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General discussion

Which Linux?

Oct 23, 2005 3:14PM PDT

I have a Dell Precision 340 which i have windows XP SP2 on. I also however need a recommendation on which linux to put on a second partition.

My main reason for requiring linux is to get familiar with it as well as to program C.

So far im considering Knoppix, Ubuntu or Debian.

Discussion is locked

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ubuntu
Oct 23, 2005 6:40PM PDT

It depends on what you want (diffent folks, different strokes, so to speak)

If you are a curious home user looking to dable in the world of linux while still having a working system, ubuntu is the way to go. It is a strong distro with a great, helpful community.

Check out www.ubuntuguide.org for tips on how to get up and running.

The guide is for ubuntu 5.04 and the latest version is 5.10; you can either run 5.04 (which will be supported with updates for at least another year) or you can be daring and try use the page as a guide to point you in the right direction on how to do things in 5.10. I would recommend using 5.04, though.

If you want a more "geekish" experience, debian sid is nice.

Knoppix is just a live CD version of Debian. If you install it, it becomes Debian, it think, or at least it is so similar you might as well just install debian.

Good Luck!

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bulldogzerofive, may I ask...
Oct 25, 2005 12:20PM PDT

Your opinion on Gentoo 2005.1, if you have one?

I'm a home user, and it was recommended (along with Slack/some others) to me by a college acquaintance. My gut feeling says its the right distro for me, but I'd like a second opinion before I install it.

My main tasks will involve Programming/Open source, using the Net/www and some more general ones e.g. listening to mp3s, WP etc.

Hope you help.

Regards,

Xandar

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Never Used it
Oct 27, 2005 8:28PM PDT

I have never used Gentoo and don't know much about it...

I understand it is hard to start with moving into the linux world because you have to compile it yourself, which takes a lot of time and a little bit of know-how, but because it is compiled for YOUR system everything works the way you want it and it results in a rock-solid system. In other distros (like ubuntu), you have to go optimize the system after the fact to get it running as fast as possible, which can introduce new bugs if you don't know what you are doing.

Gentoo's package manager (aka program manager-- this is very important in linux) is called portage and is supposed to be "tha bomb," but you can get a very similar functionality with apt in debian (or debian-based distros like ubuntu) or rpm in redhat (or redhat based distros like Mandriva).

All said, though, i have never heard anyone recommend Gentoo to the newbie, but feel free to try it if you're daring. It has a great install manual.

Good Luck!

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(NT) (NT) Thank you very much, bulldogzerofive.
Oct 30, 2005 11:25AM PST
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suse
Oct 23, 2005 9:49PM PDT

After many years I keep coming back to Suse for easy install and pretty wide hardware support.

Look at http://www.opensuse.org and it's download links.

Bob