DEFINITIVE: Which Linux Distro? (poll)

By markwolfe
in Linux

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Which Linux Distro do you prefer?  

773 members have voted

  1. 1. Which Linux Distro do you prefer?

    • Slackware (or derivatives)
      33
    • Debian
      56
    • SUSE Linux (or derivatives)
      99
    • Fedora Core (or Redhat, or RHEL)
      120
    • Gentoo (or derivatives)
      86
    • Ubuntu
      273
    • Other Debian Derivative (Mepis, Kanotix, etc)
      25
    • Arch
      19
    • Linspire
      22
    • Mandriva
      40

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Grand Master

markwolfe Veteran

Posted
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Posted
Hey Mark, out of curiosity, what's your flavor?

585208664[/snapback]

mark's a redhat/fedora guy, if i'm not mistaken.

585209121[/snapback]

Correct.

The tagline under my avatar used to say "Linux noob since Red Hat 5.1", and I have been predisposed to Red Hat / Fedora, despite trying a couple other distros. It just works for me. And, yes, I still consider myself a Linux noob. ;)

Mentor

SaguratuS

Posted
Posted

mark's a redhat/fedora guy, if i'm not mistaken.

585209121[/snapback]

Correct.

The tagline under my avatar used to say "Linux noob since Red Hat 5.1", and I have been predisposed to Red Hat / Fedora, despite trying a couple other distros. It just works for me. And, yes, I still consider myself a Linux noob. ;)

585209789[/snapback]

Bleh, I will not sleep until I get you on gentoo (so be it you've probably already used it, I'm still getting you back on it damnit). Well, I'll do it tomorrow, too tired now. g'night.

^

Forum Bug?

Just hit quote + reply :huh:

(missing a

)
Grand Master

markwolfe Veteran

Posted
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Posted
I have a hard time trying to install programs on Linux.

Is there a distro that makes it easy to install things?

585227851[/snapback]

Start a new thread please.

585227902[/snapback]

Remember we are trying to start to put all basic "which distro?" questions in here... This question is sort of right between one that should be in here, and one that could be a whole new thread. I think this is an OK place for it. :yes:

As for the question, the answer is they all make it easier to install apps than they did several years ago. Which distro did you use? How long ago was it? And what was your program install method?

Different distros have different methods, but they are all doing pretty much the same thing: you tell it what program you want, it looks for that program, then it sees if you need any other stuff to make that program work. Once it resolves those "dependencies", you are prompted to make sure you want to install, then viola! you now have that program.

Methods include emerge, apt-get, yum, urpmi and others. If you want super-easy (and are willing to go -and pay for- this route) Linspire offers a "Click-n-Run" service (which is really just a front end for apt-get, I believe).

Tell us a bit about what you have tried that did not work well, and we can help. :)

Grand Master

sfalcon

Posted
Posted

I have an extra PC that I want to dual boot XP Pro and Linux on. (2.53ghz P4; 1Gb PC800; ATI 9600). I've never used Linux before, short of data recovery with the Knoppix Live CD. I understand Knoppix is Debian based, and it seemed relatively easy to learn from. Is there a big difference if I were to install a non-Debian distro? If yes, what's the best/newbie friendly Debian based distro? Also, doesn't Linux only write to FAT32? If I make a partition, can I have the XP one be NTFS and the other be FAT32?

Grand Master

markwolfe Veteran

Posted
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  • Veteran
Posted
I have an extra PC that I want to dual boot XP Pro and Linux on.  (2.53ghz P4; 1Gb PC800; ATI 9600).  I've never used Linux before, short of data recovery with the Knoppix Live CD.  I understand Knoppix is Debian based, and it seemed relatively easy to learn from.  Is there a big difference if I were to install a non-Debian distro?  If yes, what's the best/newbie friendly Debian based distro?  Also, doesn't Linux only write to FAT32?  If I make a partition, can I have the XP one be NTFS and the other be FAT32?

585257427[/snapback]

If you liked Knoppix, you can install it right to your hard drive.
Grand Master

revvo

Posted
Posted
Is there a big difference if I were to install a non-Debian distro?  If yes, what's the best/newbie friendly Debian based distro?  Also, doesn't Linux only write to FAT32?  If I make a partition, can I have the XP one be NTFS and the other be FAT32?

585257427[/snapback]

A big difference? I'd say a noticable difference.

First off all, apt makes your life easy to manage packages. Of course the myth behind debian is "it's outdated" when we all know the original goal of the guys at Debian was to target Servers and Debian does a kickass job for servers. You would have to configure apt so it would fetch unstable packages. They call it unstable because it's the latest submitted packages but most of the time, the packages will install without fuss and are actually pretty stable.

Right now it's totally safe to read on an NTFS partition but not the write. I know some people that do write on their NTFS partition and they tell me it's fine but I wouldn't risk it until I see a "ntfs write is safe" when configuring a kernel. Now I don't know why you'd want a NTFS partition and a FAT32 partition but sure you can do pretty much whatever in terms of partitionning.

If you liked Knoppix, you can install it right to your hard drive.

585257511[/snapback]

That's right. There is a script so you can install Knoppix on your hard drive, I just dono where :ninja:
Contributor

cookie-monster

Posted
Posted

Well I'm just getting the interest in linux but...I tried to download linux and like 8591203458923 versions of it came up. To all the linux geniuses out there, what would be the recomended version of linux to start out with? I mean just to get to know the OS.

Grand Master

markwolfe Veteran

Posted
  • Author
  • Veteran
Posted
Well I'm just getting the interest in linux but...I tried to download linux and like 8591203458923 versions of it came up. To all the linux geniuses out there, what would be the recomended version of linux to start out with? I mean just to get to know the OS.

585277580[/snapback]

Merged thread into "Which Linux Distro" thread. ;)

I would recommend Knoppix as a starter. It is a Live CD. Boot it and run Linux without any changes to your hard drive. (Y)

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