I know this question is such a cliche but... I'm planning on jumping to linux and I want to know which distributable I should get. My computer is an OLD homebuilt. Here's a short list of my setup: System Type X86-based PC Processor x86 Family 6 Model 4 Stepping 2 AuthenticAMD ~1099 Mhz BIOS Version/Date Phoenix Technologies, LTD 6.00 PG, 9/9/2002 SMBIOS Version 2.2 Motherboard Soyo SY-K7VTA Pro I mainly plan on playing music, internet browsing (Firefox), some graphics, not much/any gaming, and the few odds and ends such as screwing around and exploring with packet sniffing/spoofing, code writing, etc. I am extremely accustomed to XP so I think linux will be quite a jump trying to learn the command equivalents and such. I would also like to know if there are programs that will allow emulation of windows programs as I like some windows platform exclusive programs such foobar2000 and Photoshop (CS2). Security is also big so I need to know how it goes and what, if any, freeware programs to get. Thanks in advance for any help. EDIT- Oh, I saw this guide but it seems too generic or basic. I would like to know what would be the best one for my setup, both with hardware and software needs. Also, I have come across something called Wine. A compatibility list shows some of the programs I want to use. I would still like to know which distro I should get.
just passing thru for now, but one thing that's vastly different in Linux is security. The design of Windows along the years has created a huge (no, massive) market in security products, whereas Linux has been designed properly ie with security in mind from the outset. I run ClamAV on all my Linux machines, though (and without going into unnecessary detail) Linux just isn't prone to a minute fraction of the same type of vulnerabilities as Windows. ..my point being that you can concentrate on all the other things, for choosing a distribution (or more than one), then concentrate on actually using it/them, ie you won't need the same Windows mindset - you won't constantly be ducking from viruses and the like
Creaky- Thanks for the reply. I kinda figured Linux was more secure, but I didn't really think it was invulnerable like some Mac users would like to believe their OS is. I'll check out that program. As for which distro, I think I might get Ubuntu or Fedora. Because I'm new to Linux, regardless of my Windows and general computer knowledge, I'm leaning towards Ubuntu since it is supposedly easier to learn for the newby. I would still like a reply from anyone with input on that though.
In that case avoid ubuntu,l and any of the others that use the stupid one user account and sudo for root privileges. They aren't the way it's done, and I'm sure people who have used them will tell you the multitude of problems that careless and lazy way of doing things causes later on. For your intended use I'd be tempted to jump right in the deep end with slackware. It's all a little manual, with a real steep learning curve.. but once set up should be stable, with no stupid updates to break everytyhing. It's similar enough to debian/ubuntu to use the repositories/packages most of the time.. bonus.
I don't think I fully understand you. I think you meant that the sort of lazy way of ubuntu teaches you bad habits that will screw you up later. But what would you suggest? Do you think I should go with Fedora?
well my take on Linux is that i prefer the easier to use/maintain distro's, my preferred longterm distro is Mandriva, i use it all day at work as i can just use it as an OS, no worries about it breaking or letting me down so i can just use it as a tool to do my job. (Just upgraded work pc to 2008.0 actually, though for work use it's no different to using the older versions). I also like similar distros like PCLinuxOS and another nice one is TinyMe. I've also used Puppy, DSL, Arch, Fedora, (RedHat before that), Solaris for Intel is very good but i would say that as i do Solaris on Unix for a dayjob), and various others. The novelty of using different distros has long gone for me though, i still use Mandriva the most as i can just get work done, Linux or Solaris is mostly the same difference for me most of the time. If i was now learning Linux for the first time and had no Unix know-how either, i've no idea what i'd start out with, or to suggest to others really, i see benefits in the simpler distros and the easier ones too. A colleague even spent ages installing Gentoo onto a multi-cpu Sun server with great results, but he now prefers to use Arch linux these days, that server was only really doing Seti@home number crunching in the end.
