How to pick a distro?

How to pick a distro?

[NNK]

I was wondering what I should be looking at in the different distros 
before picking one to use.

Being a total novice, I don't have much experience on Linux, so I'm 
wondering what I should be asking.

Any advice?
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Re: How to pick a distro?

[Ray Olszewski]

At 01:34 AM 4/7/2005 +0530, NNK wrote:
>I was wondering what I should be looking at in the different distros 
>before picking one to use.
>
>Being a total novice, I don't have much experience on Linux, so I'm 
>wondering what I should be asking.
>
>Any advice?

This is a difficult question to answer with anything other than personal 
prejudice. I will give it a try, though.

1. As a beginner, you want to use a full-strength distribution, one that is 
likely to support the full range of activities you might want to use Linux 
for. Experienced users often can benefit from using more specialized, 
semi-embedded distros that are geared to particular tasks ... e.g., distros 
designed to work as routers or as dedicated vidcap hosts ... but you're 
better off waiting until you know more before you go that route. Same goes 
for source-based distros ... not the best place for a novice to start.

2. You want a distro that has a good packaging system and good support for 
security and other updates. Examples that meet this are Debian (the distro 
I use) and most of the big RPM-based distros. The best-known distro that 
does NOT meet this standard (or at least I believe it does not) is 
Slackware ... though if I'm wrong, I'd welcome correction from a Slackware 
user.

3. You want someplace you can ask questions with the hope that you will get 
prompt and accurate answers. Many distros have their own help lists, and if 
you are considering one, you might look at the archives of its support list 
to see if it meets this standard. Or, for distro-agnostic lists like this 
one, notice what distros are discussed the most ... that is, notice what 
the people who *answer* questions know the answers *to*. If you have a 
friend who will be helping you, use what he or she uses ... that's way more 
important than a quest for the elusive "best" distro.

4. This all assumes you are planning to use reasonablty modern desktop 
equipment. Really old equipment ... 486- and even 386-based systems, and 
other oddball hardware ... and laptops present specialized problems that 
might dictate selection of a particular distro that handles that equipment 
well. Most of the RPM-based distros are better at hardware detection than 
Debian is, so you might think about how much that matters to your install too.

5. Finally, think about the range of applications you want to run. 
Especially GUI-based ones. Different distros come out in different places 
in the GUI wars (between KDE and Gnome, mainly, though there is more) and 
your life will be easier if you pick a distro that fits what you want or 
need in that regard.




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Re: How to pick a distro?

[James Miller]

On Thu, 7 Apr 2005, NNK wrote:

> I was wondering what I should be looking at in the different distros before 
> picking one to use.
>
> Being a total novice, I don't have much experience on Linux, so I'm wondering 
> what I should be asking.
>
> Any advice?

In addition to Ray's advice, I'll add a couple of observations. The main 
problem you'll want to adress at the beginning is hardawre compatibility. 
Though that's gotten pretty good under Linux, you shouldn't just assume 
your hardware will be supported. If some important element of your setup 
is not supported, or is poorly supported, your foray into Linux could turn 
sour quickly.

A couple of ways to adress this: 1) find a distro with a good support 
community (e.g., Ubuntu is a newbie-oriented distro with a really active 
forum) and ask about your hardware there ahead of time. This presumes you 
know what kind of hardware is in, or attached to, your machine. What kind 
of NIC/modem, video card, hard drive controller card (if any), usb 
devices, printer. That sort of thing. Short of finding out all that, you 
could try a less involved option: 2) download and burn a copy of a live CD 
like Knoppix, boot from it and see if everything works ok.

James
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Re: How to pick a distro?

[Yawar Amin]

Hi NNK,

On Apr 7, 2005 4:04 AM, NNK <savantedge@gmail.com> wrote:
> I was wondering what I should be looking at in the different distros
> before picking one to use.
> 
> Being a total novice, I don't have much experience on Linux, so I'm
> wondering what I should be asking.
> 
> Any advice?

I can also give you a couple of tips :-)

You may appreciate a distro that comes with a full set of CDs, so you
don't have to download the internet+1 just to get the stuff that you
like to use. This may be the case even if you have a fast connection
because online package repositories can get overloaded and/or taken
down from time to time, or the software which goes and gets the
packages for you from the 'net may be slightly misconfigured, and give
you all sorts of headaches.

Full-CD distros like Debian, Fedora Core, SUSE, and Mandrake come to
mind. Here's what I think: Debian is excellent, but ... outdated. And
if you want to be cautious and not try to do full upgrades from the
'net for fear of breaking something, then you're stuck with older
stuff. (Sorry, Ray! I had to get that out. I myself use MEPIS, which
is Debian-based. And I `broke' it by doing a dist-upgrade before first
installing all the stuff I like.)

Fedora Core is also great. I used FC2 for a long time. Its yum package
management system is slow as hell, though. If you use FC, install apt
(that is, apt-rpm) and Synaptic on it.

