As a dedicated reader of OSNews.com and a VP of Technology for an IT firm that specializes in utilizing Open Source solution for small business, I have been amazed at the rash of some reviews on the various distros of Linux and their failure to really help readers make a choice on what they should use or try. Linux has really matured in the desktop arena and in alot less time than Windows took to do so.I’ve been trying, and I mean really trying to select a version of Linux to use at home, but with much disappointment. This isn’t a review, it an opjective professional opinion based on 3 years of real experimentation with Linux as a ‘average home use’ OS. I will also point out that I am not a fan of Windows and use only Linux now in the work environment. I was a convert from the NT/2000 world who learned Linux like most people I know, in whatever spare time they had. I love Linux, and as a server OS, uneaqualed. Linux is an OS that with a professional with the right skills, can be shaped to perform just about any task, very well. Now we professionals have to do the hardest task there is, make it easy enough to please everyone.
To make this easier for readers, consider this a guide to a finding a Linux distro that will fit your needs and help you have a better experience with Linux.
1) Gentoo – A great distro for those who like to be on the bleeding edge with a great support community. This is a very fast, optimized distro which has different versions based on your CPU model and optimized to perform better on those CPU’s. If you are unexperienced in Linux or afraid of the command line, this is not for you. It also takes nearly an entire day to install everything you need for a good desktop OS. Lots of software choice and easy update management. This is a great distro for those who love to tinker, tune and really love compling code.
2) Mandrake 9.2/SuSe 9.0 Pro/Fedora Core 1 – I am grouping these three together because both offer a very good user experience and show alot of polish to the look & feel of the desktop itself. Everything works and most of the software you need is included. The install process is easy enough for just about anyone who has ever installed an OS before to understand and perform without incident. All discover hardware well and install the correct drivers to operate a stable desktop. These also lack proper multimedia suport like Mplayer, Xine and all the codecs needed to handle Quicktime, Windows Media, MP3(Fedora Core) and Real Player files. You will need to install various libraries, codecs and plugins for your browser to properly handle multimedia.
3) Lindows 4/4.5 – Great distro for someone who knows very little about computers or OS’s and wants to try Linux! For an average consumer who wants a great OS that will be stable, nice to look at and use, and offers plenty of easy-to-install, easy-to-use software, this is for you. Very close to what a desktop should be. Everything works. It does a good job with wireless and detecting digital cameras and USB devices. If your a developer/tinkerer and like to use apt-get or synaptic to install additional software, this is not for you. CNR is a great was for average users to install software, but using apt/synaptic will break it.
4) Lycoris Update 3 – Same as 3. A great OS for beginners and does an excellent job of imitating the look and feel of Windows XP. Again everything works and it has a great support community. I encountered many problems with wireless cards though and it is still based on KDE 2.2.2.
5) Ark Linux – Still alpha and still many things that don’t work well. Last one I tested was alpha 7 and the current release is alpha 10. So it may be better now. Personally, I would wait till it matures more.
There are a number of smaller releases I haven’t tried and since some of these distros mentioned are Debian-based releases, I will say that Debian itself is a good distro for the experienced Linux user, but not a beginner. Lindows is based on the Debian flavor and good for beginners. When you want to step up, I would look at Debian or Gentoo.
Again, this is to be more of a suggested guideline not a review. I hope it helps a few make a decision to try Linux. It will suprise you. And you can install all of these on a seperate partition or hard drive in your existing system witha dual-boot configuration so you can try it without blowing away windows. I know this much, Linux is getting better and better because of a great community, and the more people that use it and provide good feedback about their experience, the better it will get.
6)Debian
Maybe the most “standard” GNU/Linux distro. Also, included software is all *free* (as in licensing not price).
7)Slackware
A slick distro, not for the inexperienced. It’s mission is to be the most “unix-like” and it shows. A very straight forward distro, but there’s not a lot of documentation out there for it.
8)LFS (Linux From Scratch)
Build your OS from the ground up. If you’re fairly familiar with GNU/Linux this is not as hard as it may sounds, as the guide on the linuxfromscratch.org is pretty thourough.
