Which Linux Disto (yet again)

[Tea]

Yup. It's that time of year again. Time for me to once more waste $10 of Tannin's money on our annual sample of the Linux water. One day we are going to do this and say "Hey - wow! We can finally stop selling Microsoft junk!" I doubt that that happy day is here yet, but every time we look at another Linux release it's getting closer. When we see a disto that we figure we can happily pre-load and say "Here Mrs Jackson, you can surf the web, write your letter, do your accounts, and not have to call us for help" , we will start pushing it instead of M$ stuff.

So far, we have done this with Caldera, Red Hat, and Mandrake, each one a year or six months apart, and each one a lot closer to the mark than the one before. Time we did it again.

SuSE?
Mandrake again?
Red Hat?

Strictly desktop, guys: home users, non-nerds. Which one comes closest? (I don't care if we have to buy it, just so long as it is either cheap or freely copyable. I'll save myself the download by buying it on CD from www.everythinglinux.com.au

 

[SteveC]

I would say either Mandrake or Redhat. However, they're still not quite there yet. Mandrake 9.0 still has some rough edges since it's a .0 release, but on the whole I haven't had any major problems with it. The hardware detection is very good, and Samba and printing just work. Evolution, OpenOffice, and Mozilla can handle just about everything the typical web surfing/letter writing user needs without any troubles. Speed and stability have also been very good, but some of the extra programs it comes with seem incomplete and crash prone (They seem to include too many superfulous programs that the average user will never use).
I haven't tried Redhat 8.0 yet, but it's supposed to be equally good. The Bluecurve theme looks very nice and uncluttered, and probably would be a little easier for new users to navigate. The default fonts are supposedly much nicer also, although I haven't seen it first hand. It doesn't have MP3 support out of the box, but that could be easily added. It'll probably be the next release cycle before Linux could truly contend with Windows for the average user, although the more savvy user will probably have no problem with these releases.

Steve

 

[blakerwry]

I like mandrake 9.0 but had reapeated problems with the included mozilla 1.1 (had to download 1.2)

Overall I think that a savvy user or a user doing only basic things such as email/surf/word processing would love mandrake.

I have also tried Redhat 8 w/ blue curve... I didn't personally like it as much as mandrake, I thought mandrake looked nicer and came with a better interface out of the box... but Blue curve reminds me a bit more of windows... so it may make for a smoother transition for most people.

I would have to agree with Steve. Neither is there yet, but by the next cycle they probably will be.

 

[Dozer]

I am definitely a Mandrake fan. It was fairly easy to configure, and runs very smoothly on my PIII-800. I am running Lycoris on another machine, which is supposed to be more like windows, but I wouldn't recommend it as a customer solution as it seems to be quite sluggish.

I agree with both SteveC and blakewry--the average computer user is probably not quite ready for Linux as the distros currently stand. But they are sure getting darn close!

 

[Tannin]

Hmm.. I guess that's what we were expecting: a "next to final" experiment, if you like. Another look at Linux to see where it's up to, another "not quite yet" decision. Mostly, the idea just to keep a finger on the pulse. When the time comes, desktop 'nix is going to just explode onto the market. One day: like today. Three months later, Linux everywhere.

I'm inclined to think that we might leave it go till about Christmas time, wait out another minor revision cycle. My main interest is in seeing usable font management that doesn't look like DR Gem circa 1984. I like the souind of what they are trying to do with the new Red Hat look.

 

[Buck]

RedHat 8 is much improved from previous versions. I like the GUI of Lycoris, but the sentiment ends there. I think the RedHat/Mandrake duo are doing quite well in providing continuous improvements in performance and with the UI. But I'm still waiting for the one that will replace Windows for me.

 

[LiamC]

I have been playing with RH 7.3 a lot in the last few weeks and it works OK but SAMBA is giving me fits. However it doesn't apply to your situation because I want to share a FAT32 drive with validated users only.

As far as most Linux distro's (that I've used) go, the interface is clunky. Everything and the kitchen sink is on the menu somewher and there is usually two different ways to do the same thing (and probably three). For your intended purposes Tony/TEA/Tannin, I would count this as a minus.

The auto updater (a la Windows update) in RH 7.3 works really well, though you have to register (free) for it to work. It certainly works much better than the updater in Mandrake 8.0/8.1.

RH7.3 includes a number of apps like KATE (K editor) useful for text editing that just crash for no apparent reason - I'm talking Windows 3.1 frequency crashing here.

Window Managers. I only ever use KDE becasue they seem to be making progress where Gnome don't.

Lycoris on the other hand, with the brief time I played with it had a brilliant interface. No make that double brilliant. K.I.S.S. Loved it
For your purposes, I'd go with it. If an item is not there, there is less chance that a newb will stuff with it. The problem I had with Lycoris was getting an ADSL connection working. No ADSL software out of the box. I tried stuffing around with Roaring Penguin, but once I had to get down to compiling my own software (and I'm a developer for a living) and start specifying where everything was located, I said no thanks. Modem software was included (dialer etc) and worked.

IMO, the mating of the Lycoris interface with the United Linux idea of everybody putting all the common files in the same bloody folder locations would make a compelling distro.

Try Lycoris, and maybe RH 8.0 or Mandrake 9.0 as well this time around. It might be closer than you think.

 

[Tannin]

Where do I get Lycoris from, Liam? I can't seem to find it listed at everythinglinux.com.au. (Don't want to download, prefer to pay a few dollars and buy it on CD.)

 

[Mercutio]

I'm a Redhat person, but I don't pretend that Linux is right for everyone.
I think Lycoris might be a good place for Tannin to place. I've read happy things about Xandros as well.

Every distro does some things better than others. I think you'd need a wider sampling than just one distribution to really see where things are at.

 

[LiamC]

Bugger! I would have though that EL would have Lycoris. I have a set of images I downloaded about three months ago, so drop me email on where to send them and I'll burn you copies and send them to you. Should be good for eval purposes and then you can decide if you really want to offer it/use it as an option.

 

[Tannin]

Cool! Thanks Bill.

56 Victoria Street
Ballarat, 3350

 

[JMP]

How about minimum system requirements, I would like to try one as a Windows replacement on some older machines ( PII-400 or K6-2 400) but I think it would chug too much>

Jeff

 

[Mercutio]

You;ll be perfectly happy if you've got a decent amount of RAM - 128MB. A Pentium 200 would work fine for most of the rest,

 

[NRG = mc²]

Although I didn't use it much. Lycoris is very simple to use and quite a few similarities with Windows, give it a try.

 

[Tannin]

Lycoris sounds good to me. I'm looking forward to trying it out. Also, in the semi-relevant department, I stumbled across this Register article the other day. It promises to finally fix what is, in my view, by far the worst problem with Linux: those appalling on-screen fonts. If it hadn't been for the terrible look and feel, I'd have been happy to start our Linux-in-Retail revolution with the Mandrake 8.0 we trialled six months or so ago. It wasn't perfect but, font problems aside, it was close enough.

 

[CougTek]

the worst problem with Linux: those appalling on-screen fonts.

It is now a thing of the past with KDE 3. Fonts in Mandrake 9 look just as good, if not even more, than on Win2K. I haven't tried it, but since it partly uses KDE 3 too, I expect RedHat to look very good too.

SuSe 8.1 is suppsed to be great, but it isn't available for free.

Visit www.osnews.com for more info on Linux distros and other OSes.

 

[LiamC]

Linux fonts. Just noticed this over on La Reg -

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/27788.html