Which flavour of linux should i get

[t92300]

which flavour of linux should i get the choices so far red hat 9.0 $60 and mandrake linux 9.1 $100 and $200 approximately for the mandrake power pack 9.1

so people which one should i get or are there better cheaper alternatives

thanks


t92300

 

[Mikoyan]

You're going to pay for Linux?

 

[t92300]

download over 33k dial up it would take me ages not to mention the fact my parents wouldnt be to happy me hoging their businesses/home phone line

plus i think iwill need a manual of some sort

by the way those prices are in nz$

also any cool linux games out there

thanks

t92300

 

[CrackedCrystal]

Originally posted by t92300
plus i think iwill need a manual of some sort

You may want to just buy a book on Linux instead. Many come with a Copy of Linux on CD included with it. So you don't have to buy the boxed Linux. They are usually a little older version, but on the other hand much cheeper. Plus you get a nice book to help you learn it. However, you won't get tech support. But if you find you really need that, you can always buy the boxed set later. Or even just buy the support.

And you ask if there are any games. Don't buy linux if you want to play games, there are not many out there that are of commercial quality. Most people run a windows emulator to play games.

 

[funxus]

Well, why not put the money into getting broadband and then download it for free? Kill two birds with one stone...

I'm sure there are instructions on what to do on the internet also, or forums where you can get help.

I have had both Redhat and Corel Linux installed at home, and I thought Corel was much easier since as I was able to connect to internet through my modem and I could view files in the GUI. I never spent much time on it though, because I used an old and slow computer.

 

[t92300]

ok forget about paying for it which version is the best
as for the games i didnt think there were any but thats what ill be keeping windows for (but just on the off chance)

thanks

t92300

 

[Mikoyan]

Mandrake is best for beginners, IMHO, but it's also one of the most bloated versions.

 

[bladester]

I have used Redhat 6.2, mandrake 7.1 and currently red hat 9. I suggest you go for redhat 9 as it is cheaper .

Also, a friend of mine downloaded mandrake 9 but borrowed my red hat 9 cds. Apparently mandrake 9 had a buggy c compiler, which you will need to install some programs.

As for games, I run unreal tournament (a linux installer can be downloaded) and various other games such as bzFlag. But also check out wine and winex as they implement the windows/directx api's.

Good luck!

 

[t92300]

mikoyan what do you mean bloated bloated as in microsoft buggy bloated or bloated as in comes with all source code lots of apps etc

also what has the best GUI as a windows immigrant a good one of thesse would be important in the short term while im learning linux

thanks

 

[Mikoyan]

I mean the size of the fully-customized system.

It's the biggest Linux version i've installed, with the package going up to 1,4 GB.

 

[bladester]

The two best window managers for linux are Gnome and KDE IMO. Redhat 9 comes with both and mandrake will too most probably. Both Gnome and Kde have user friendly functions like file managers and such to make it easy for you to adjust to linux.

The latest version of Gnome is probably what you would want to start off with as it has been made alot simpler and has less options to confuse you with initially, but when you feel more comfortable with linux try Kde as it is MUCH MUCH more customizable.

 

[Sodapop]

Only for a matter of accuracy... GNOME and KDE are not window manager. They are desktops. Which means that they include a window manager (K window manager or ICEWM for KDE, and any window manager for GNOME, as you can change it), a desktop, a panel and a framework to build apps that have similar GUIs.

RedHat and Mandrake do have both of them. However, my experience with red hat's GNOME has been far better than Mandrake's. And KDE has been far better on Mandrake. So you could base your distro choice on the desktop you prefer (hard to tell before I know).

Anyway, there are several pros and cons to both distro.

RedHat package management sucks. There's no dependencies resolution, so if program X requires program Y, you'll have to find a rpm of program Y to make X install, and then, program Y might have another dependancies, which can make a dependancy hell, as it's often called. But (yes, there has to be a but) if you can live with all the packages included, or don't mind working a bit to make a program install, RedHat is your best bet, as it's the defacto standard. If there are rpms out there, you can bet they'll work on RH (Ximian desktop 2 (which is GNOME with several improvements) has an example, which comes only for RH and SuSE).

