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What's A Good Starter Linux distro?
Posted by
Hemos
on Sun Aug 12, 2001 11:49 PM
from the start-the-flame-wars-early dept.
from the start-the-flame-wars-early dept.
alen writes "I've been working with NT for a year now, and I'm getting really tired of it. So I finally decided to learn Linux, after a year of putting it off. I've got an old P2 266 that I'm going to use. Now the next question is what distro do I get?
What's a good starter version? I'm just looking to get the feel of it and to play around a little. " This question gets asked periodically - it's always good to hear have a lively discussion about it - I love my Debian but have heard that Mandrake is a good starter distro.
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What's A Good Starter Linux distro?
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The unanswerable question (Score:5, Interesting)
You're probably saying already, that doesnt make sense. Let me ellaborate.
RedHat [redhat.com]/Mandrake [linux-mandrake.com] are both very similar. Often, one user of one hates the other. RedHat people will say 'RedHat is more powerful and stable' and Mandrake people will say 'Mandrakes easier and less buggy'. As you can see, these statements conflict. Overall however, there very similar, and either one is fine. They're both based on RPM, and they both can be used for virtually anything.
Then there's the Slackware [slackware.org]/Debian [debian.org] crowd. They tend to stick together, but they have differant views none the less. They take pride in their 'elite feeling', in that only people with 'skill' can use and know these distributions. They're typically harder for the novice, yet easier for the seasoned Linux user. Debian has arguably the best package management, and Slackware has probably the most loyal user base ever formed. These are top choices for someone experienced in Linux. Additionally, their is Progney [progney.com], a commercial debian-based distribution that makes using Debian easier, and provides commercial support. This is quickly becoming a good alternative.
Finally, there's the SuSE [suse.com] and other crowd. They are less known and used, and usually appeal to a specific crowd. SuSE for instance, is very popular among non-US users. These are also generally good, especially if you have really specific needs.
Now, which crowd is right? None. Which is the best? None. It depends on what you want, what crowd you fit in. If you're very technical, You fall into the Slackware/Debian crowd. If you like what's popular, easy, and commercial, you'll like hanging out with the RedHat/Mandrake folks. And if you like something very specific, or a close community, you'll like SuSE or something else.
But what is right for you? That's up to you. Research all of them, Try a few, Play with them. It's like shopping for a car. Some like Chevy, Some like Ford, and some are fine with a Honda. And some just dont care.
What I use depends on the target machine. If it's a server, I'll go with either RedHat or Debian. If it's a workstation, RedHat. Firewall, I use OpenBSD or Debian. But like I said in the beginning, my opinion, or anyone else's, means nothing. Good luck.
Why are you looking at Linux? (Score:3, Insightful)
If it's because of a moral/open source issue, then realistically you have to go with Debian, but you can expect to encounter an almost vertical learning curve at the start - it's not reknown as an "easy to install" distro. So much so in-fact that I would *never* recommend a user with no *nix experience install it until they had played with another distro for a while - that's the beauty of Linux of course, you can play around until you find what suits you best.
If you are getting into Linux because you are going to be using it in a corporate environment, then you probably want Red Hat; it (or a derivative) is used on perhaps 90% of systems with "Linux Inside" and corporates seem to like Red Hat best, but check your intended first... Red Hat's installer has leapt forward recently and it's a very nice distro for support because it has the largest user base abd has generally given me the least grief.
Finally, if you are coming from Windows and are just curious to see what the fuss is about, then checkout S.u.S.E. and/or Mandrake. The former has an "everything including several kitchen sinks" approach and the latter is perhaps the best at making Windows users feel at home and has a very nice installer.