-b
Yea well…I appreciate the time the author has put into the review as I would respect anyone sharing their thoughts, but at the risk of sounding harsh my reaction is:…ok?! I think that everything the author side, while true, could be learned from briefly skimming over each of the projects websites…And I think thats what alot of people do already do when searching for a distro. Saying something like “is for people who like to tinker” or “is for people who know very little about computers” is sort of useless because its hard to quantify what the author means by such statements. Personally here is what I think:
Beginers should use: Debian, Slackware, or Gentoo.
Yes thats right. The best way to learn is by doing, and thats what beginers should be doing, learning.
Once People have masterd most basic things, then they can move onto something like Mandrake/RedHat/Lindows, like that they will have a better understanding of whats under the hood, and at least have an idea of whats borked, when something is borked…
Just my two cents.
Before the flaming starts about what wasn’t included or why he did or did not make valid arguements for one distro or the other, remeber that he’s talking about the beginning Linux user and not most of us. I hate the thought of Lindows being anywhere near one of my computers. It is the distro I set up for my Grandma to use though. She’s an email and print the pictures of the grandkids kinda lady. I wanted to get her up and comfortable. Lindows did that. I can’t tweak it the way I want, but that was a perfect fit for her. There’s not another distro out there I would have used for her. Remember… we want people to like linux. We want them to use it and love it… swear they’ll never pay the tax again. And almost no one wants or has the time to learn all the “weird” stuff we do to our machines. Let’s hook’em, then upgrade them.
I will try a couple distrobutions, but I won’t try them all.
This is how I choose Mandrake over redhat.
Redhat vs Mandrake
I like kde better(redhat feature more gnome, but I guess this is equal, since its easy to switch).
Compiled for i586 (1+ for mandrake).
I don’t think Redhat needs to go as low as i386
Buggy gtk with Eclipse (-2 for Redhat).
Little bit more polished look and feel (+1 for Redhat)
Better included apps for “me” (+1 for Mandrake –>webmin, kb3 , xine, xmms etc).
stable vs very latest features. Mandrake packages are generally slighty newer. Redhat is probably more solid in many ways, “except for it 9.0 & severn implementation of GTK (did I say eclipse crashes all the time under this)
I will choose to live a “little” bit more on the edge for slightly newer apps.
I am not done trying distros on my secondary machine. Also, I know my criteria is not the same as everyone else.
Then it’s Linux From Scratch.
Yeah, it’s a bitch to set up the first time, but it only takes ~5 hours and you can get a really cool little installation for your effort, without the duplication of functionality found in most distributions, or the irritating things in Gentoo. Get Xfree and KDE (or GNOME
installed on top of this, and it’s pretty sweet.
To be honest though, and this is not me trolling or being off topic if you think about it, no Linux flavors are really right for me. For those of you who find it fits your needs, that’s terrific.
Typos abound. “solution” should be pluralized, for instance.
You point at Gentoo, yet leave out the debian distros because they might be too advanced? Gentoo is the *very* *last* *distro* I would point a newbie to. Lumping Mandrake, SuSe and RH into one? And as for ‘smaller distros’, Ark Linux really isn’t on *anyone’s* radar. Try Slack at the very least.
Not a good article.
Beginers should use: Debian, Slackware, or Gentoo.
Yes thats right. The best way to learn is by doing, and thats what beginers should be doing, learning.
So by that logic, people should build a car from the ground up before they get a driver’s license? Or manufacture their own home rather than buy one? Get real dude. Most people don’t know or care about Operating Systems. There’s nothing wrong with wanting an O/S that “just works”. So why use Linux at all then? Well – people want Windows alternatives for their own reasons. They don’t have to justify themself to you.
I agree with threefootninja, it appears the article is for people who want to use Linux as an alternative to Windows rather than learning how to use Linux. Sounds strange but you don’t need much computer knowledge to click on an icon to open email or a web browser.
For someone who wants to learn Linux from the beginning I agree with bogey, use either Slackware or Debian (if you are not scared by the installer
). I first started with Redhat 5.2 and used it for two weeks thought i was doing good. Installed slackware and learned more in the first two days than I did with the 2 weeks of redhat. I would say slack would be the best distro if it had debian’s apt suite. (I cannot comment on Gentoo since I have not used it, but have heard plenty of good things about it).