I can't comment on fedora because I don't like the rpm type distros.. suse, redhat et al.. The simple ones are good, but there may be quite a few issues as soon as you get off the beaten track with multimedia/sniffers and the like. Arch has good reports.. it doesn't work for me.. something to do with my strange setup, same with 64studio and pclinux. Mandriva 2007 and 8 just don't install.. they hang at the blue screen.. I need uptime and reasonable reliability on old strange hardware, so it's the distros that have been around with the cores unchanged from back in the 90's that suit me. Not binning the newer ones.. they just don't seem to have a realistic sparc/alpha multithreaded kernal available where debian and slackware do in a modern 2.6.xx configuration. Small distros.. puppy, feather, dsl, micronix, slax and the gang.. Great for live situations and data recovery, or the non-booting scenario. Slax is my disk of choice for hardware detection, but not for installing.. a quick browse of the distros forums is usually in order to see the issues, likes and dislikes... dsl.. I'm not attacking them in any way, but it's all a bit old.. That is their intention for backwards compatibility on the target hardware, just not much good for full time use (gcc in particular is very out of date) I changed my advice direction a while ago concerning easy distros.. the ones that try to do everything for you don't teach you anything.. when they break it's the same solution as windoze.. format and reinstall.. I'd suggest trying a few ""REAL"" ones.. not the ubuntu type and seeing what fits.. some will be good and others bad.. it all depends a lot on your hardware. You could be really brave and try FreeBSD.. real unix. Be prepared to learn a lot just getting it running....... In a very subjective area like linux distros all I can do is attempt to be impartial.. avoid fanboy-isms and report what I have found on old hardware. I'm sure if you ask 100 linux full time users you will get 100 different answers, but I think most will suggest trying a few and seeing what you like. (my first was slackware 2.1.. how long ago? then donkeys years of bloody redmond stuff in a work environment) Posted this from an antique p2 266 with only 32mb ram running a slackware 2.4 kernal with fluxbox, rox and dillo.. average system usage is less than 20mb.
Hmmm, well I'm starting to realize I need to find out which flavor ice cream I prefer on my cone. I guess I'm just gonna look up the ones mentioned and grab one. I don't have very much HDD space so I will only be installing one at a time if I ever decide to switch between distros. Does anyone have any sort of distro neutral guide of some sort to setting up the basics after the install? By basics I mean security first then like the odds and ends. I know there can't be one guide that would cover everything after the install because the distros apparently vary so much.
Got a spare hdd?? install that and just follow the instructions with the installer.. Security isn't really an issue unless whatever you use runs sudo rather than a proper root account. The iptables firewall that comes with 99.99% of linux distros is more than adequate for desktop use.. some would say it's too strict. In 5 years I have never seen a rootkit or virus that wasn't deliberately and determinedly installed either by a malicious hacker or a stupid user. Not much you can do about either of those... Look for the distros that have a "netinstall" iso to save yourself a whole heap of downloading, or the one disk ones.. I use a few old xbox drives for the OS and a couple of large data storage drives.. for experimenting I think it's a very good way to go.. there must be lots of 10 and 20 gig hdd's hanging around unused that you can beg/steal/borrow.. most linux distros will happily do a full install in less that 2 gig, including swap space and /home partition.. I think the current full debian is around 700MB for a pretty full installation. Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/hda2 8.3G 3.8G 4.2G 48% / tmpfs 189M 0 189M 0% /lib/init/rw udev 10M 60K 10M 1% /dev tmpfs 189M 0 189M 0% /dev/shm /dev/hdb1 76G 63G 8.9G 88% /home that's debian after nearly 2 years with over 4000 applications, who knows how many media players and other stuff installed. the OS is taking (with all those apps) not much more than basic windows.. 48% of an old xbox hdd, and I haven't decluttered it in ages. If you are on an old spare machine don't bother trying to dual boot or any of that nonsense.. just do a clean install first time and accept what the installer does. They normally get it right.. That's one of the reasons you don't neet to worry about security and things right off.. it's not like you are building a production real webserver or anything, and you will very likely break it pretty quick first time :lol: I know I have broken quite a few installs by messing about with apps from different dev streams. I know creaky will agree.. until you find out what does what, and what depends on what.. and how to resolve conflicts for yourself there can be a few situations of an impossible to recover error or it's just too messed up to bother with.. (silly story.. tried to install a testing package from an upstream repository.. it didn't like a file so it updated it.. then due to a conflict with something else it removed about 70% of the core system.. stupid, but it happens.. That's why I keep all my user data on a physically separate drive.. then quick example 2.. odd software set, all seemed to work well.. some minor updates come through the package manager.. nothing that looked important.. screwed up all the keyboard and display settings. I put that drive to one side for further investigation...) So don't worry too much.. you will break it.. that's all part of the fun... hint::: write down your root and user passwords as you make them ;-) basic guide .. more a reference to commands.. http://blog.lxpages.com/ultimate_linux.html look for the wiki/homepage for whatever one you chose for more specific instructions. I'm surprised OzMick hasn't showed up yet reporting on his arch setup.
