DEFINITIVE: Which Linux Distro? (poll)

[John_M]

Mark, I see your in middle Tennessee, well, I'm a Gentoo user with my capitol as headquarters for Red Hat. :-) Thank God I live near the mountains. :)

[jus1haz2]

What is the best Linux distro to run on an older IBM computer? I like GUI so that would be a plus.

specs:

300mhz

32mb ram

6GB hdd

I know it?s a badass comp. Cant wait to bust out the HL2 with 200 FPS lol j/p

So what would you guys recommend?

[Jayzee]

Every Linux distro will work, but you may maybe not be able to use latest Window Manager and nifty graphic apps.

[Jayzee]

It all depends how much you know about Linux systems and what you want to do with your computer, if you are experienced I recommend Debian, if you haven't been using Linux before and just want to see what it can do I recommend Knoppix.

[BouncinDave]

I recently went onto SUSE 9.3 and can say it is the best distro ive used

[jus1haz2]

I have played around with Suse, Redhat, slack, freebsd and some others but im not expiernenced. I know how to install them so I dont need a live cd. I was justwondering if you would recomend redhat over suse or whcich on you liked the best. I will give debain a try. Does any one else (that is still up) have any suggestions?

[jus1haz2]

The only thing i have to be able to do is remote connect to the computer with out installing anything on it and withing windows. SO i go from this machine into the 'debain' machine. Is that possible becuase im not good at installing things on a linux system. lol Also will the newsest ver. of debain run on that old thing or do i need an older one?

[rezza Veteran]

The latest version of debian (3.1) will run just fine on that machine - I have it installed and running well on a 486 DX4 with 28mb of ram ;)

Oh, and merging with definitive thread.

[Gongrc]

:yes:

debian....3.1 stable!

[strekship]

Well, i want to try and use a *nix distro of some sort, but i don't know how anything works in a *nix system. Any suggestions on what i should start with?

[Hankyone]

don't know any nix distro that isn't made for a special computer

maybe freeBSD?

[Lexxan]

FreeBSD for his first OS.. are you kidding me?

Try out www.mandriva.com or www.ubuntulinux.org

[Miuku.]

It seems Ubuntu has been marked as the new "introduction to Linux" distribution, guess that would be the logical one then.

[Favorable7404]

:rolleyes: I think it's not a post for only 1337 providing suggestions. As a newbie, I've tried Fedora and now I'm using Ubuntu. For me the latter is more accessible. Install it and consult the forums when coping with any possible problems. In this course you can learn a lot.

Well, I think you may as well begin to get used to *nix style before you start.

[Miuku.]

:rolleyes: I think it's not a post for only 1337 providing suggestions

:o

Where do you see t3h l33t? :woot:

[MulletRobZ]

The only distributions I tried are Fedora (since 2), Mandrake (8.0 - 10.0), and Slackware (9.0 and 9.1). If you got an NVidia video card, I strongly advise against using Mandrake (now Mandriva) as I was never able to get the drivers to work properly with that OS (except for 9.0, but even that's tricky). Also, Mandrake 10.0 contained too many flaws. Fedora lacks certain vital software including MP3 support, but you can get that off the Net and you can even get the NVidia drivers to work without having to manually modify the Xorg.conf file (just two RPM's will suffice). Very reliable system indeed. As for Slackware, I thought it was the HARD distro to use, but it can actually be as easy as Fedora thanks to the TGZ installation packages. That distro was faster than Fedora when I last tested it, but that was a year or two ago.

[krmathis]

FreeBSD is pretty much as close to unix as you get.

But a user-friendly GNU/Linux distro might be a better choice for beginner... :)

[markwolfe Veteran]

* merged strekship's thread *

[Crimson Behelit]

Speaking out of personal experience, I strongly believe that Mandrake and Ubuntu are great starting points for the Windows-familiar beginner.

Being somewhat green myself, I don't feel as if I have the required experience to suggest what the next step should be from there...

[kyro]

so far i see

SUSE Linux (or derivatives) [ 36 ] ** [12.00%]

Fedora Core (or Redhat, or RHEL) [ 49 ] ** [16.33%]

Gentoo (or derivatives) [ 34 ] ** [11.33%]

Ubuntu [ 99 ] ** [33.00%]

its good to see ubuntu at top and i promote it for everyone(specially new users).

For me i use fedora as much as possible, its good, works for me, using it for LONG time and i make a living out of it.

[thedoors27]

I've noticed there are many distributions of linux...but what is the standard one to download?

[sd_ba2271]

Right now, I'd go with Ubuntu. I say this for several reasons...

1-- It's Debian based, which makes it easier for newbies.

2-- It's free and will continue to be so, and will be updated every 6 months. You're lucky to get yearly updates from even the major distros.

3--One of the ones I like, is that they will send you free cds...however many you want.

4--It's easy to install and has great hardware support.

[Billa]

Well, i think theres no "standard" download, although i would recomend Ubuntu due to it's easy instalation, and it usually makes the hardware works just when you finish the instalation, so you dont have to configure all the stuff. But it's up to you, just do some google search and look for the distro wich fits you.

[Brutimus]

I would also vouch for Ubuntu (as I am installing it on another machine this very second). As previously said, it is pretty easy to get around in, I'm no linux expert, so I like the ease. Look into the apt-get system, its amazing. Install anything you need...or uninstall...just great. I know other distros have this take method, but I think apt-get is exceptionally nice. Theres also x64 versions of Ubuntu if you need it.

[sd_ba2271]

One warning, I recommend using the Synaptic Package Manager if you can. I prefer command line, but it's not everyone. Also, even though Ubuntu is Debian based, try no to install very many .deb packages. You will eventually break something, and it's a pain to fix.