How can you not include Slackware in that list, and include Gentoo? If you’re going to exclude Slackware because it’s a list for beginners, then why would you put in Gentoo? Slackware was my first distro. Slackware taught me probably 1/2 of what I know about Linux. Had it not been for Slackware, I probably would not have the interest in Linux that I have today.
The good thing about Linux is that there’s a distro for everyone. Start with the easy distros then as you become experienced, advanced and graduate to the status of power user, then try the *true* linux distros.
“Beginers should use: Debian, Slackware, or Gentoo.
Yes thats right. The best way to learn is by doing, and thats what beginers should be doing, learning. ”
I disagree – most people i know, all just average users, would be intimidated using these. No average user wants to see the “guts” of the system – they have their own jobs to do, not be a tech weenie. the “news” is always talking about how little time people have, why burden them with computer stuff too?
This was a good overview of distros. Clear and to the point. If i were putting together a small-business setup, I’d use Suse, preferably with “dumb” terminals to reduce costs drastically.
For home, heck, i tell people to get a Mac – 5 of my friends have them and love it – no virii, easy to use, BUT LETS YOU GO DEEPER IF YOU WANT, and great software – they love the iLife apps.
If you only want to spend $400, go to Walmart and use Lindows – that’s a pretty decent deal.
So. Some people aren’t average users. I tried Slackware first. It was nice. Do you think an “average user” is going to want to use Gentoo?
Just a reminder … I read many comments from the reviews posted lately and one reader pointed out something very true. None really convince or recommend the distro they review, which leaves them nowhere.
This is not a review, as I stated numerous times in the article. It is a recommendation to readers based on the experience of myself, my linux desktop client’s remarks, and my own family’s comments. I consider people like my wife and kids the mass target if Linux wants to chip into the Windows market share. Those people don’t want to learn or understand, they want it to work in an easy, intuitive way, that doesn’t require them to ‘figure it out’.
I personally use Mandrake 9.2 and Windows XP, I’m a developer and need both. I wish I could use Linux 100% of the time, but in certain areas, it’s just not there yet. I wish it was and look forward to when it is.
I don’t understand why Xandros seems to be ignored so much. Am I missing something in the Linux community which tends to shun it for some reason?
…sO I am a techno weenie…No I am a haxOr Phear me….
(Ok I was really kidding not trolling)…
Happy New Years to everyone here….
you know views dont really matter, lets go get drunk and have fun tonight
It’s like Lindows.
People don’t talk about Xandros because “Surprise” you have to pay for it.
Guess everyone forgot about the Dot Bomb and the fact that some where down the road everything has to be paid for. People are not going to work for free forever.
But once you get over the price issues Xandros and Lindows are both nice. And both serve their purposes.
When I tried Xandros 1.x, it was very out-of-date with other distros and very basic. Not much inovation. To be fair, I know that 2.0 is out and Xandros has contacted me about if I reviewed 1.x and what I thought.
I didn’t want to post anything until I could test 2.0 as I wasn’t impressed with the prior version and knew 2.0 was soon to be released. I wanted to focus on the new release and not the old. I hope to look at 2.0 soon.
Thanks for the explanation, Robert. I like Xandros 2.0 (it’s the only distro that’ll touch my home computer) and it seems like it gets ignored an awful lot. Maybe because it can’t be freely downloaded like Tyrone said.
Robert Trembath, you would love Xandros 2. It’s stable it has the new KDE 3.1.4 which is great. I say take another look at Xandros. It’s a very good os. I also would put Xandros with Lindows and Lycoris together for the newbies. Gentoo, Slackware and Debian for the hard core.
I started with Mandrake, and learned a little bit about Linux (versions 7.0 – 8.2)
Then I went to Redhat and learned a decent amount (so I thought) I stayed with redhat from 7.3 to 9.0 and was pleased with it.