SUSE has a great rep. I haven't used it, but it's obviously very
high-quality. Teutonic precision, you know :-)

Mandrake I have used. Version 10 is excellent, I can't think of
anything bad to say about it -- except that I never was able to set up
its apt equivalent, urpmi, to use the internet. Probably my own fault.
In any case, you can still easily get apt and Synaptic for it.

Overall, wrt package management, I recommend using the distro's
built-in management tool for installing from the CDs, and Synaptic for
downloading from the internet.

HTH,

-- 
Yawar
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Re: How to pick a distro?

[Ulrich Fürst]

James Miller <jamtat@mailsnare.net> wrote: 
> A couple of ways to adress this: 1) find a distro with a good support 
> community (e.g., Ubuntu is a newbie-oriented distro with a really
> active forum) and ask about your hardware there ahead of time. This
> presumes you know what kind of hardware is in, or attached to, your
> machine. What kind of NIC/modem, video card, hard drive controller
> card (if any), usb devices, printer. That sort of thing. Short of
> finding out all that, you could try a less involved option: 2)
> download and burn a copy of a live CD like Knoppix, boot from it and
> see if everything works ok.

3. Type the names of your hardware components into
http://www.google.com/linux
or
http://groups.google.com/grphp?hl=en
But watch out for the date of the question. A hardware with problems in
2003 can work properly now... You should find many threads about it if
you're hardware makes problems or is often used. But you see the
solutions to get it working. If you do understand them it's o.k., if
it's to complicated then you need other hardware or a distribution which
supports it (or someone to help). By the way: sometimes it's better to
change the hardware (e.g. software modems) than wasting hours and days
to get it working...

I don't know other distributions but e.g. with debian GNU/Linux you can
use also packages from other distributions (like rpm). 

4. Check sites like
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO/
>  This document attempts to list most of the hardware known to be
>  either supported or unsupported under Linux.
This document is over a year old, so there should be much more
supported. So I guess "3." is the better solution.

hth

Ulrich
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Re: How to pick a distro?

[Ray Olszewski]

At 02:50 PM 4/7/2005 +0800, Yawar Amin wrote:
[...]
  Here's what I think: Debian is excellent, but ... outdated. And
>if you want to be cautious and not try to do full upgrades from the
>'net for fear of breaking something, then you're stuck with older
>stuff. (Sorry, Ray! I had to get that out. I myself use MEPIS, which
>is Debian-based. And I `broke' it by doing a dist-upgrade before first
>installing all the stuff I like.)

You should not feel the need to apologize for an honest opinion, at least 
not one that you express politely (as you do in this instance). That said, 
I do feel the need to respond with a bit of a clarification.

Most Debian users agree, I think, that the "stable" Debian distro 
(currently Woody) tends to be extremely out of date (except for 
security-related fixes, where the maintanance team is very good). Some 
would go so far as to say that it is so outdated that it is a joke, and I 
can't really disagree with that.

But Debian also maintains a "testing" distro (Sarge) and an "unstable" 
distro (Sid), both of which are considerably closer to current. Here, on 
any system that requires really up to date stuff ... in practice, 
everything except my router ... I always use Sid. I occasionally experience 
transient problems, as package updatings get out of sync ... especially a 
problem with major moves by shared libraries ... but that is probably an 
inevitable price of staying close to current. I've never "broken" a Debian 
system for more than a day or two, until the packages got back in sync.

I haven't used any distro other than Debian in so long that I no longer 
know how they compare in the balance of currency and stability with Sid.

I don't know what "Debian-based" distros use, since I've not used any of 
them ... I've never even heard of MEPIS ... so I can neither encourage nor 
discourage their use. I just note that "Debian-based" != "Debian".

Finally, due to the detection and correction of security-related problems, 
I'd suggest that nobody ... at least nobody running a system that has any 
sort of Internet connection ... can escape the need to do regular updates 
of his or her system. In practice, I find "full upgrades" easier to do than 
security upgrades of specific packages ... but the need, and the attendant 
risks of compatibility problems, is present in EVERY distro.


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Re: How to pick a distro?

[Jeremy Abbott]

Peter wrote:

>Hi,
>
>having read all the replies I would almost be scared to go to a Linux OS. It 
>is not that difficult at all. With Fedora I would call the installation a 
>child's or grandma's play, however, would recommend to do the partitioning 
>yourself after having read how to go about it.
>
>As for me slackware is even easier and faster to install, however, can be 
>bitchy afterwards. I have used SUSE once a long time ago so I can not speak of 
>it today. At that time I was not impressed.
>
>When I switched to Linux I had no one to consult at all. Bought RedHat 5.2 
>which had just come out, read carefully how to install, the had a very 
>comprehensive handbook, and have been with Linux ever since. There were some 
>problems in the beginning an account of my ignorance. I had only 16 MB RAM, a 
>very small HD and forgot what of a slow cycle of the processor resulting at 
>times in application crashes and what I call memory-run-aways.
>
>So just do it.
>
>Regards
>  
>
I bought Suse about a year ago.  Very nice Distro with package
management through Yast.  My problem with it though, was that it does
not come with a C compiler.  If all youare installing is binary
packeges, that's fine.  I wanted to do some compiling from source though.