I will be doing dual boot for a little while at least because I will still need Windows for some random stuff. My small HDD space (100gb total) just means that I need to move some torrents over to DVDs...
Thought by your post you were installing on some old spare piece of hardware.. I don't trust dual boot windows/linux setups.. trashed 300 gigs of ntfs partition full of data last time.. probably the owners fault not mine.. but haven't been down that road since.. I have no use for windows. ktulu14 dual boots
i've got a machine or two that still dual boot, purely to cut down on machines, got 4 laptops (1's always in use) and 6 desktops (3 of those always in use) and not enough hands. I no longer bother with dual booting for new builds, unless it's a distro i can trust, DSL (Damn Small Linux) let me down bigtime on 2 machines, they were dual or triple boot and DSL managed to physically corrupt the Windows partition on both machines (without any help from me), that put me off DSL, which up until then i really liked. But then there's always the slew of live cd's to use instead of dual booting. Back way back there only used to be the Knoppix live cd (which was and still is very good), but these days everyone and their uncle are producing live cd's, which makes dual booting a bit pointless. When i'm on a remote site (depending on which laptop i have with me) i just use linux to get everything done, some laptops still have java issues (don't you just have java) so i end up rebooting into windows for some firmware tasks on the servers, as some need to be updated via GUI in Java. But i also keep a few live cd's with me so i have a choice and don't get stuck because i've taken the wrong laptop with me (that either doesn't work quite right or because i'd forgotten to finish fixing the laptop or whatever). as per slugfuk there's going to be times when it breaks spectacularly, and until you've got the knowledge to fix, it's going to be reinstall time.
very true creakster.. I have seen dsl destroy a windows setup without even being installed.. just running the live cd seemed to corrupt the boot files.. (cramfs file made possibly?) Ubuntu lost all the partitions.. not a clue as all I was given was a machine with no partitions remaining. the ext3 was recoverable.. but the ntfs was corrupted beyond any chance without paying a fortune to a data recovery company. fedora and debian seem safe, but I would still advise using a spare drive rather than risking bringing ntfs drives anywhere near linux. I still don't truly believe that they have managed to get both file systems to fully respect the spaces used by the other. I have a sneaky feling that some distros use anything they see as free space for swap areas.. and windows will expand it's paging file over anything not ntfs at random. google returns over 1,000,000 hits for dual boot data corruption.. Suggest using a physically separate drive and swapping them for each os.
I wouldn't discount using Ubuntu as an introduction to the world of Linux. Say what you want about it's security, but it DOES simplify setting up hardware for that first time you experiment. It is hard enough for some users to get accustomed to the interface, and having hardware issues is enough to write off the whole thing and never use Linux again. If you know some command line stuff and config files, it makes troubleshooting hardware issues much easier than trying to troubleshoot and learn at once, and Ubuntu lets you do that. That said, once you know what hardware you have and what you need to do to get it running, try a more advanced distro. I'm really loving Arch, has most of the benefits of Gentoo (quite optimised, rolling release, great community), but without the need to compile everything from scratch, and a really simple set of config scripts. I actually find it nicer to install on my machines than Ubuntu, as no assumptions need to be made about your hardware or video etc, all up to you to make the right decisions. Good luck with your search.
I actually installed Fedora 7. As a matter of fact, that is what I'm using now to submit this post. I am actually pleased with it so far. During the install, it found my M-Audio MobilePre usb sound box and set it up for my audio. Fedora is currently updating itself so I haven't played around with it much. So far though, it seems pretty good. I just have to learn the new commands and such. I appreciate the help and am still open to anything that may be useful for Fedora or linux in general.
Ok, ummmm... I kinda screwed myself. Now that I installed Fedora, I can't boot back into my windows installation. I had system commander on before the install and now it's not there. I don't think the master boot record was overwritten but I could be wrong. In Fedora, I don't know how to view the windows partition or if it's even possible. The partition was NTFS so I figure linux should be able to read it but I could be wrong with that too. The partition could be hidden somehow but who knows. Does anyone know how I can get back into windows?