After reading an article on OSnews about Gentoo, and having heard the hype, I decided to try it. I installed once, and got done, and screwed it up terribly. (Couldn’t even get a command line, I accidently removed a bunch of config files)I decided to reinstall, (this time with 2.6 kernel)I am now pushing through Gentoo, and loving it. I love to tinker, and I have enjoyed it (While pulling my hair out at the same time)
Although I don’t know what I will do if I get bored with Gentoo the way I did with Mandrake and Redhat. Maybe I’ll take on *BSD. Who knows. For now I am enjoying the stuff I am learning from Gentoo. Redhat and Mandrake seem like child’s toys now.
If you really enjoy getting your hands dirty, and learning tons, give Gentoo a try! The documentation is great (the 2.6 kernel stuff isn’t all in there yet though) and the forums are much nicer than any others (haven’t seen a single RTFM yet!) Just be prepared to spend some time. Forunately my boss has no problem with me spending time on Linux since I have helped save the company money with it
I would recommend that beginners also take a look at Knoppix, Gnoppix, Mandrake’s live CD, etc. Sure it is not hardcore Linux but at least it gives beginners a feeling for what they might be getting into without having to deal with potentially wrecking their system.
Me personally, I only swear by SCO Linux!
Seriously, I am a big Gentoo fan and I like ArkLinux as well. Granted they are two different levels of Linux but there is something cool about ArkLinux that I can’t really put my finger on that I like. However, for the more serious stuff, Gentoo all the way.
I’m currently running a 3ghz P4/800 box, w/2 80gb SATA drives in a Raid 0 configuration, w/1gb of Ram, and a Radeon 9600 driving 2 21″ monitors (there’s more, but these are the main “hurdles” I’m facing at the moment).
On my old box (1.2ghz AMD), Linux ran fine. I had 2 seperate video cards driving my dual display, and xinerama worked nicely. In addition I had Linux working with all of my hardware. I actually switched over to Linux more or less full time for about 6 months before getting my new box. My old box has since been switched over to primarily being a server (serves files, serves video, handles my p2p, etc.), so I’m anxious to again get a nice Linux distro setup w/my new box.
However, older Linux distro’s bomb hard on my new PC. None will even see the Raid 0 drives, and if I install to one of the IDE drives, the install appears to go fine, but then Lilo’s hosed (Or Grub… Iv’e tried both to no avail).
I don’t know if it’s the SATA configuration screwing with them or what, but they all fail to boot after “succesfully” completing their setups. Hell, Knoppix won’t even boot on this system for me!
The notable exceptions to this are Suse 9 and Gentoo.
Suse 9 installed fine, and I like what I end up with (although it doesn’t appear to be as fast as I’d expect, I’m chalking that up to the older 2.4 kernel not taking full advantage of my hyperthreaded CPU), but I cannot get it to work 100% with my dual display Radeon. I had it working for a short while, but after updating several components via Suse’s built in updater, I can no longer get it to work with both displays as one large desktop. It’s either 1 monitor working, or 2 monitors working, but with the same desktop displayed in both (ie, “Cloned” mode).
Gentoo installed ok, but never worked 100%. It would bomb hard during boot sometimes (SATA drives causing this too?), and it never was able to drive both monitors, no matter what I did.
Every other version of Linux I’ve tried either won’t boot at all, or fails after setup as per the above. This includes Vector, Fedora, Redhat 9, Mandrake 9, Knoppix, Morphix, Yoper, and <shudder> Ark.
Can anyone reccomend another distro to try? PCLinuxOS looks promising, but it’s currently a CD-only based distro (HD installs are not reccomened in it’s current incarnation I’m led to believe).
Gentoo was way fast on this new box, but I refuse to relegate myself to only one monitor when I have two sitting here. Plus to reinstall it takes awhile (even on a 3ghz box!).
I’d reinstall Suse, but after tweaking it all, just to have it flake out when updating Suse components, I’m not too cool on going through the entire process again. I wasn’t able to isolate what caused the problem before, and it’s likely liable to happen again.
Plus, I’d love for a Linux distro to see and utilize my Raid 0 config. If I can’t install Linux on a Raid’d drive, I’d at least like to be able to read the data on such drives.
The sad part for me, other than the frustration of trying all these Linux’s, only to have them all fail in one way or another, is that Windows XP works great with everything!