Finally. Play. There are lots of distros; the above are just the ones I know enough of the current specifics to support a new user on. Once you know your way around; install another distro. Play. Install another distro. Play...
best way to learn (Score:4, Insightful)
- The installation
- The management system (often related to the installer)
- Room for going out of the management system
Overall, I was most impressed by Redhat's installer. Of all the machines I installed on it caused the least amount of problems. Mandrake in some ways looked a little slicker, but when it had much less control, and ultimately annoyed me enough not to go further. Debian's installation lacks a lot. I beleive this is partly because the installation is less important with Debian (and I've gathered the same with Mandrake?)Although there is a certain amount of simplicity involved with distros based on tarballs (i.e. slackware) with the number of applications it can be rather time consuming after awhile. As I mentioned, I used redhat for a long time, and I found the RPM system to be rather frustrating at times. However, for a beginner you probably won't notice the some difficulties that might come up, as well as user friendlier front ends like ximian's installer.
Overall, really the key to getting used to Linux is: (a) patience (b) an ethusiasm for some punishment for great reward later in life [sounds like a religion..] (c) you need to make sure you sit down and spend a lot of time on the linux box - its a matter of needing to do things, and having no choice but to research how they are done [for instance, you 'need' to burn a CD, and you have to figure out how to set up ATAPI cdrom writers up] (d) an O'Reilly book by your side (I still have not found a good substite) - yeah, its basically what you'll find online for free, but unless you have another computer around, certain things could be difficult to lookup, and paper is sometimes better.
Apples and Oranges... (Score:3, Interesting)
Each distro has its major features, enhancements, and drawbacks.
I suggest you get 2-5 distros together, for a new user, I suggest Mandrake, Redhat, Debian, Suse, and possibly Slackware as good comparisons.
Try each for a period of time, then see which one you like best after you try them all.
What is hard about Debian? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been using Linux and Debian long enough that it is probably just a case of I forgot what I learned, but could those of you with more fresh memories of difficulties shed some light for me?
There is one difficulty that has long been a problem with (I think) any Linux setup -- getting it to work with your hardware; although that is changing more and more. But I see that as a distribution-neutral problem.
When it comes to having well integrated software, and convenience in upgrading packages when you want new features or bug fixes, I have had far better luck with Debian than I ever do with Red Hat or Mandrake. The one version of Mandrake that I tried (7.2) was laughably broken. KDE settings would be lost without warning, their upgrade utility was completely worthless, because it did no dependency tracking for me, and several of the packages the "friendly GUI" listed would fail to be on the servers when I tried to download them. It was all I could do to keep the thing from spontaneously combusting. I gave up and switched my wife to Debian 8)
Maybe I'm just using my system differently than others? One suspicion I have is that maybe most newbies just install from CD, and then leave it alone most of the time. Therefore they don't expect to install new software they read about on slashdot or freshmeat, or upgrade to the latest version of qt for anti-aliased fonts, etc.
Anyone have any input that could help me out here? I never know what to tell potential newbies, because I always want to recommend Debian, but I know I've heard lots of people say that's a bad idea.
Give Mandrake a go (Score:5, Informative)
Gives you lots of GUI configuration help.
All in all it is a nice beginner distro. As you learn more you can move away from the GUI configuration and do it by hand. Then latter on, if you want to keep learning more you can start setting up the more expert distos like Slackware, of Linux from Scratch.
Whatever you decide to do, Mandrake is certainly nice - hell my sister and Mother in Law both manage to use it everyday, without problems.
Maybe OT, but how about Cygwin? (Score:3, Informative)
So I installed the Cygwin tools. Recently I upgraded them to the latest versions, including XFree86. Wow, do they ROCK. Most of the CLI tools I"m used to from Linux (BASH, SSH, man, info etc) where there. XFree86 defaulted to twm, but I downloaded the IceWM sources and compiled it with NO CHANGES WHATSOEVER and it works perfectly. Some configuration changes were necessary in some of the window manager files to get them working just so (in particular XTERM defaults to the current SHELL environment variable which normally under NT is set to cmd.com; changing the menus to xterm -e "/bin/bash" does the trick).
So far all the Linux sources I've downloaded have configured and compiled without any fuss.
