and yet more similar articles...
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| Author | Content |
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| vainrveenr Apr 11, 2007 2:46 PM EDT |
... ordered by date too! Choosing a Linux Distro By Suresh Ramasubramanian Posted: ( 2001-03-07 04:50:09 EST) http://www.freeos.com/articles/3777/ Choosing a Distro - a newbies guide Wednesday September 18, 2002 (12:02 PM GMT) By John Murray http://distrocenter.linux.com/article.pl?sid=02/09/18/126229... Choosing Between the Big Linux Distros Written by special contributor Marcus Vorwaller on 2003-02-20 09:31:01 UTC http://www.osnews.com/story.php/2865/Choosing-Between-the-Bi... "Which Distro Do You Recommend?" Wednesday March 02, 2005 (08:00 AM GMT) By: Brian Jones http://enterprise.linux.com/article.pl?sid=05/03/01/2248250&... Choosing and Downloading a Distro 08.31.05 Popular Home Distros By Oliver Kaven and Sebastian Rupley http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1854438,00.asp Linux vs. Linux: Which Distro Should You Dump Windows For? * By Bryan Hoff. Date: Sep 16, 2005. http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=414291&rl=1 Choosing a desktop Linux distro by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (Jan. 24, 2006) http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT3269115798.html Choosing a Linux Distro A Newbie's Guide for Newbies By Merlin Whitewolf at 2006-04-14 00:33 http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/articles/Home_Use/Choosi... Also from LQ, http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Choosing_a_Linux_distrib... What are all these distributions and how should I choose one? PDF format! by Stuart Yeates, 2007-02-01 [url=http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/its3/seminar-notes/2007-02-01-which linux-distro.pdf]http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/its3/seminar-notes/2007-02-01-which...[/url] again, a PDF file Choosing a Linux Distribution Date: March 2007 (last updated Wed, 21 Mar 2007) Author: Stuart Yeates http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/selectdistro.xml DistroWatch's The Top Ten Distributions A Beginner's Guide to Choosing a (Linux) Distribution http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major Linux Distribution Chooser test 2005 - 07, http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ zegenie Studios http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/ --------------------------------------------------- An interesting exercise is to compare any subtleties of the earlier "choosing a distro for noob"sites with the current slew of noob recommendeds. |
| jimf Apr 11, 2007 3:58 PM EDT |
@vainrveenr You've just done more damage than you can ever know ;-) |
| vainrveenr Apr 12, 2007 9:27 AM EDT |
Guess that any damage will have to be attributed to growing pains :-) In truth, common themes of all these distro-chooser sites going way back, are the general suggestions of choosing a distro (or narrowing down the distro field to 2-3 distros) based upon 1) one's background (with computers in general, Windows, Macs, UNIX, ... etc.) 2) one's present&anticipated wished-for/required distro features. Hopefully this most accurately sums this up best. |
| jimf Apr 12, 2007 10:06 AM EDT |
Well, 'best' is a very relative term here. As noted in the other thread, this is the last thing that noob users from windows should be looking at. A much better Idea is to actually talk to existing and experienced users, either in person, in Linux forums, or on IRC. No matter how well meaning, 'distro-chooser sites' are a very poor way of picking a distribution and end up being a curiosity more than anything else. What new users need and want is 'experienced advise'. To get that advise, new users need to be individually evaluated by a real live person (other than the noob) and 'distro-chooser sites' are just a cheap substitute for that. New users trying to pick an appropriate Distro this way are usually the one's who flee back to Windows. |
| vainrveenr Apr 12, 2007 12:36 PM EDT |
FWIW, even before the earliest distro-chooser listed on top, there were also ESR's "Editorial Recommendations", such as this one from 'The Linux Distribution HOWTO'
maintained by Eric S. Raymond
v4.10, 10 December 1996,
http://www.ictp.trieste.it/~radionet/nuc1996/ref/howto-html/...
