Prospective Linux User


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I've been looking in to putting Linux in on my old computer just to give it a try. I've never used Linux before and I was wondering where exactly should I start? Which distro would be best for me and my system? My system I will be putting this on is a 700 mhz P3 with 640 mb ram, a SB Live! Value, and Geforce2. So, where is one to start in this Linux game? Any suggestions will be appreciated.

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There are a few distros I'd look into, such as Red Hat, Mandrake, or Ark Linux. You can search on google for info on each. Personally I'd go for Mandrake, unless you want to persue a career being a linux technition or something, in that case, I'd go for Red Hat. If you want a distro that's windows xp'ish, then go for Ark, but understand that's it's still in beta :)

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honestly, I find Slackware to be thew easiest if you're willing to put some time into learning to do what you want.

If you just wanna install something and start doing stuff, downloading rpms like mad, then I'd suggest Fedora. I would suggest Jamd, but they merged with Blue, Jim quit development, so there's no available distro and I'm not too hopeful about a good solid finished product. Jim was great in the respect that he made his distro truly stand out...shame he left...

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Well if you want to jump into it then go Gentoo but for someone who wants to take it one step at a time, I'd suggest Fedora, even Mandrake. Eevoo has got the list down pretty good so there's not much I can add except that the Fedora Project is basically RedHat rebadged.

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well i started playing with linux about 1.5 years ago... when i started i tried read hat, mandrake and suse.

i found red hat had a few too many advanced features which confused me. then i tried mandrake and the installer was freaking awesome...soooo easy and does a lot of it for you. and it has a lot of gui based programs to do configuring for you and make it a lot easier.

suse is very good and just getting it all going for you with no real hasel, but also not the greatest for learning cuz it does it all for you.

so if you wanna do what i did i would go with mandrake. its a good starter distro and you can learn quite a bit. but it takes a while to get used to the filesystem...but once you have that down it all falls into place

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And once you're ready and comfortable with Mandrake (or whatever distro you choose), go for "harder" distros (they're not that hard once you feel comfortable to move on) like Slackware, Gentoo or Debian if you wish.

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OK, so Mandrake seems like it could be a good choice. Where can I get it? Is it available for download at a site or do I have to buy it. What is the latest version and all that jazz?

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If you have some time to spend and you want to learn a little, I'd go with Debian (maybe Bonzai). It's a fast distro with great community, and it will do just what you want it to do.

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Right now, I don't have an exorbitant amount of time, but I have some which I want to devote to learning Linux. I'm going to stick with Mandrake most likely, but I've come up with another question. Should I go for 9.2 or 10 Beta 1? Is the beta stable enough to be worth trying?

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My first (and currently only) distro was gentoo. Trying to get it up annoyed me to no end, but now it is up it's more or less good. I personally might go for Mandrake 10 once that's final, (at the moment they supposedly have no 3d acceleration).

edit: For me gentoo took a week (or more) to get working the first time, and almost that much time the second time around because of problems with the video card driver and using the new linux test kernel =S. Hence I want to switch to a more painless one.

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So, where is one to start in this Linux game? Any suggestions will be appreciated.

Knoppix will run off the CD-ROM so you can find out how well your hardware is supported. When you want to, you can choose to install it on the hard drive (which will speed things up nicely). When Knoppix is installed on the HD you essentially have Debian which is one of the most professional (and completely free) versions of Linux.

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Right now, I don't have an exorbitant amount of time, but I have some which I want to devote to learning Linux. I'm going to stick with Mandrake most likely, but I've come up with another question. Should I go for 9.2 or 10 Beta 1? Is the beta stable enough to be worth trying?

Most of the time the betas are pretty stable. But if you break it, you'll learn more. :D

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