If you aren't doing anything with the Linux kernel and you don't need a Linux desktop, then Cygwin on NT or 2000 may be a good way to get access to the user tools you get under Linux.
Try Several (Score:5, Informative)
Why restrict yourself to one distribution, particularly if you're going to start out by installing on an older computer? One of the best things about Linux is that you can get distributions dirt cheap. Go to a place like Linux Mall [linuxmall.com] and get a bunch. You can even get multi-disk sets containing several distributions packaged together specifically so you can try out different ones and pick your favorite. Of course if you have a fast network connection and a CD burner, you could even download the ISO images and burn them yourself instead of paying $2 per CD. If you want, you can set up your partition scheme with a separate /home directory that doesn't get reformatted with each new distribution so that your settings are preserved from one distribution to another.
The big message, though, is not to take our word for which distro is best for you; find out for yourself. But don't forget to pay full price for the one you decide you like after you've made your decision. You'll get manuals, support, and help keep the maker of your chosen distro in business so that you can keep using it in the future.
Learning Linux has gotten a bit easier (Score:5, Informative)
From my experience the most frustrating part of learning Linux is getting all or most of a computer's hardware to work properly. For a long time I had no sound card that Linux supported. Fortunately, hardware support and automatic detection has improved tremendously. Now many ethernet cards, video cards, and sound cards are automatically detected by various Linux installs. CD-ROMS are almost always compatible with standard IDE and SCSI drivers. I believe that new users to Linux should be focusing on learning to install software, use popular software, and learn his/her way around a shell. Learning Linux shouldn't be mostly about learning how to install Linux, and this is where a few distributions have made great progress.
As your first distribution, I would recommend Mandrake. I have been a Red Hat user since my first install (and administering Red Hat based Cobalt servers). Red Hat's install (both graphical and text based) are reasonable for a new user, but they don't explain things as thoroughly as Mandrake. I installed Mandrake a few times and was fairly impressed with the installer and explanation, but it's a little too annoying to non-newbies. However, a new user simply wanting to toy with Linux would probably be best served by starting out with Mandrake.
Mandrake is nice that they are a download-friendly distribution. No other distribution is as easy to find in downloadable iso form. Yes, Red Hat offers it, but they promote their pay package far more than Mandrake does..companies like making it no-so-obvious that they can get it for free. I can't blame them. Also, Debian offers downloads, but their website isn't as easy to navigate and I'd hardly consider Debian a newbie-friendly install. Visit the mirror list [linux-mandrake.com] for mandrake to download the install isos. There are two iso images to burn to cd-rom using common software like Easy CD Creator. If interested in Redhat, the mirror list [redhat.com] offers a variety of sites to find both RPM files (for individual software install) and iso images.
However, buying a boxed set may be worthwhile for a new user. No need for big downloads, a cd-writer, and figuring out how to install. These include support and an installation manual.
I find computer books extremely helpful in learning a new operating system or programming language. Yes, website and forums are available, but a book is generally arranged quite well for new users. My first book was "Red Hat Linux Unleashed", that huge orange book. It included Red Hat 5.2 (though I already had 5.1 installed by that time), and had a few chapters on installation. Then, as I needed a reference or wanted to learn about setting up new services, I just read through the appropriate chapter. Though many disagree, I find it most helpful to have a large comprehensive book that covers all topics lightly to give a user a start. From there many websites provide the detailed information required to complete a task. I found the how-tos helpful in most cases.
So, in short, get Mandrake (or possibly Red Hat), get a good book or two (buy from a bookstore to be able to flip through it and see if it seems right, while also looking online to find reviews). Once you get the feel of using Linux a bit - take a look at other distributions (Progeny is a nice entry into the Debian world, for example).
Good luck.