Carefully note from these 1.4 Editorial Recommendations of 1996, ESR's emphasis that "there is no substitute for doing your own evaluation based on experience...":
Quoting:Last section, the facts. In this section, my opinions (for whatever they're worth -- and remember the caveat about free advice). There is no substitute for doing your own evaluation based on experience and the data in this guide, and these are intended more to illuminate my possible biases than as a guide to what you should do.One would do well to recall that a dozen years ago before ESR's own "distro-chooser" was put out, many fewer distros were even readily available, and for those distros that were available, there was much less "experienced advice" for the noob. Plenty of mailed-out AOL floppies and AOL CD's, but minimal-to-NO availability of that free mailed-out Ubuntu install CD... or even that friend's Linux iso CD. Here are some of the recommended American distros from that time period a dozen years ago or thereabouts (taken from http://www.ictp.trieste.it/~radionet/nuc1996/ref/howto-html/...) : * 2.1 Craftworks Linux * 2.2 Debian Linux Distribution * 2.3 DILINUX * 2.4 Linux Pro * 2.5 Red Hat Linux * 2.6 Trans-Ameritech Linuxware * 2.7 Walnut Creek Slackware * 2.8 Yggdrasil Plug-and-Play Linux CD-ROM and the Linux Bible Also, SuSE at this time was an up-and-coming Linux distro from Germany officially called S.u.S.E. GmbH (see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Linux_distributio...). AAMOF, there is probably in all likelihood at least one current LXer reader of this who originally checked out one of the top distro-choosers or else ESR's as anoob, and then eventually encouraged her/himself to venture away from Windows based upon that Slackware or RH 1CD enclosed in a Linux book. |
| jimf Apr 12, 2007 12:45 PM EDT |
@vainrveenr So your point is it's historically intresting? |
| bigg Apr 12, 2007 12:47 PM EDT |
My problem with distro choosers is that with the current live CD's, it takes six times as long and 12 times as much work to choose a distro as it does to get one running on your computer. Pop the CD in, turn on your computer, wait for a Linux desktop to appear. Even a caveman can experience a Linux distribution. |
| jimf Apr 12, 2007 12:48 PM EDT |
> Even a caveman Ohh please... no cavemen ;-) |
| bigg Apr 12, 2007 1:04 PM EDT |
Okay, how about "a chicken can boot Linux". |
| jimf Apr 12, 2007 1:12 PM EDT |
> "a chicken can boot Linux" Well, frankly they're just too... 'chicken' to try it :D |
| jdixon Apr 12, 2007 1:22 PM EDT |
> there is probably in all likelihood at least one current LXer reader of this who originally checked out one of the top distro-choosers or else ESR's Not me. When I started checking out Linux the choices were SLS or Slackware. Debian came along shortly thereafter, as I believe did Yggdrasil. . |
| Sander_Marechal Apr 12, 2007 1:50 PM EDT |
C'mon, the most important criteria in your choice of distro is easy: What are your Linux geek friends and neighbors using? Unless all your Linux geeky friends are running advanced distros such as LFS or Slackware, you should pick what they pick. Having personal support a phone call (or a few streets) away beats most of the differences between distros or their volunteer support communities. |
| bigg Apr 12, 2007 1:57 PM EDT |
> Having personal support a phone call (or a few streets) away beats most of the differences between distros or their volunteer support communities. That's assuming I actually want to support someone else's Linux adventures. I use Debian, but would rather point them in the direction of a distro like Mepis, for instance, that has good (proprietary) wireless support and a good forum. Debian is not intended for newbies and only two people, my mother and my wife, expect to get extensive help from me. |
| number6x Apr 13, 2007 5:54 AM EDT |
S.u.S.E. GmbH was founded about a year before redhat. They started out selling support and installation of the old SLS linux distribution. SLS is the distro that Slackware is based on! Two of the founders of Suse wrote a book on how to install and run Linux that was the 'bible' for early Linux users in Europe. After Red Hat started selling Linux, SuSE started to develop its own distro based on Slackware. Suse really became big when they added Red Hat's rpm package management to their slackware based system. Suse was a great commercial distro. For many years I purchased a copy of their releases from their web site in order to support them. Whatever became of them? (That's sarcasm) |
| jdixon Apr 13, 2007 6:06 AM EDT |
> After Red Hat started selling Linux, SuSE started to develop its own distro based on Slackware. Yep. SuSE started as pretty much Slackware with rpm's and KDE. The heritage is still there if you check their base packages. |
| dcparris Apr 13, 2007 6:44 AM EDT |
And I always thought it was rooted in Red Hat. Learn something new everyday. ;-) |
| number6x Apr 13, 2007 7:14 AM EDT |
I think Slackware had the most packages for any distro at the time, and RPM was 'teh hot' in package management. So it was pretty exciting when these German guys ported rpm to a slackware based distro. Yast was an attempt to create a consolidated install tool and control center. The first time I used SuSE (or Red Hat for that matter) they both used FVWM. They were both command line based and you would set up X manually after install. I remeber how the X86Config steps were second nature to me. |
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