Linux nub

[BooST]

Wondering which version of Linux to install, I understand it's all personal prefrence, but what would be a good install for a person new to Linux?

I have Knoppix, been playing around, I just want to install somthing on my drive instead of running it off the CD

 

[Howell]

How long have you played with the CD? Are you now vaguely familiar with how linux works?

 

[sechs]

I generally suggest that people go with Mandrake or SuSE. They're easy to install and pretty much set everything up for you.

 

[BooST]

Vague would be an unjust description

Thanks for the input sechs

 

[The JoJo]

Another vote for Suse.

 

[Mercutio]

Use what other people you know have. You'll probably run into the same issues that they did, and they'll be able to help you.

If you're interested in seriously learning Linux for Unix' sake, I'd suggest Slackware or a *BSD. BSDs aren't Linux, but fundamentally, either way you're going to get something that's closer to a traditional "unix" experience with very few preconfigured services and no fancy admin consoles to do all the work for you.

OTOH, all the commercial Unix systems have fancy consoles to do all the work for you.

Software Package management is a big weakness with all the Linux distros. Gentoo does it right, with a BSD-like system, and Debian has apt-get, which itself sucks less than Redhat's rpm. Or you could ignore the whole thing and do macho-man compiles from source. Hands down, package management is the biggest frustration for techies running Linux (on the desktop side, I'd say the inconsistencies in UI are probably the worst thing).

If you want something where everything is already done for you and everything works in a desktoppy fashion, that'd be SuSE, or Knoppix if you aren't even willing to make the commitment of formatting a hard disk. SuSE isn't quite a commercial player in the US, but since it's now owned by Novell, that'll be changing.

For commercial interests, and for current widespread industry support, RedHat is the guy to know. Small Businesses generally know RedHat if they know anything about Linux, and RedHat offers good support for its OS, if you've got the cash. RedHat is distinctly NOT desktoppy. It doesn't even ship with an MP3 player among all the packages you can install. It's presently the "business linux", and it's what I run on my machines at home.

Another option in the desktop department is Mandrake, which is free (SuSE costs money), fairly common among hobbyists and IMO a little bit flakey in comparison with everybody else (e.g. problem with LG CD drives, occasional extra RPM hell for being similar to, but not exactly like RedHat).

Debian is a decent intermediate choice. I'm not a big fan of its community, but it is flexible enough as a "server" or "desktop" linux, and it has apt-get which, once again, is a big step up from RPM.

Beyond that, there's dozens of specialized Linux distros. Some are made for newbs (Lindos, Lycoris). Some are specialized for multimedia (EvilEntity, MoviX). Some are set up to be Diagnostic tools (SystemRescue) or for networking functions (Smoothwall). It just depends on what you want and what you want to do.

 

[BooST]

Well, What I'd like to accomplish is to start playing with linux. Knoppix is nice, my only problem with it is it running off the CD. Do I need to just move the files on the CD to the HDD and I'm done?

I have a dedicated machine that I just came into so I can play / format / whatever it until I get somthing I like, Knoppix worked fine, the slackware install had a whole lot of crap I didn't understand and it doesn't work.

Thanks again for your input

 

[SteveC]

Well, What I'd like to accomplish is to start playing with linux. Knoppix is nice, my only problem with it is it running off the CD. Do I need to just move the files on the CD to the HDD and I'm done?

There's an instruction guide on how to install Knoppix to a hard drive here. I haven't tried it myself, but I believe you basically end up with Debian once it's installed.

 

[mubs]

Reviving a decade+ old thread.

For support reasons, I'd prefer a mainstream version even if there's a bit of a learning curve. Would that be Ubuntu and not Xubuntu or Kubunu?

Also, when they say AMD64, I guess that will work on Intel 64-bit as well? Thanks!

 

[CougTek]

AMD64 is what you want and yes, it works with Intel's x86-64 processors. What you don't want is IA-64, which is for Itanium processors and which isn't compatible at all with anything you can possibly have at home.

Many others here have deeper Linux knowledge than me, but I've installed and used (and am still using at the office) many Linux distros. I have a few CentOS and Ubuntu servers virtual machines deployed at the office. I've run Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Fedora, OpenSuSe and probaly a few others in the past. I prefer Ubuntu derivatives to RedHat's and SuSe's. I've had issues with Mint though ; never gotten a fully working installation based on it, although I've only tried in inside virtual machines.