WinLinux (Score:3, Interesting)
When I got started, I went with Debian (still a 1.x version; Slackware (a 6.x version) and Red Hat (a 5.x version). Having zero experience outside Windows these were fairly harrowing (esp deb and slack) but I got through it and read a LOT (sidenote: if your local library is any good, they'll have some decent books on linux in general, check out as many as you can and READ THEM ALL). Depending on the degree of technical competence and interest I recommmend different things. To my NT admin friends who want serious stuff and know their hardware back and forth, I tell them to go with deb, slack or a BSD. My wife, on the other hand, who just wants word processing, email, and web surfing on a box that doesn't blue screen every 20 minutes I went the Mandrake route, and my brother wanted more multimedia support so I pointed him to SuSE. I have changed "favorite" distros so many times I've lost count, all that matters is that you find one you're comfortable with, which only comes about by experimentation.
Here's what I did (Score:3, Interesting)
Debian - this was easily the toughest of them all. Text-based installer, questions I didn't know how to answer (why does it want me to become a USENET server?), etc, etc. But it finally ran, and being able to "apt-get" is amazingly cool.
Corel - I know I'll get flamed for this, and it DOES have disads. But it installed flawlessly on my computer, and seemed to work pretty well. On the plus side it acts a lot like windows, and installing software uses a variant of apt-get (which Corel is based on). I use it at home. On the downside, it's not nearly as supported as, say, Red Hat, so you need a lot more hand-holding. But I heartily recommend it.
Red Hat. I downloaded 7.1, and it had a great installer. The good side is that it's commonly considered the standard, so FAQs and programs are built specifically for it. On the down side, all the trojans and the like are built for it too. The problem I ran into is that applications stopped working for no apparent reason (even with re-installing from scratch) and Usenet didn't offer any solutions.
Mandrake - amazingly well put together. The installer was smooth as silk, everything looked and acted great, pretty sweet. I believe it's based on Red Hat, so take the pluses and minuses from that.
Overall - Any of them will work. Someone else suggested doing what I did, and I concur - buy or download all of them (and just go to linuxberg/linuxburg/linuxville and download the debian image- it took half an hour to figure out how to use debian's vaunted smart-installer, and then it didn't work. Get the ISO image), and try each one on your machine. I'd almost say to try installing them in this order - Corel, Debian, Red Hat, Mandrake. See how you like each one. Try installing a few programs. See what you think and once you're done, make sure to secure it. Keep it off the network until you have (if you can, since you'll be downloading stuff to patch it). In that part Debian has the advantage, due to "apt-get update", which will update all the packages, and I believe install all the security patches. But you still need to secure the thing, look at Bastille.
And let Slashdot know what you went with, and why. If it gets posted, it'll make an interesting followup.
My 2 chips (Score:5, Informative)
Using Slack will teach you how things are done, and it will teach you what not to do. You will spend a lot of time doing menial admin tasks. Slack doesn't even rotate your logs, so you'll have to do that yourself!
After you've mastered Slack, move on to something that's well maintained and stable; i.e. Debian or Red Hat Linux. Forget Mandrake. All of my friends who've used it have found it to be less stable than Red Hat. Noticing that a Linux distro isn't stable is terrible, and frustrating. Red Hat or Debian will be blissful in comparison to Slack, and you will love them for the rest of your days. Plus, most all of the things you learned from Slack will still apply.
Choosing the best Linux distro for You (Score:5, Informative)
DukeOfURL wrote this helpful article in choosing the best Linux distribution for your skill level, with comparisons of Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced distributions. They highly recommend Mandrake Linux for beginners, and I would tend to agree.
before you install, research your hardware (Score:5, Insightful)
Once you have that down, then figure out which distribution to use and make sure that it has a kernel that supports your hardware.
I have been using Mandrake for some time and it has been my favorite.
-Kevin
Being a linux newbie myself... (Score:3, Informative)
I have tried redhat 7.1 and mandrake 7.2 and I had a sound card I was never able to get working. Mandrake 8 found and configured it the first time(I did'nt even know KDE had a startup sound before).