And before the naysayers start saying “Just stick w/XP”, I’d like to point out that I have no problem doing this, but like most on this site, I love to tinker and play with alternative solutions (such as Linux!). While XP handles everything beutifully now, I’d like an alternative for a dual boot. Since all incarnations of BeOS choke on my new system (1GB of memory = No BeOS), Linux appears to be my only viable alternative for awhile.
Any success stories out there? Anyone setup a similar box w/Linux?
You must suck as a VP and your clients must be totally stupid. Where is the “value add” in your review ? You have some spelling mistakes too.
Anony From Austin(rr.com), don’t be so harsh, if you have a critique back it up in a civilised manner.
I stated my occupation not to impress, merely to state that I spend most of my waking time helping businesses use this technology to save money. I have been doing this for a number of years and do it because I enjoy helping people.
As for my spelling & grammar, I apologize. I’m a techie, not an author. Spell check was invented for me and since I wrote this in a hospital waiting room, waiting for my first grandchild to be born, cut me a little slack.
By the way, it’s a girl 7 lbs. 15 oz. and very beautiful. It was great being a dad, even better as a grandpa.
Hello. I was wondering. If you guys think that debian is a tough install you gotta be kidding me.. Debian was the first linux I have ever installed, and that was also one of the easiest. no need for missing a click of the mouse or anything. Why do you guys consider hard? just a confused 2 month linux user..
First of all, thanks to Robert for taking the time to write his thoughts. Like a few others, I think Slackware should have been included, but its absence doesn’t take away the good points Robert made.
This, I think, is the root of the problem – no pun intended. Every one of us looks for a particular feature set in a Linux distro, and for that feature set to work on our particular hardware. Any distro that: 1) does what we want and 2) does it on our hardware, is treated like gold, and any that doesn’t is an “inferior” product. Its the same with cars. You’ll have one person swear by a brand for their entire life, while the guy or gal next door thinks that brand is junk, when in fact, for the majority of driving tasks, both vehicles perform just fine. So someone who likes Slackware (and I’m one of them) might get riled at it not being in Robert’s list, when it really wasn’t Robert’s intention to look down on it.
Another important point that Robert hinted at in his comment above, is a fundamental difference between many Linux/*nix users and the vast numbers using Windows or Macs. Most computer users don’t attach any pride or satisfaction to knowing something about their OS. It doesn’t give them greater self-esteem to run “uber difficult to install” distro vs. “kitchen sink newbie friendly” distro. They are more concerned about getting work done, nets surfed, CD’s burned, music heard, and games played.
By the way, the “leet” Linux folks out there might enjoy my upcoming distro, called “Twostick Linux”. You are given two sticks to rub together to make a fire, which you use to melt grains of sand together in crystalline 0/1 patterns on your desk. Standard Turing rules apply, and anyone trying to sneak in an abacus will be deemed a “lamer”.
Why do you guys consider hard?
Well if you can come down off your high horse long enough to listen to reason (doubtful), I’ll try to explain it. It’s not that Debian is hard to install, it’s that Debian is *harder* to install than say Fedora. *Relative* to other distributions, Debian isn’t one of the “easiest” distributions to setup and get going.
I apologize to the Slackware users. Haven’t used it or installed as it has never been recommended to me. Support free and paid support for a distro is important to me and I tend to use distro’s that offer paid support as an option.
In business many customers feel more confortable knowing there is a real business behind the software. I accredit much of Red Hat’s success to this. They do a very good job in the support arena.
Personlay i think that ppl should try distros like
Mandrake, Lindows, Lycoris, Xandros, Suse[yep i think it’s a very easy to use distro] then move to Redhat, then move to somethng like Slackware/FreeBSD[o.k, not a distro]. THEN they should decide stick with whatever they’ve got, or move to
Gentoo[haven’t tried it, don’t know if it’s easy to install] or LFS
[my history]
[don’t try this at home]
Redhat something->Mandrake 7.x->Redhat 6.x->7.x-> Mandrake 8.2->FreeBSD 4.7->Redhat 8->Mandrake9.0->9.1->Redhat 9.0-> Slackware 9.1 + Dropline Gnome+2.6.0
some were dualboot with windows.
