What Linux for a Newbie

[Darkmatter]

Im sure this question has been asked many times before.
Im looking to try my hand with Linux, whats a good distro to get ?
Are there any real differences between them ?
Can any of them be used with Samba ? (want to try out a domain controller )

Thanks for baring with the silly questions

[Agent]

the 2 main ones you will be looking at are Mandrake and Redhat
Both are very newbie friendly and you shouldnt have any problems installing either as they are both 100 times easier than windows to install.

[megah0]

take a look at ark linux too

[Enverex]

The differences are all about how they are configured and how they work under the hood. When you are just running a Window manager like KDE or Gnome then you probably wont notice the difference between any of them until you start to dig deeper.

NS

[directhex]

the default configuration is where you see the difference between a n00b linux - Redhat 9 and Mandrake 9 are pretty similar - but mandrake has better media support out of the box (e.g. mp3) and redhat has a better font renderer. Ark is slightly different as it's single-user, and probably stands between the two others on looks & support

[c0w]

start with mandrake it's nice and easy and it's hard to go wrong with but then when ya start to learn, go for a different disto where you have to configure things more,

kde, and gnone are all well and good for desktop, but FLUXbOX rocks =)

[Enverex]

Fluxbox is just a Window manager rather than a desktop environment like KDE and Gnome, but remember, you can use Fluxbox with Gnome....

NS

[c0w]

mate you don't need gnome to run fluxbox all you need is that standard Xfree, and yes i know it take that extra time to setup and configure but it's well worth in the end.

[Enverex]

Originally posted by c0w
mate you don't need gnome to run fluxbox all you need is that standard Xfree, and yes i know it take that extra time to setup and configure but it's well worth in the end.

I know, I run just Fluxbox alone on my laptop.

I was just pointing out that one was a Window Manager, and the other was a Desktop Environment, and as thus the DE has more functionality, but you can use Flux with Gnome if you want too.

NS

[c0w]

=)

[wasabi]

Mandrake gets my vote., and though I'd say gnome maybe looks slightly better I'd go with KDE3 as I find its functionality better.

Redhat is nice to install but I find the installer makes slightly dumb decisions - for a workstations install it doesn't install a lot of C libraries etc so you get wacko error messages when you're trying to put rpms on, which you simply don't have as a prob with Mandrake. Mandrake does have that security monitor thing which is a pain and needs disabled.

Having siad all that, I've failed to get my audigy working with either - both work OK in the initial sound test then refuse to actually produce a meep in real apps.

[MrFlibble]

Err, talk of window managers and all that is all very interesting, but the thread says - 'what Linux for a newbie'

Simple answer: Mandrake. Unless you have very new or non-standard hardware, it's pretty difficult to go wrong. Once you've learned the ropes then you can get stuck into something more hardcore if you like. (Depends what you actually want to use it for I suppose)

[Twigman]

If you dont want the hassle of partitions or HDDs and stuff, you could always get a bootable CD with Linux on..that way you can just use it when you put the cd in.
Try www.knoppix.net
And burn the ISO.

[Darkmatter]

Thanks for the advice guys, most appreciated

[0iD]

Try Knoppix, runs from a CD so u can try before installing anything.
I'v always used SuSE myself. But Redhat's the one most of the books seem to be written for. The 'For Dummies' books are always a good investment.

[oshta]

I also an a newbie to linux

- i what to run it on my new file server, so shall i just use use mandrake

- someone sayed i should use smoothwall - which i have, is that OK?

thanks oshta