I will admit that all the guis can make it a little to easy to set up services though. They can be a crutch and I try hard to learn to set stuff up by hand first using the gui as a last resort and trying to figure out what they did later when I can.
I really do want to learn to compile the kernel by hand one of these days especially because mandrake 8 will not install on my laptop at all(even in text mode). mandrake 7.2 did but I was never able to get my cheap ass nic to work.
But like I said I'm no expert and I use linux for work (SQl, perl, webdev) everyday.
other architectures. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm assuming, due to the NT postion of the submission, that you're looking for a decent distro for the x86 platform.
However, if you have an extra PPC machine kicking around somewhere, i would suggest getting a copy of Yellow Dog Linux 2.0. I just can't say enough great things about this one; smooth install, good package tools, works great by default. Check it out if you get a chance.
Anyone else have suggestions for good Sparc or Alpha distros?
--saintWhat's a good car to buy? (Score:3, Funny)
What a fun question. (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been right in the thick of this lately, converting my 7-computer home (macs, linux, windows) into a 100% Linux home. My low-end computer is a 75 mhz 486 laptop with 4 megs of RAM, my high-end is a 750 mhz P3 with 192 megs of RAM. Here are my thoughts after getting into it with a lot of distros.
Red Hat is the default most new users would pick. As BigBlockMopar said in another post, it's what most howtos and guides assume you're using. They have marketshare, they have a GUI installer, they're relatively stable. They also don't invoke a die-hard following much anymore, probably because of stunts like the non-compatible gcc compiler included in the most recent releases. I also agree with BigBlockMopar that the .0 releases suck. His suggestion to stick with 6.2 and patch it, or wait for 7.2, that's good advice. I loooooveed 6.2 and 5.2.
Mandrake is clearly targeting the Windows-refugees. Their installer is slick, it detects even obscure hardware for you, it sets up a nice-looking GUI, lots of point-and-click tools. It also has a security setup which I love -- you can turn on a small firewall, set security to "paranoid" and really protect your machine. But Mandrake's 8.0 is like Red Hat's 7.0 -- buggy. Their graphical RPM tool will lock up if it can't do passive FTP -- it doesn't appear to time out or have any code to fail gracefully. The AbiWord fonts completely screwed up the 8.0 release, some text is almost unreadable. The TuxRacer game will die if you use KDE. But the community is great. It's the only place you can go, say "I love how Windows does this" and not get flamed. People are really friendly. 8.1 should be a delicious release if they squeeze in gcc 3.0 and X-Windows 4.1.
Debian is great because of apt-get. It lets you install just a very core Linux setup, and then add bits & pieces safely, as needed. But the installer is painful -- one install literally took about 6 hours, because there is a whole LOT of detail in there. You can switch packages on and off at a very granular level. Didn't help that during the video card part of the install, it locked up. But I still like this distro for one big reason: it will install on my lame old 486 laptop with almost no RAM. It's a miracle I can shoehorn anything onto that machine, and Debian does it. Debian is usually only downloaded, they don't much sell CDs. Debian is run by volunteers, so the system really works well, people put TLC into the bits they help with. But that also means packages fall behind if the maintainer is busy or loses interest, and it isn't really a mainstream consumer product. Progeny is a commercial version of Debian that is more up to date.
Small Linux is another good Linux for old old computers. It comes on 2 floppy disks for install, and you can run off a disk if you wish. I tried to copy it to my 486 hard drive, but it got too complicated and I bailed for Debian.
Here are three that I don't use (although I used to play with Slackware). First, Slackware's package tool isn't really a package tool. It doesn't resolve dependencies. I'm fairly good at Linux, but I still consider Slackware too advanced for me. It is the most up-to-date Linux release right now though. Second, I haven't tried SuSe, although I've lusted after it a little in the stores. It's a good, big distribution, lots of apps. Nice and graphical. But it also needs a lot of RAM -- I think 64 megs was the recommended base. This will be best on modern, fast machines, I think. Third, I don't use Caldera because their new license don't allow users to freely install Linux on multiple machines. More money for them, which is good (Linux vendors need to survive), but I don't use them because of it.