I’m so pleaZed with Slackware, that i don’t want to try ENYTHING ELSE, so i must a) DualBoot with Slack b) make my slack(test) PC – my workstation and vice verca c) Bochs Gentoo or d) find a victim or a friend and install Gentoo
This is my first posting here ever:)
I like my Slackware better than any other distro. It is easy to configure (at least if you read the manuals). I tweaked it a lot and use it as desktop either as console too. It is far more stable than MDK9.2.
Other distro that should be listed is:
SuSE – Commercial Linux distribution – easy to use, with advanced configuration wizards, with not too standard directory tree;)
I know that when I started Linux there were choices but not many that would even pretend to go on a laptop (the only computer I had) so I started with RedHat now I use gentoo since them I’ve used almost every distrobution inbetween and still continue to experiment. I agree with the author that for mainstream computer uses pick up RedHat/SuSe/Mandrake, if you feel the need to go further then play around. My wife has to use what I install and she could careless as the how leet it is, as long as it works, so I’ve spent many a day tweaking gentoo to do this, but when she was willing to settle for a slower computer (now she thinks gimp is greatest, and we have many picture of our son on the wall thanks to it..), she tried both RedHat which wasn’t as good due to missing multimedia components and then moved to Lycros it had what she need and worked… that all most people want. There not religous about there computers nor do they have the time needed to master it… in other words asking here to recompile a kernel would be like speaking a foreign language to my dog and expecting her to make a cup of coffee…
as for most people I also suggest they get a mac… my sister will swear by it… it’s an alternative… or if you don’t have money get a easy to use distro like Mandrake or Lycros or Xandros (used it when it was Corels Linux offering, but not since then)…
Good Article, Robert
For the folks on the ‘Linux Hacker’ end of the spectrum, I think Gentoo is a great option. I’ve never used Debian so I can’t speak for apt-get, but I find Portage to make box maintenance to be much easier than it was with the RPM-based distro’s I’ve used (Mandrake, Red Hat).
You want rythmbox?
$> emerge rythmbox
With one command, Portage downloads, compiles, and installs rythmbox and all of its dependencies. Everything is compiled optimized for your box. The next command you run?
$> rythmbox
Want to upgrade your system?
emerge –update world
Sure, the compiling takes a while, but I think it’s worth it for the extra speed I get by using every feature on my P4.
I like messing around with the box, but I like to work too, and Gentoo does both.
The article was clearly trying to evaluate the progress Linux has made toward being an appropriate desktop OS for the mythological Typical User. I’ve used Linux as a desktop for 7 or 8 years, and it has made real progress in that regard. But, theres a way to go, yet.
With that in mind, here are two of my Linux New Year’s wishes:
1) People stop ranting about “pretty” desktops and “eye candy” and offer rational examinations of desktop usability and appearance. Why can’t we have something better than Windows, eather than writing clone applications and using Windows as the yardstick? This area belongs to the folks who write video card drivers, the XFree crew, and those who design and build desktop environments. What’s the impact of using different video cards in an otherwise identical configuration? What’s the best 2D card? (Remember them? 2D is more important than 3D when you spend your day with the web and office applications. Not everyone buys computer to play games.) Are KDE and Gnome on the right track? If not, is anyone?
2) A single and universal packaging and dependency scheme. I want a packaging and dependency daemon that pays attention to everything installed on a machine, regardless of method. If I install an RPM, a ebuild, a tgz file, a deb, a tar file, or code and build from scratch, it tracks ’em all and keeps me out of trouble. I want dependency problems to go away! Why is this hard?
What do you mean when you say Suse has a non standard directory tree? Suse is fully compliant with the LSB and a founding member of United Linux. They were LSB compliant long before other distros stopped following redhats decision to dump everything into /usr.
I apologize to the Slackware users. Haven’t used it or installed as it has never been recommended to me. Support free and paid support for a distro is important to me and I tend to use distro’s that offer paid support as an option.
Paid support
http://www.slackware.com/support/
As a VP for a consulting group, you should know better than to replace Windows workstation with Linux. Virus repair is the most profitable area, accounting for the majority of service hours.
