wanted:considered opinions

[marcbachman]

I spent 156.00 on corel Linux. After 9 months of posting to their newsgroups and watching them largely ignored, I have decided to start over. I need to learn some skills that will qualify me for a job someday, I hope, in the IT field, or something. I was thinking that since Red Hat is the overwhelming favorite, why not go with the flow ( like I did when I bought M$ ) and then I read this post somewhere about Red Hat and Mandrake having their own compilers so that you can't steal their stuff, or something. At my local college they're teaching SCO unix and they are using Solaris on their Sun Servers, so I thought, why not start over again and buy a Unix OS and see if I can run Linux apps on it and maybe a KDE desktop but then I read ( in Unixworld ) that even Unix users are thinking that the commercial market is moving to Linux or FreeBSD. So I feel like a little ant looking up at a bunch of skyscrapers and wondering, Which way do I go?

[X_console]

I recommend that you learn Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris. These three operating systems can be obtained for free. Knowing how to use any form of UNIX will allow you to quickly learn how to use another version of UNIX. The only thing that mainly differs are administrative commands and the structure of the system, and it's easy enough to pick up.

[milanuk]

Originally posted by marcbachman:
<STRONG>I spent 156.00 on corel Linux. After 9 months of posting to their newsgroups and watching them largely ignored, I have decided to start over. I need to learn some skills that will qualify me for a job someday, I hope, in the IT field, or something. I was thinking that since Red Hat is the overwhelming favorite, why not go with the flow ( like I did when I bought M$ ) and then I read this post somewhere about Red Hat and Mandrake having their own compilers so that you can't steal their stuff, or something. </STRONG>

Bull. You need to read a little better than that, or you are going to have a tough row to hoe in the world. RedHat introduced a 'beta' quality compiler in their last release, and while it may not be 100% compatible w/ previous versions (or later ones, as it turns out), nothing stops you from yanking it and sticking a different version, older or newer, in there. RedHat has a tendency do things like that to kind of 'nudge' the community forward a bit, for better or worse, and are usually villianized for it, regardless of whether it was justified/needed or not. It's their distro, and their perogative.

<STRONG>At my local college they're teaching SCO unix and they are using Solaris on their Sun Servers, so I thought, why not start over again and buy a Unix OS and see if I can run Linux apps on it and maybe a KDE desktop but then I read ( in Unixworld ) that even Unix users are thinking that the commercial market is moving to Linux or FreeBSD. So I feel like a little ant looking up at a bunch of skyscrapers and wondering, Which way do I go?</STRONG>

Try Linux, try FreeBSD, then if you still feel the need, try the low cost/free version of Sun Solaris (IIRC, they charge for the media, including the books, which is still more than most Linux distros.)

As far as which distro to try, there is a distro NHF, and many, many threads on the board on the (perceived) pluses and minuses of the various distros. Read up.

Monte

[bdl]

Originally posted by marcbachman:
<STRONG>I spent 156.00 on corel Linux. </STRONG>

YOU DID WHAT?!?

:eek:

[burzurk]

i saw corel linux in the "bargain software" bin over at micro center today for about 35.00! :D

[bluebell]

My advice would be that if your goal is to one day work with computers, to maybe go to the college and take some courses rather than just throwing yourself at running any particular OS on your own machine. You could get a feel for Solaris at the college before deciding to use it yourself.

:)

[TaeShadow]

Originally posted by marcbachman:
<STRONG>I spent 156.00 on corel Linux. </STRONG>

That was a mistake. I downloaded Corel for free. Even that wasn't worth it, though...

[marcbachman]

OK, to clarify, I spent the money on the Corel Office 2000 without ever seeing it working anywhere. I hear it does. Anyway, what I'm really wondering is which distro might have the best claim to compliance with Open Source goals, if there is such a thing, and the distro that may have claims to retaining the greatest degree of universality, compatibility, adaptibility, that sort of thing. And thanks, I will read the NHF and see if it answers some of these questions.

[Keyser Soze]

there is much you can learn without much effort, and little to no cost. While it is true that Corel might not be to everyone's tastes(definately not mine, but thats not the point) any linux you learn is a major inroad to every other distro of linux/unix. Drop me an address in my email and I will send you mandrake or redhat on cd's for free. And you might look at star office, it's compatible with office 95/97/2000 and macintosh, hell, virtually every document type there is. And it is free to download. if you require the cd (meaning you don't have the bandwidth) let me know, i can send you a copy of that too. The thing is to stop spending money now. Every bit of information you require is free on the net(if you have the time to search it...wish i had more time). As to careers, linux can get you a well paying job, put it in combination with something else(I have novell and mcp certs..waste that microsoft certs are...)the learning curve is only at the beginning, have a little patience, read, install a whole lot of times, ask for help here when you need it, and good luck. You can go very far indeed if you apply any amount of effort at all to the learning process. I would also suggest using a newbie version, get you started with some positive successes, then get into the command line interface and editors and such.(No emacs vs. Vi war for me, thanks anyway.) :)