I'll never again use anything based on Mandriva as it has constantly screwed my drive's partitions every time I've tried it over the years.

After reading this short article (see page 2 and 3), I plan to try PC-BSD (based on FreeBSD) in the near future. Very good results compared to most Linux distros and with a ZFS file system.

 

[timwhit]

Xubuntu and Ubuntu are almost exactly the same, just different packages come installed by default.

 

[Handruin]

After reading this short article (see page 2 and 3), I plan to try PC-BSD (based on FreeBSD) in the near future. Very good results compared to most Linux distros and with a ZFS file system.

You can easily get ZFS on Linux and it works very well. It's not just a BSD thing. It's not installed on Linux by default because of the different licenses.

 

[CougTek]

You can easily get ZFS on Linux and it works very well. It's not just a BSD thing. It's not installed on Linux by default because of the different licenses.

I know ZFS can be used on Linux, but the last time I've seen comparative benchmarks, its implementation was slower than on BSD and of course Solaris (where it came from). It might have changed as it was more than a year ago.

 

[Handruin]

I know ZFS can be used on Linux, but the last time I've seen comparative benchmarks, its implementation was slower than on BSD and of course Solaris (where it came from). It might have changed as it was more than a year ago.

I haven't found anything concrete to show this with recent versions compared to BSD/Solaris. ZFS On Linux is production ready for enterprise environments.

 

[mubs]

Thanks Tim. I had tried Xubuntu in a VM and it was amazingly easy to use the basics. I also tried a ready-to-run Ubuntu VM that was quite frustrating. Just saying...

 

[sedrosken]

Throwing in my two cents.

On my laptop I'm using Arch x86_64, but honestly it was a pain to install and an even bigger pain to get everything working properly in. I still haven't finished with that over two weeks later, that's how big of a pain it is. Repository convenience with Yaourt be damned, I'd rather have to add a repository on an Ubuntu derivative than spend three days just figuring out what applications I need and installing them. But, it's installed, I'll leave it alone until it annoys me enough that I want to mess with it.

Meanwhile on my dad's old A64X2 that I've brought back into service I have a completely working copy of Xubuntu x86_64 that I've had running for a couple days, and everything I have tried (and I do mean everything, including some light gaming, even on a machine with 2GB of RAM) works very well. Had to do some manual reconfiguration for some settings that I was partial to, but the defaults were perfectly serviceable as well.

Regarding ZFS, I've always seen it as an option and assumed it worked, but I've always opted to use ext4 for my needs. What particular features does ZFS have that ext4 does not?

 

[Stereodude]

Linux will never be a viable replacement for Windows because the people guiding the various Linux flavors and major programs have no interest in making it just work or cloning Windows. They make stuff different not because it's better, but because they want to make it different. It's like a point of pride with them that the average heathen slob who uses Windows can't sit down and use their OS flavor or Linux program intuitively in a way they're used to.

Further, when it doesn't work and something goes wrong, it really doesn't work and heaven help you if you're not a Linux guru savvy with the command line.

I'm no Apple fan, but they were able to do what the Linux folks have been unable to do. IE: put a familiar GUI on top of new guts and make it work (as before). And yes, I realize OS X is not Linux, but Unix based, but it's the same idea when discussed as this high of a level.

 

[mubs]

I sorta have to agree with you DD. During my extremely limited exposure to Linux, I saw messages to do various shell things which I have no idea about. I last worked on Unix between 1995 and 2000, and that too, on a "need-to-know" basis, meaning I learned just enough to get things done, and since by definition Unix is ultra stable, there was very little need to monkey around. I was too busy with application issues to have time for playing around anyway.

 

[Handruin]

Linux will never be a viable replacement for Windows because the people guiding the various Linux flavors and major programs have no interest in making it just work or cloning Windows. They make stuff different not because it's better, but because they want to make it different. It's like a point of pride with them that the average heathen slob who uses Windows can't sit down and use their OS flavor or Linux program intuitively in a way they're used to.

Further, when it doesn't work and something goes wrong, it really doesn't work and heaven help you if you're not a Linux guru savvy with the command line.

