linux???

[mrdata2003]

i am getting Red Hat Linux 9 & Mandrake Linux 9, which is the better out of the 2? also what is the difference?

i am being given them but could really do with knowing which i should use?

thanks

[directhex]

they're both antique, though mandrake probably less so.

mandrake has more useful stuff like media codecs out of the box, other than that they're broadly similar

[directhex]

mandrake 9.0, 2002/09/25
red hat 9, 2003/03/31

my mistake.

rh9 still won't have anything like mp3 playback though

and neither will run on modern hardware

[mattjgalloway]

Sorry to dig up an old post but that's simply not true.

Both will run fine on new hardware even now. And the reason Red Hat can't play MP3s is because it had some issues with copywrite regulations. You can easily make it play MP3s though by installing an RPM.

Also, there is absolutely no difference between the GNU/Linux bit behind both, it's just the software it comes with. Try Ubuntu/Debian/Gentoo (Gentoo my fav.) for the best Linux system

[directhex]

red hat 9 features the 2.4.20 kernel, which lacks support for (amongst other things) modern ethernet or disk controllers. you can't use sata with it, for example. mandrake 9 uses the slightly older 2.4.19

if you look up posts by the thread starter, it appears he has an nforce2 board - taking nvnet and nvsound binary drivers to be unstable trash, forcedeth isn't available in the kernels in either of those distributions (and i don't think the versions of i810_audio support the audio either), so we're already looking at a crippled system needing a newer kernel compile, which isn't really ideal for a beginner. All assuming an IDE disk, not a SATA disk

I think it's fair to say that antique distributions aren't geared to run on modern kit, and i'd no sooner recommend running red hat 9 on a decent nforce2 setup than Debian Potato on a dual opteron.

[directhex]

that & RPM-based distributions suck

[oyster]

that & RPM-based distributions suck

oops, hexy, you're prejudices are showing!

[directhex]

ok, how about they blow - it's the opposite of suck, it must be good, right?

[mattjgalloway]

Yes I agree RPM sucks, but sorry your comment about the nForce 2 being unstable and worthless on a 2.4 kernel is just plain wrong.

I run Gentoo linux on my nForce 2 board. I started out at 2.4.20 and now am on 2.4.27. I have SATA aswell. It IS supported by the kernel and not extra modules or anything. Ok so maybe not with the stock kernel with Redhat 9 or Mandrake 9 but have we actually checked that out before telling him those 2 are worthless?

[directhex]

Yes I agree RPM sucks, but sorry your comment about the nForce 2 being unstable and worthless on a 2.4 kernel is just plain wrong.

I run Gentoo linux on my nForce 2 board. I started out at 2.4.20 and now am on 2.4.27. I have SATA aswell. It IS supported by the kernel and not extra modules or anything. Ok so maybe not with the stock kernel with Redhat 9 or Mandrake 9 but have we actually checked that out before telling him those 2 are worthless?

where did i say it was unstable & worthless on 2.4? it's simply unsupported & worthless on antique 2.4 kernels, such as used by (mandrake|redhat) 9. not really the same thing

[directhex]

no more useful than a 3-year-old intel network card with a debian 3.0 supported kernel.

[mattjgalloway]

Umm ok. But I still use the 2.4 kernel on my nForce 2 board. I actually found it better than 2.6 because with 2.6 I had lots of issues such as seg faults with Wine. I have a 2.6 kernel compiled aswell just incase I decide to use it one day, but for now my 2.4 kernel on nForce 2 is working perfectly.

If I were mrdata2003 I'd certainly give Mandrake a try.

[directhex]

mandrake, fine, a sensible beginner distribution

2.4, fine, doesn't like my way of working but if it supports your kit, then no worries

versions of mandrake old enough to include xfree86 4.2, not sure that's advisable to anyone running hardware made since the middle of 2002.

[0iD]

I like Suse, probably ecause i've used it for years. I know a lot of peeps don't like at because there's a lot of hand-holding. But for a a user like me who's not interested in the inner machinations & just wants a stable working environment it's a dream to use.

Having said that, i downloaded Xandros OS3 lst week & it's the best desktop environment i've seen to date.

[mattjgalloway]

Suse is nice yeh. Xandros also.

To be honest, distro choice really doesn't matter in my opinion. I chose Gentoo because I wanted to know how Linux works and learn quickly as you have to with Gentoo to become competant. But I don't think I could easily setup Suse, Slackware, etc because I simply have had little to know dealing with dependency resolving. The reason I stay with Gentoo is portage. I'd consider Ubuntu or Debian though, just I don't need to switch at the moment and Gentoo has a very active AMD64 project going.

directhex - Sorry if our debate got a little heated, Linux users should stick together! What distro do you use out of interest?

[directhex]

To be honest, distro choice really doesn't matter in my opinion.

pretty much, as long as you run something fairly recent, then you should have a working system. the hand-holding distributions are a good starter, and by the time you find yourself limited by them, you're probably ready to move onto a grown up's distro.

directhex - Sorry if our debate got a little heated, Linux users should stick together! What distro do you use out of interest?

debian sarge (3.1, testing) at home, debian-amd64 sid (unstable) on my work desktop.