of the CDs so that I can D/L it over ICQ (I have a fat pipe - 1.5 Mbit DSL)?

[tallulah]

Mandrake. It has more hardware support than does Red Hat. I found it to support more hardware than SuSE as well.

[Trigger-X]

Basically from what I hear, all Linux distro's are good from what I see it, even know I have only used Mandrake 7.2, To some it up, Linx Rulez! :D

[Dangerboy]

Like there is any question!!! Mandrake is the best distro period.

Unless, of course, you like to spend hours reading books, and enjoy spending all your brain power trying to remember command line commands. If you really like to modify text files to tweak your system, and you have no life, then you might want to go with something else.

If you want to stick the disk in, answer a few simple questions, and have it install everything, without reading ten 500 page volumes, then Mandrake is for you. If you lack self-confidence and you need to read ten 500 page volumes to make yourself feel like a bigger person, than by all means go with some other distro.

If you like sunshine, and have the ability to get hot dates, you might want to go with Mandrake. ;) This will allow you time to hang out with beautiful women, and maybe even get a successful side business going!

Caution: The writer of this opinion may not entirely agree with the above expressed opinion, due to nice weather and lack of time to try every distro out there. The writer has not tried Suse or Debian yet. Mandrake is so nice he probably never will!

[fallenang3l]

I like mandrake because:
- Nice software bundle and books
- Easy to install
- Easy to use
- Easy to configure

I don't like it because:
- I can't strech the picture using my monitor controls so that it will cover entire screen
- Modem doesn't work in default kernel 2.2.17
- After upgrade to 2.4.2, auto-mounter and NFS don't work anymore, but modem does work
- KDE 2 beta bites
- Couldn't install Aureal 2 soundcard, but now I pulled sb live! from my old computer so sound would probably work

The bad outweighted the good for me so Mandrake went down the crapper. I am waiting for Drake 8 because I'm confident that all my stuff will work there correctly. Until then, it's Windows point'n'click nirvana for me, which I happen to like a lot.

PS. Does anyone have a clue when Drake 8 is gonna be officially a stable release?

[cyan]

Originally posted by fallenang3l:
PS. Does anyone have a clue when Drake 8 is gonna be officially a stable release?

When it's ready. ;)

From what I know, it shouldn't be too long. They're already on beta 2, so things are advancing quickly.