Mandrake however is really awesome when it comes to package management. With its tool, urpmi, if you install a program, it will automaticly download all the other program it needs to make it work. That makes the user life a lot easier. The configuration tools are great too, you won't have much config to do, since most of the time, everything works out of the box. The main problem of Mandrake is that it's not as standard as RH, so you might have problems to find packages, but that's a minor problem. But some software are simply not ported (in binary form) to Mandrake (again, I take Ximian desktop 2 as an example).

As for the favorite desktop, personally I prefer GNOME, but I think KDE is more user-friendly at the moment. I started off with GNOME in RedHat, and although it was nice and all, I think I would have prefered KDE to begin with. And GNOME is as configurable as KDE, just that it has hidden some of the useless config options from the end-user. They are still configurable, just hidden.

Finally, the games. Wine & Winex let you play some of the windows game. I've never had luck with any civ games using those 2 program though. Civ2 crashed when it asked you to input your leader name, some say Civ3 works, but it has never worked for me. The only that I ever made to work was colonization, and it worked good, although it tended to be a bit unstable. Point is that you'll never get the same gaming experience as windows with windows games. But (hopefully there's a but here too ) there are more games that gets ported to linux. UnrealTournament 2003 had a linux cd and a windows cd in the box. In most case, it takes the form of a client, that lets you play the game with the same files as windows. There are also free alternative, the first that comes to my mind is freeciv.

So basicly, for a newcomer, I'd say mandrake, with KDE. Have fun

 

[Comraddict]

linux os is worth as much as it cost, so it is exactly 0.00.

 

[Padma]

Just to add to Sodapop's post, I would also recommend Mandrake.

Mandrake 9.1 is as easy to install as Windows, and the KDE environment is quite smooth. (I have worked with UNIX/Linux systems for many years, and I have come to prefer KDE over Gnome. ) Since the original version of Mandrake was an offshoot of RedHat, most RH binaries work fine with Mandrake. Mandrake's urpm command (and gui interface) detects dependencies, and fetches the appropriate libraries to satify them, thus helping avoid "dependency hell".

IIRC, by release of 9.2, Mandrake hopes to become Linux Standard Base (LSB) compliant. All LSB-compliant systems should be able to "share" binaries, with no compatability issues. (I believe RH is also aiming for this as well.)

No offense to any Suse/Debian/etc. users out there - I am only familiar with Mandrake & RedHat. Any of the major distros of Linux will serve you well. And I would encourage you to actually *buy* whatever you decide to use. Since Linux is open source, it is technically "free", and you can download any of them for nothing but the cost of your time & internet connection bill, The distro houses can use any financial support we are willing to give them. One of the things you are purchasing when you buy the distro is free access to tech support for that distro.

 

[Sodapop]

Originally posted by Padma
Just to add to Sodapop's post, I would also recommend Mandrake.

Mandrake 9.1 is as easy to install as Windows, and the KDE environment is quite smooth. (I have worked with UNIX/Linux systems for many years, and I have come to prefer KDE over Gnome. ) Since the original version of Mandrake was an offshoot of RedHat, most RH binaries work fine with Mandrake. Mandrake's urpm command (and gui interface) detects dependencies, and fetches the appropriate libraries to satify them, thus helping avoid "dependency hell".

IIRC, by release of 9.2, Mandrake hopes to become Linux Standard Base (LSB) compliant. All LSB-compliant systems should be able to "share" binaries, with no compatability issues. (I believe RH is also aiming for this as well.)

No offense to any Suse/Debian/etc. users out there - I am only familiar with Mandrake & RedHat. Any of the major distros of Linux will serve you well. And I would encourage you to actually *buy* whatever you decide to use. Since Linux is open source, it is technically "free", and you can download any of them for nothing but the cost of your time & internet connection bill, The distro houses can use any financial support we are willing to give them. One of the things you are purchasing when you buy the distro is free access to tech support for that distro.

