Which flavor of Linux for me?
Published by michael December 20th, 2004 in techI’ve made up my mind to try out Linux after continually reading postive things about it. Quite a few bloggers I respect have written about it or use it, and it seems to permeate many tech circles, as does much of the great stuff I find valuable (like firefox, delicious, wordpress, etc.). Perhaps the greatest reason beyond its stability and alleged functional superiority to Windows or Mac OSs is the philosophy of open-source software itself that so positive and subversive to the corporate dominance of computer technology.
I plan on installing it on a partition of my hard drive, leaving room to keep Windows functional until the day that I might be able to switch over completely.
Update: I read on Podz’ blog that creating a partitioned hard drive (aka dual-boot right?) can be risky, so I’m no longer certain of the partitioning plan.
I’m currently researching the various distributions available, some of which are free downloads, others packaged and supported variations on the basic package. I’m definately into keeping a GUI, ideally a pretty one, even though I have a simple working knowledge of some command line stuff from Unix. In all of my reading on Linux, I mostly hear people talking about Mandrake, Debian, RedHat, SuSe, and Fedora, (and Ubuntu). Right now, I’m scouring forums and directories trying to glean the pros and cons of each distribution.
Update #2: I found this guide on choosing a distro and am reading it now!
If you use Linux, and have a moment, please leave a comment telling which you use and why you chose it!
5 Responses to “Which flavor of Linux for me?”
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Right, it’s a tricky one, but here’s my 2p’s worth… I run Fedora Core 3, Gentoo, and A music/video production based Debian install of DeMuDi. For ease of use, I’d say go for fedora, easy install, should pick up everything for ya. For max customizability, I’d say go for Gentoo, as you can add as much or as little as you want. Both are pretty, but gentoo can be customized even more. Downsides are that both take 3 cd’s to download, and Gentoo will take longer than Fedora to install, and is a little more complex, but definately worth the hassle, as it’s my fave for a desktop!
As regards partitioning, it’s not all that hard, the most important thing is to keep your head, and bear in mind that 9 times out of 10, you’ll be using the linux bootloader (lilo or grub), so if you delete the linux, you will have to redo your windows bootloader. Not too much hassle, but can be a bit awkward!
Easiest way to get around partition is to get a cheap second hdd and run it on that (you can get em for about 30 quid these days!)
Any questions/queries, drop me a line… I’m by no means a linux guru, so may be able to answer your problems in a non geek way! :p
Don’t be pressured to move on over to Linux entirely anytime in the near future, Windows will probably be there when you need it, and trust me, you will. I’ve counted my lucky stars on more than one occasion, especially when I was just starting out with linux, something would go wrong and I’d have to revert to windows for a while. While Linux does just work(tm), a great deal of things are different and confusing for a new user and you might find yourself in a similar position as I was in when I a) couldn’t get back into my graphical environment b) couldn’t connect to the internet c) etc etc. Most often the “problem” was that I just didn’t know what I was doing. But that is more than acceptable in the learning process
I’m using linux solely right now, but it took me almost a year to come to a point where I felt I knew enough about linux in order to do so.
I use Mandrake 10.0 and started out with 9.2. It was the first distribution I tried out and I stuck with it, since I was so pleased with the way things were set up and it was known at the time to be the distribution with the best hebrew support (even though it’s not normally related to the distribution itself rather the graphical environment and applications, but I didn’t know that back then). I love Mandrake, I rarely use the command line so MDK suits me as a GUI oriented distribution.
Linux does everything I need an operating system to do, and I rarely come upon an application I need which doesn’t have a Linux counterpart. My needs may differ than yours, though, it’s a good idea to check out which applications are available for your specific needs before you “take the plunge”.
I’m at the point where I feel more “at home” with Linux. I find it comfortable, non-threatening, and I know that I never need to seek far for help.
Neither should you, by the way. I’m here, and if you have any questions you’re welcome to shoot them my way. If it’s something I can’t answer, I’ll try to direct you to some place which you might find what you’re looking for.
AJ: Thanks! 2nd HD sounds like a good plan, but from everything I’ve heard about Gentoo it sounds a bit daunting. I wish I could try them all out in some super-Linux-expo… ha. Did you download or purchase your fedora/gentoo installs? Have you tried other distros also?
Liron: Thanks! Did you download or purchase Mandrake? Did you join the “Mandrake-club”? Do you have it installed on a partition, a separate HD or a separate box entirely? How did you go about the distro-decision when you made it?
downloaded them all.
I’ve tried gentoo, red hat, fedora, knoppix, susie, Debian, and Debian based DeMuDi.
Gentoo seems daunting, but the manual is EASY to understand, and you only put on what you need. Also, adding programs later is easier on Gentoo than on any other distro I’ve come across. 2nd HDD makes it very hard to kill your system, as so long as anything points to HDB you’re sorted! Easiest way is to just download a live cd and try that I suppose… that’s what got me hooked!
Update 1/8/04: (With a gift card, I ordered a small 40Gb HDD to install as a 2ndary drive in my desktop so as not to risk botching my main HD with some newbie partitioning fiasco.
I’ve been messing around alot with the MOVE (mandrakelinux) livecd and like it quite a bit (more than Suse which gave me more hassles, and a bit more than the austere looking Ubuntu, although I really like the totally non-commercial philosophy of the Ubuntulinux.org site). Those are the main 3 live cd’s I’ve had success with so far, although Gentoo livecd loaded, I got dropped at a command line prompt. The command line still baffles me, as my entire unix-based vocabulary is less than 10 commands.
I’m not going to jettison Windows by any stretch of the imagination, not for a long time, if then even. It’s still the OS that requires little to no thought to navigate and get stuff done on. I may well spend less and less time in the Windows environment, depending on my ability to get stuff done on Linux. I’m hoping I notice some improvements with Linux in terms of speed and ease of use. It’s awfully hard to judge those things from an OS that’s running off a CD or Dvd, but the whole livecd concept is really great.