PS.
congs on being a Grandpa
I have a simple question. Who reading these forums isn’t a computer geek? Why are we pretending to know what the average user wants when we are not the average computer user?
The average computer user doesn’t read computer magazines, or computer articles. I think we are trying to achieve something in these articles and these postings that can’t be achieved here. Instead we should be asking these questions in Teen magazine, Better Homes and Gardens, Popular Mechanics, etc. What do you guys think?
You are right. The readers of OSNews are *usually* on the geek side of technology. However, some of us support those users that don’t have a clue. One thing I’ve always noticed when reading through the posts is that there seem to be quite a lot of us that help family members and friends even if we aren’t in the technology field. Dear lord, don’t ask Teen Beat. I can see the responses now. “I want it to be easier to find nekkid chicks to set as my background” and “does that case some in soft pink?”
Just because we know what grep means doesn’t mean we don’t talk to the users that don’t everday.
I have a simple question. Who reading these forums isn’t a computer geek? Why are we pretending to know what the average user wants when we are not the average computer user?
I think you make a valid point, but alot of times a person
might be in the computer/electronics store and buy that O/S
box out curiousity, not having any thing to do with a geek
Valid point, but I do have a responsibilty to my clients to recommend Linux Desktops as a solution when its applicable and only then. When I prevent problems with a client, a may not make as much from them but I definitly get referrals. So I still make money. Besides, who’s in this for the money? 😉
You’d be suprised, well maybe not, what a good Linux Desktop can do when combined with Crossover Office 2.x. It’s an inexpensive reliable way of defending against viruses and getting users on a more stable system. I’ve even noticed speed improvements in some Windows Apps on Linux. Photoshop, Visio and most I’ve tried with exception to games, run very well.
This has to be one of the strangest so called Linux distro comparison piece I’ve seen to date. First, I think having Mandrake, SuSE and Fedora being lumped into one is truely odd. The three are geared toward three different types of users and markets. In fact Fedora isn’t even ready for prime time. I personally think Fedora is a perpetual test bed for Red Hat’s overpriced enterprise only distro but I digress. Another thing that’s truely weird is that there is no mention of Slackware, Knoppix, or Libranet. If the author has never heard of them in which case he probably isn’t qualified to be writing such an article in the first place. Also for some reason Debian is briefly mention along with Lindows and Gentoo which is just all wrong.
I think I might have some issues with the possibility that a lawsuit would win against Linux. I would have to inform my customers that some linux’s might be in touble.
Im obviously not surprised that ArchLinux wasn’t mentioned, but its a very cool distro.
Its like a perfect mix of Debian and Gentoo. Its package system is both binary and source based, so you can get every program in the repository as a package or compile it yourself. Its very good.
Lots of other features too, including i686 optimization and VERY up to date packages. New releases usually make it into pacman within a day or two.
http://www.archlinux.org
I don’t think it’s a strange article. I would also group SuSE , Fedora (Red Hat) and Mandrake together. When I started using Linux about a couple years ago that’s all I heard most of the time was Red Hat, SuSE and Mandrake. Than later when I searched more about Linux did I realize there was Slackware and Gentoo which where for the geeks. Now there is so many Linux distros it’s hard to review them all. Btw, Robert Trembath, congradulations on your new granddaughter and have a Happy New Year!
I don’t think it’s a strange article. I would also group SuSE , Fedora (Red Hat) and Mandrake together. When I started using Linux about a couple years ago that’s all I heard most of the time was Red Hat, SuSE and Mandrake. Than later when I searched more about Linux did I realize there was Slackware and Gentoo which where for the geeks. Now there is so many Linux distros it’s hard to review them all. Btw, Robert Trembath, congradulations on your new granddaughter and have a Happy New Year!
A few others are worth mentioning:
Debian, Slackware: these are very different but i’m grouping them together. They are sort of intermediate distros. Very good for the power user.