Lastly, some advice in general: if you're going to be installing on older machines, remember to AVOID using Gnome or KDE. Install them to get their apps, but then also install IceWM or WindowMaker, and use those instead. IceWM runs apps from other window managers really well, and it's responsive. It's what I'll be using on my 486 laptop when I get it upgraded to 20 megs of RAM.
Depends on your needs. (Score:5, Informative)
Mandrake is the Mac of Linux
Redhat is the MS of Linux
Slackware is the UNIX of Linux
Debian is the Linux of Linux.
Red Hat != Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
Red Hat might have the best selling and/or most popular distribution, but they're not Microsoft-like an any meaningful way. In fact, they're one of the most -- if not the #1 -- Free Software-friendly commercial distributions. All of the software they write is released under the GPL, and with the sole exception of Netscape 4.7x, the distro includes no closed software. (They've said that Netscape will go away when Mozilla is a completely viable replacement, which shouldn't be too long now.) And, they've shown repeatedly that they're not interested in becoming a monopoly (of Linux or in general) -- they're interested in increasing the Linux "pie" completely. (A great example of this is the Mandrake distribution, which basically started as a branch from RH Linux.)
In fact, take this as a challenge to people in general: point out one way in which Red Hat's behavior is like Microsoft's. From what I can tell, it's pretty much all "they're-too-popular-to-be cool" syndrome.
(As a side note: I'd say Caldera, with Ransom Love's anti-GPL rhetoric [zdnet.com], is more like Microsoft -- or at least, they'd like to be.)
Re:Depends on your needs. (Score:5, Funny)
RedHat is the ketchup of linux
Tasty, versatile, red and ubiquitous, but some people will tell you that it isn't very gourmet...
SuSE (Score:3, Informative)
Another vote for SuSE (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Another vote for SuSE (Score:5, Informative)
I agree. If you want a good learning curve and not too many weird bits, go with SuSE. My two gripes with Mandrake are how slowly they release packages (I wound up compiling everything, thus negating the benefits of a package system), and how the had lots of undocumented automated "features", like their menusync system.
That's assuming you want to learn to *use* and *administrate* Linux. For a much higher learning curve and a path towards kernal development and manual dependancy management (which isn't necessary unless you want to make your own distro or develop Linux itself), try Slackware.
--
Evan
Number of distros is more than number of users (Score:4, Funny)
Red Hat - Not the best overall, but well supported (Score:5, Insightful)
For your first Linux distro, I recommend Red Hat Linux. While I think it's unquestionable that it's not the best Linux, especially from a security standpoint, it's very well supported. Almost every Linux FAQ you'll find on the 'Net treats Red Hat as the defacto standard.
Coming from NT/2000, for the first little while, everything is going to feel really foreign and strange. Don't lose your way. Relax and read the docs which are all over the 'Net. And don't be afraid to experiment with the system.
Red Hat has (don't flame me, this is from memory) an installed base of about 50% of the Linux market; you can't beat the support. And even if it's not the most secure or stable Linux, it blows NT/2000 out of the water in security and stability.
Specific version? Find a Red Hat 6.2 distro; make sure you turn off un-needed daemons ("services" in Windows parlance) and do the BIND upgrade, since most older Linux/UNIX distros ship with a fairly dangerous DNS server vulnerability.
I'd stay away from x.0 versions, especially RH 7.0, which, to be blunt, sucked. I like the greater maturity of the 6.2 distro over RH 7.1 because, well, RH 6.1 wasn't nearly as good as 6.2. Note that the kernel that ships with 6.x and 7.0 is a 2.2 series kernel, and a more modern distro has a 2.4 series kernel, which means better built-in firewalling, SMP support and a few other goodies.
Once you're comfy with it, consider moving up to Debian or Slackware - but that's a matter of opinion.