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Thread: Flavour of Linux

  1. #1
    Zzzzzzz sleepyhead's Avatar
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    Flavour of Linux

    I have enough spares to make another box.

    I was thinking of using this box to play with linux and eventually use this as an always online machine doing whatever therefore freeing up my main machine purely for gaming and movie watching.

    What I have is...

    AMD XP2500+ (with a large copper heatsink and loud 92mm fan, want to replace that with a silent one)
    NF3 abit motherboard (forgot model name)
    GF4 4200ti 64MB
    512MB RAM
    Thermaltake 500 (ish) watt PSU
    Spare Keyboard (mouse is dead )
    Lots of spare monitors (mainly 15s)

    I can dig up other ancilleries needed to get it operational

    I hear people mentioning ubuntu and knowing there are several flavours of linux out there, I was hoping someone could recommend to me the 'ideal' linux package for me.

    In summary requirements are:
    1) Simple enough for a dumb guy like me to play with it and learn
    2) Be able to run on the available equipment
    3) Be used as a tool for online stuff (web browsing, downloading etc.) as well as maybe being an internal media host.

    Any and all help greatly appreciated.

  2. #2
    Comfortably Numb directhex's Avatar
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    Re: Flavour of Linux

    just use ubuntu. should work out of the box on that kit without worry

  3. #3
    Splash
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    Re: Flavour of Linux

    Yep, Ubuntu is an ideal starting point - it's well supported and has good hardware detection. PCLinuxOS is also starting to make waves for similar reasons, so I've just installed it on my lappy to try but it seems a little "Playskool" for my likes (if you know what I mean), though that may be a good thing for someone with no linux experience.

  4. #4
    The late but legendary peterb - Onward and Upward peterb's Avatar
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    Re: Flavour of Linux

    Very difficult to recommend an 'ideal' Linux - or to be strictly correct an ideal distribution or distro.

    Ubuntu is the current flavour of the month, and it is true that Ubuntu has done much to popularise Linux in the last 12 to 18 months.

    However there are (as you say) many others - my personal choice is Fedora, but other people have their favourites..

    In terms of performance, they all use a similar kernel, and all so much the same. Where they differ is in relatively minor things such as file system structure, ease of installation, ease of application installation, and the various Guis - the two main ones being Gnome and KDE.

    Ubuntu, Fedora and Knoppix all support a wide range of hardware, and should install on the system you describe. Fedora comes with YUM which is a package manager, and there are a lot of precompiled packages to download and use from the Fedora and 3rd party reposatories. Ubuntu (I think) is supplied with APOT - another package manager and again there are many packages pre-compiled to download.

    One option is to download some of the live CDs and run those to see what you get on with.

    With the requirements you have listed, loading anyone of the ones I have mentioned will get you up and online quickly. However if you have no Linux eperience, doing some of the other stuff will take a little investment in time to learn about the OS - time well worth spending IMHO! Once you have decided on a distro you like, I would also recommend getting one of the guides written for that distro - again well worth it for jump starting your learning process.

    Just for background, I did pretty much as you are doing now - about 4 years ago. Having got hooked but been a bit disappointed by the performance of the old machine I was using (but it was old - ISA sdlots and pre-atx!) I built a dedicated machine to learn on - and haven't looked back. The initial learning curve was steep - but a good text book helped through the initial stages and was invaluable.

    Good luck - and enjoy!
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  6. #5
    Nox
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    Re: Flavour of Linux

    try sabayon too - its based on gentoo and was the only distro that 'out of the box' supported my 8700m gt gfx card... tried both fedora and ubuntu before that.

    oh, and it looks pretty smart too, nicer default colour scheme I reckon than any of the above!

    Nox

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    Re: Flavour of Linux

    have a butchers at linux mint too
    Gamertag - Russonf (xbox and ps3)

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    Comfortably Numb directhex's Avatar
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    Re: Flavour of Linux

    remember, though, that if you find yourself with a problem, the more "fringe" a distribution is, the smaller its community (and the less chance there is of finding someone with a fix)

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    Zzzzzzz sleepyhead's Avatar
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    Re: Flavour of Linux

    Oo thanks for the quick replies

    I'll try out ubuntu and Fedora (thanks PeterB) and see how I go from there.

    You have made a very good point there Directhex about support. Thanks

    Just need to make the box now...(after I fix my car...*sigh*)

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    Re: Flavour of Linux

    Ubuntu's support community via their forums really is an excellent starting point. I've rarely come across such a friendly bunch to novices, plus Debian is the core of many distros so it would make a starting point as suggested.

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    Nox
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    Re: Flavour of Linux

    Quote Originally Posted by directhex View Post
    remember, though, that if you find yourself with a problem, the more "fringe" a distribution is, the smaller its community (and the less chance there is of finding someone with a fix)
    thats the only problem i'm having with sabayon/gentoo - theres a lot less to search through and zero books (quite enjoy sitting with my feet up in front room reading!!)

    Nox

  13. #11
    Zzzzzzz sleepyhead's Avatar
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    Re: Flavour of Linux

    OK, I've grabbed ubuntu, next up is Fedora but....er...Do I just need to grab Media but what is "Fedora Desktop Live Media" and "Fedora KDE Live Media"? Do I need theses as well or are these optional packages or different installs?

    <--confused

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    Re: Flavour of Linux

    Quote Originally Posted by sleepyhead View Post
    OK, I've grabbed ubuntu, next up is Fedora but....er...Do I just need to grab Media but what is "Fedora Desktop Live Media" and "Fedora KDE Live Media"? Do I need theses as well or are these optional packages or different installs?

    <--confused

    I would imagine that:
    Install Media - is just the installer (boot then install) ie. non-live-cd
    Fedora Desktop Live Media - is a live CD with gnome
    Fedora KDE Live Media - is a live CD with KDE
    Not sure if you can install from a liveCD with Fedora, but you probably can.

    Personally, i use Mandriva Linux

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