What Ditro, etc.

friedpiggy

friedpiggy

Expert Member
Joined
Aug 6, 2005
Messages
1,709
Reaction score
1,273
Location
127.0.0.1
Ok so up till this point Ive only worked on MS OS's. Think its about time for all that to change. So I have a couple of questions.

1) What flavour would be reccomended as a good starting place for someone wanting to learn the ins and outs.
2) Any good tutorial sites out there with good tuts that can be downloaded and used offline
3) Driver sites. Last time i even tried installing Ubuntu I couldnt get half my gear to work due to a lack of drivers.

I Intend slapping in an additional hard drive in my desktop and just installing Linux on that and then boot it when I want.

Many thanks indeed.
 
Ubuntu is a good start. Really easy to install.

Just select your basic options and away you go. For drivers and stuff, they pretty much all available through the repositories, although I've had to custom compile a driver for my ATI graphics card and Compiz, coz the stock ATI driver doesn't like it. (Compiz is a cool "Window Manager" that creates some pretty mean effects, that kinda makes Aero look lame). For other drivers, google, or ask for help. A lot of WiFi devices now pick up out the box with Ubuntu.

I run Ubuntu in a Windows dominated environment without a care in the world. If you are after setting up very specific things, www.howtoforge.com is a decent place to start.

Don't expect everything to work like it does in Windows, coz it won't. It's not Windows. Expect to have a few moments of grief as you need to find a new way to do something. Typing documents etc is pretty straight forward, but the interface is slightly different. Email clients are slightly different as well.

I've used a lot of other Distro's, but I find Ubuntu the easiest from a maintenance point of view. The repositories sort out dependencies, and there is just so much stuff there. It's almost too simple.
 
Before you start, please read this.

Have fun! :D

Oh yes, I second the suggestion for ubuntu. I use Mint which is a great ubuntu-like OS, any advice you read for ubuntu applies to Mint too. Great distro for people new to linux.
 
My recommendation will also be Ubuntu.
I have used Fedora since it first came out and Red Hat before that. But this past weekend I finally decided to give Ubuntu a real chance and installed it. An immediate difference is that Fedora includes a lot more choice than Ubuntu. But that choice also mean confusion if you are new. With Fedora you do not get one app to do something. You get many. But as a new user to decide what to use is confusing. (Not that you do not have the choice in Ubuntu, but you need to manually install it afterwards). The menu structure in Ubuntu is also a lot cleaner.

I have also used Suse at work and will still recommend Ubuntu for a newby.

The other nice part is that Ubuntu is a 700mb download and Fedora is a 3+gb download.

I was very surprised that ALL my hardware works out of the box on Ubuntu, but the setup program/me did screw up with the installation of the boot sector (It might be because I have some exotic hardware for storage).

One other thing is that Fedora is very strict regarding the software that forms part of its distribution. It MUST be gpl licensed. That means that software like flash (even though it is free) is not distributed with the disto and must be manually installed. (Also mp3 and mpeg). Another reason why I would recommend Ubuntu for a newby.

If you like to be on the (b)leading edge of new software, then go for Fedora, as it uses a lot newer versions than Ubuntu, but with it comes a lot more issues as well. That means you might have to sort out problems as well. NOT recommended for a newby.

Anyway, this is my take on it with 3 days of Ubuntu experience behind me :D
 
if you want to learn to use Linux, go for Ubuntu. if you want to know what is really happening under the hood, do a Gentoo install. if you are not up for a challenge, stay away from gentoo!!

Google is your friend. I quite often get solutions on the Ubuntu forums.

rather than dual booting, just set up a virtual machine. I recommend VirtualBox; It allows you to take snapshots of your machine and roll back to them. Very useful if you are messing around with the system.

EDIT: you can get most distro's from you closest local mirror: ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.za/
 
Definitely would reccomend Ubuntu

Also recently took the plunge and haven't looked back. All my hardware works perfectly, except my farking DualPhone that is, and the amount of support available online is huge.

Ubuntu is very popular at the moment so it is very likely that someone has already been through any problems you might encounter and a thread with a solution will be out there somewhere.

Good luck and enjoy
 
I hate Ubuntu..... Sorry, just had to be the odd one out this time...

PCLinuxOS = * * * * * for beginners.
 
Ubuntu - Because sharing is caring... Or whatever ;) Only Linux I've used even if it was only for 3 days... Need my games, and dont like dual-boot
 
I have tried: RH, Mandrake, OpenSuse, SLED, Ubuntu and Kubuntu. Of these, Ubuntu has given me the best Linux experience and has remained installed on my PC for a year, which is the longest that I've stayed with one distro.

edit: have a look at DistroWatch's list of most-downloaded distros. This gives a good indication of distros which are satisfying users.
 
Last edited:
wezhira said:
mandriva or pclinuxos most people simply say ubuntu for they have not tried anything else personally ubuntu sucks

http://www.linuxnewbieguide.org/
Click to expand...

I have tried various flavours of mandriva, suse, fedora, debian, ubuntu, kubuntu and mint. I've stuck with mint, but would certainly recommend ubuntu to anyone looking to get started with linux.
 
ta for all the advice. Ive mucked about with an ubuntu cd once before and it was ok ish. not looking for a replacement for windows though. looking for an operating system
 
I'm a sucker for Fedora even though I hated it the first time I came into contact with it (That being said, I always install Debian as the master distro on all my systems).

No Ubuntu or it's derivatives has stayed on any of my systems for more than a month. For me it offers nothing more than Fedora for instance. And as for communities, I have found all sorts of Linux distros have very vibrant user forums to help with questions.

To give an indication, I have been using Linux for 99% of tasks for the last 4 years.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X