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Re: How to pick a distro?

[Peter]

Hi,

having read all the replies I would almost be scared to go to a Linux OS. It 
is not that difficult at all. With Fedora I would call the installation a 
child's or grandma's play, however, would recommend to do the partitioning 
yourself after having read how to go about it.

As for me slackware is even easier and faster to install, however, can be 
bitchy afterwards. I have used SUSE once a long time ago so I can not speak of 
it today. At that time I was not impressed.

When I switched to Linux I had no one to consult at all. Bought RedHat 5.2 
which had just come out, read carefully how to install, the had a very 
comprehensive handbook, and have been with Linux ever since. There were some 
problems in the beginning an account of my ignorance. I had only 16 MB RAM, a 
very small HD and forgot what of a slow cycle of the processor resulting at 
times in application crashes and what I call memory-run-aways.

So just do it.

Regards
-- 
Peter

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Re: How to pick a distro?

[Ray Olszewski]

At 07:45 PM 4/7/2005 +0000, Jeremy Abbott wrote:
[...]
>I bought Suse about a year ago.  Very nice Distro with package
>management through Yast.  My problem with it though, was that it does
>not come with a C compiler.  If all youare installing is binary
>packeges, that's fine.  I wanted to do some compiling from source though.

Are you sure of this, Jeremy?

I just checked the online package repository for SuSE at 
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/current/suse/i586, and there I see all the 
usual compiler packages ... for example: gcc (the C compiler), g++ (the C++ 
variant of gcc), the *-devel header files for the libraries, gdb (the 
standard debugger) and ddd (its X frontend).

I suspect that either what you bought was a limited subset of SuSE ... 
possible, I suppose, since the iso image for the full distro is about 3.5 
GB, requiring a DVD to hold it ... or you misunderstood the docs that came 
with what you got.

I can't recall ever seeing a full-size Linux distro that did not include 
the full suite of compilers it needed to compile all its own source. If 
nothing else, you need this to compile custom kernels, a fairly common 
activity among experienced users of all distros.

And as we all know, anyone who provides you with a CD or DVD of binaries 
needs to provide you with access to the associated source, at least for the 
GPL'd packages.


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Re: How to pick a distro?

[Jeremy Abbott]

>
> Are you sure of this, Jeremy?
>
> I just checked the online package repository for SuSE at
> ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/current/suse/i586, and there I see
> all the usual compiler packages ... for example: gcc (the C compiler),
> g++ (the C++ variant of gcc), the *-devel header files for the
> libraries, gdb (the standard debugger) and ddd (its X frontend).
>
> I suspect that either what you bought was a limited subset of SuSE ...
> possible, I suppose, since the iso image for the full distro is about
> 3.5 GB, requiring a DVD to hold it ... or you misunderstood the docs
> that came with what you got.
>
> I can't recall ever seeing a full-size Linux distro that did not
> include the full suite of compilers it needed to compile all its own
> source. If nothing else, you need this to compile custom kernels, a
> fairly common activity among experienced users of all distros.
>
> And as we all know, anyone who provides you with a CD or DVD of
> binaries needs to provide you with access to the associated source, at
> least for the GPL'd packages.
>
>
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe
> linux-newbie" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
>
The version I purchased was the cheapest version of 9.1, and I found out
later that their was no compiler from reading on the net.  I could be
mistaken, as I was extremely new to linux at the time, but either their
was no gcc, or it was not in root's or my user path.  I tend to lean
toward what I read on the net.  I did just examine Suse's website, and
it apears to have been redesigned, and has new versions.  After reading
about 9.2 professional, I would agree that there should be a C compiler
in it.

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Re: How to pick a distro?

[Yawar Amin]

Hi Ray,

On Apr 8, 2005 12:52 AM, Ray Olszewski <ray@comarre.com> wrote:
[...]
> I don't know what "Debian-based" distros use, since I've not used any of
> them ... I've never even heard of MEPIS ... so I can neither encourage nor
> discourage their use. I just note that "Debian-based" != "Debian".

Of course you're right -- the MEPIS distributors do take Debian,
change it in an unspecified number of ways, and release it as MEPIS.
But I do want to qualify that, so far as package management is
concerned, at least, MEPIS _is_ the same as Debian, because MEPIS uses
dpkg, dselect and apt.

> Finally, due to the detection and correction of security-related problems,
> I'd suggest that nobody ... at least nobody running a system that has any
> sort of Internet connection ... can escape the need to do regular updates
> of his or her system. In practice, I find "full upgrades" easier to do than
> security upgrades of specific packages ... but the need, and the attendant
> risks of compatibility problems, is present in EVERY distro.

Totally agree with this. But I would also, having learned my lesson,
first install all packages I might like to use -- especially the
development packages -- before doing full upgrades.

Regards,

-- 
Yawar
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