I'm no Apple fan, but they were able to do what the Linux folks have been unable to do. IE: put a familiar GUI on top of new guts and make it work (as before). And yes, I realize OS X is not Linux, but Unix based, but it's the same idea when discussed as this high of a level.

As someone who has to use a Mac every day, I'd of rather had a Linux desktop. As much as this Mac has a command line, I hate using it and gravitate towards any other Linux machine I can remote into to get my work done vs doing anything locally on this system. This machine is nothing more than a glorified terminal for me. As much as this Mac has a subjectively functional and pretty GUI, I'd rather not use it. I've been pissed off too many times because of it. I plug in a 4K panel and have to figure out how to finger-fuck a keyboard command to get into a hidden desktop menu to force the size and refresh to almost the right resolution. Seriously, WTF Apple...why can't your modern-day shit work at 4K? My Intel i7 built-in GPU works at 4K via HDMI so why can't this one???

I've had to customize the GUI with apps to make it less stupid. I've had to bring in my own mouse and keyboard to gain back the sanity I lost to Macthulhu while my fingers figure out some unnatural karma-sutra to get things done. I've had to disable or workaround the things that Apple has tried to do to make my life easier when it really hasn't. I used to think this pain came from years of using a Windows machine but I don't have the same angst when using Linux desktops. My two biggest beefs with Linux desktops is the slow UI response and lousy font rendering. I realize that this is being said coming into this with more than enough Linux command line experience to make a Linux desktop functional for me but that was only gained through years of banging my head on the desk trying to fix things when they've gone wrong. There have been many times I've borked a Linux machine and couldn't figure it out only to take the "easy" road of reinstalling the entire OS. That may be why I loathe the Mac because it failed to achieve something useful at either ends of the spectrum. It looks nice, it's easily portable, and has really good battery life so there's something.

 

[Mercutio]

I'm just going to say that Handy's assessment of OSX is almost entirely the same as my own. I see a lot more "Hey, why doesn't that just work?" on OSX than I ever did on Windows (where things do actually mostly just work, or else I know exactly how to configure them anyway) or Linux (where things break all the time in weird ways but I expect that and probably have some idea where to poke around to get them working again).

One reason I haven't had many issues with Linux in "desktop" form is that I've gone out of my way to MOSTLY use the same window manager and shell environment for the last two decades. I've tried out GNOME and KDE and E but I have a happy home setup that I don't feel like changing. About 98% of what I'm going to do on a linux box will be in a terminal session or in a web browser regardless, so as long as I can start those two things I'm probably fine. Nothing else has that level of stability and I respect the hell out of it.

 

[Stereodude]

Lets not get ahead of ourselves here. I didn't say OS X was good, or a great OS. I personally hate it. What I said is it was easy for Mac OS users to use despite being totally different underneath. Someone could make a Linux desktop environment that is very easy for Windows users to use despite being Linux underneath, but there's no interest in that. Simultaneously, the same Linux groups complain that they don't gain marketshare while MS seems to be doing everything they can to alienate users.

 

[sedrosken]

Oh, but there is. Zorin, for one, aims to be a clone of Windows in regards to the UI if memory serves me correctly, or at least as close as you can get Linux to that ideal. Plenty of prepackaged Linux distros have the primary aim of making Linux easy to use for the common person, and Ubuntu is only ONE of those. Before they Unity'd everything, Ubuntu was my favorite simply because it was THE easiest to use out of the box. Even now, Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, and particularly Linux Mint (though I detest Mint for reasons that frankly I don't even know, it just rubs me the wrong way I guess) have a very simple out of the box experience. It's true that when things go wrong, they go horribly wrong, but for the average user that doesn't go messing with stuff they don't know about, things only rarely get that bad. I could (and indeed DID) sit down my grandmother at an Xubuntu machine and have her be perfectly able to do what she needs or wants to do. True, she's more literate than most, being that she's had and used computers since the early DOS days, but she has no idea how Linux works.

 

[mubs]

While doing some research on W10, I came across this page: Major Linux Problems on the Desktop or Why Linux is not (yet) Ready for the Desktop, 2016 edition

It seems one is caught between the devil (MS) and the deep blue sea.