That LSB is not really that much of a good thing. If a distro wants to be certified LSB, they have to pay fees, and use rpms. And rpms are not what I would call great. They are the main cause of the dependancy hell. It's better than it used to be but still.

Anyway, you can guess I don't like rpms. Personally, I prefer portage and ebuilds from gentoo and building all my things from source. But that's not something I would actually recommend to a newbie

 

[Padma]

Originally posted by Sodapop
That LSB is not really that much of a good thing. If a distro wants to be certified LSB, they have to pay fees, and use rpms. And rpms are not what I would call great. They are the main cause of the dependancy hell. It's better than it used to be but still.

Anyway, you can guess I don't like rpms. Personally, I prefer portage and ebuilds from gentoo and building all my things from source. But that's not something I would actually recommend to a newbie

Definitely not something I would recommend to a newbie! The *good* thing about RPMs is that even a newbie can install them, without knowing much about what's happening (kind of like with Windows ). As long as there is some mechanism to handle the dependancies, at least.

Myself, I like building from source, usually. But sometimes, when I just want to install the blasted thing ....

 

[Perfection]

I like Red Hat Linux, it's easier to use and get support for if your only a semi Linux literate person like me

 

[bladester]

Originally posted by Padma
Definitely not something I would recommend to a newbie! The *good* thing about RPMs is that even a newbie can install them, without knowing much about what's happening (kind of like with Windows ). As long as there is some mechanism to handle the dependancies, at least.

Myself, I like building from source, usually. But sometimes, when I just want to install the blasted thing ....

I have even heard that in the newer distributions rpm's can be installed with a single mouse click! Maybe even my red hat 9 install has that feature? I open up a terminal and install my apps via command line, usually building directly from source like you guys. It is also fun to try and *hack* source code just to get the darn thing to compile .

Edit: And I have heard nothing but great news about gentoo linux. From all I have heard it seems to have the best package distribution scheme!

 

[phoenix_night]

@t92300,
Why do you want to switch to Linux?

And everybody else, why is it that you use Linux?

Personally, I was also thinking of asking the same question (as t92300). I have Debian here (for some reason, never looked at it), but I think maybe I should get Mandrake. Or so it would seem anyway.

 

[Sodapop]

Why use linux??? Errr, the main reason would be that it's just not the same experience. You (well at least I feel like that) have way more control on the system and on windows, it's way more customizable, it's free (as in speech, and as in beer) and it's highly stable. The only way I've ever crashed linux was when using wine to run windows programs . Other than that, you can crash the GUI, but the system itself is almost uncrasheable. Besides, there's the permission system, which is way better than windows, and finally, you're immune to windows viruses.

Between mandrake and debian, use mandrake. Debian main advantage is apt-get, its package management system. But urpmi with mandrake is pretty much the same.

[geek part people who don't know linux, stop here please ]

I have even heard that in the newer distributions rpm's can be installed with a single mouse click! Maybe even my red hat 9 install has that feature? I open up a terminal and install my apps via command line, usually building directly from source like you guys. It is also fun to try and *hack* source code just to get the darn thing to compile .

Edit: And I have heard nothing but great news about gentoo linux. From all I have heard it seems to have the best package distribution scheme!

AFAKIK Red Hat is good at managing dependancies as long as you use packages that are included on the cds or external packages that depends on program that are on the cd. My only experience have been with RH8, but I've read that the package management hasn't changed much. The only way to really avoid the dependancy hell would be to install apt-get for rpm, but I've never used that, nor read about it, so I won't try to talk about stuff I don't know

And yes, gentoo is great. Portage handles dependancies in a great way. You can set USE flags that will make the program compile with certain options.

USE="gtk gtk2 gnome -qt -kde"

Now that's an example that would make a program compile with gtk or gtk2 and gnome support if possible, and would leave out any qt or kde dependancy. That way, you can keep your system fast and efficient. And you can also set CFLAGS easily to make optimized binaries for your system. The speed improvement is not that much, but the fact that everything can be configured makes the whole system a lot faster than standard easy-to-use distros.

[/geek part]