Arch, Crux: Crux is minimalism at its finest excepting perhaps LFS and Rock. Arch is great for package management. It’s damned easy to use and upgrade stuff. It’s also i686 optimized and its boot times and speed are sans pareil
Rock, LFS: These are great for the extremist, u will learn something and that’s half the point of GNU / Linux
Lunar, Sourcemage, Sorcerer: of these i like lunar the best but it’s buggy, these are alternatives to Gentoo and a little more off the beaten path. If you want something new, these are good. Broadband only and fast machines only.
Core, etc: server type distros intended for advanced users
Freebsd, netbsd: technically not a linux, but good anyways, i personally love freebsd
Openbsd, OWL, LAS, trinux: for the security afficionado
tomsrtbt, damn small linux, small linux, minix: these are good for speciality uses, 386’s, 8088’s or whatnot, recovery
Knoppix, SuSE live: for those who want cd based distro for work machines, family machines
Zipslack, Bigslack, Phat linux: great if u want fat32 based linux
Personally i think i’d go nuts if i only used rpm based distros or the deb based “easy to use” distros. Point being: to each his own. Linux fills a niche itself, and each distro no matter how small seems to have a devoted user community.
A truly great, Debian-based, desktop distro is Libranet
It has great hardware support and detection and a wealth of applications PLUS the power and beauty of XAdminmenu,the system administration and software update tool . I’m running it on a brand new (Xmas) Sony Vaio laptop with an Orinoco wireless card.
I booted into the bios,set it to boot from cdrom, wiped the drive of XP and installed Libranet.The installer is practically a no-brainer and very helpful with video and sound detection. I’ve been trying every distro available for over five years and this is the best yet!
I admit to being Debian/biased and am anxiously awaiting the arrival of the new UserLinux but for the time being..
this article intreagued me bcause like the author i’ve become more than disappointed with Linux. Or maybe I just want Apple to switch toIntel hardware and become an OS company I don’t know. My experience is mostly with Slackware but now I tried Xandros and I am impressed with how slick it sets up and how slick one can install programs from xanrosnetworks with it (apt-get confuses me sorry debian site always says down so what gives there?) But heres what outright pisses me off about the state of Linux right now: HARDWARE!!!!! dammit why does it have to be like pulling molars to get linux to play DVD’s and even print with printers!!!!! and tv cards LOL don’ even get me started with those problems. the only real solution for the home because of theseproblems is WinXP thats all thereis to it unfortunately until companies start making real software and install systems that work.
Couldn’t agree more about Apple! I’ve told many of my friends that Apple should forget hardware and port OSX to x86 hardware. Steve, if your listening, OSX on Intel could seriously challenge Microsoft domination as well as bring some of that Apple intutive thinking to the masses instead of the 5% you already have. The time is right!
” I think I might have some issues with the possibility that a lawsuit would win against Linux. I would have to inform my customers that some linux’s might be in touble.”
You’re getting a little ahead of yourself. Only two Linux related companies are being sued, IBM and SCO. IBM is being sued by SCO over contract violations, and SCO is being sued by IBM and RedHat. No other companies or individuals, either producers or users are being sued. We are a long way off from “Linux” losing a lawsuit.
Slack…yeah wonderful!
S-L-A-Ck = Soaring Linux As Chuck 🙂
iloveslack
If I was running a billion dollar plant and one day found out I had to stop it if for only a few hours to correct some legal issue that would be very important to me. I think the author of the “which is right” might have mentioned that. Don’t be fooled into thinking the SCO has no claim. I wouldn’t risk it.
How dare people call Gentoo bleeding edge… still using freetype 2.1.4, gaim 0.72 amongst many things… yes i went trhough the install took me 4hrs (2.8ghz p4) was very very dissapointed anted and went to the real linux distro – Slackware
“If I was running a billion dollar plant and one day found out I had to stop it if for only a few hours to correct some legal issue that would be very important to me. I think the author of the “which is right” might have mentioned that. Don’t be fooled into thinking the SCO has no claim. I wouldn’t risk it.”
Sorry.. Go sell your FUD elsewhere. No one is buying it. Also no one is buying SCO license either. Go take a look at those header files they claim is their intellectual property and ask to yourself if they have a legitimate claim. If you still come to the conclusion that SCO has a claim, I have a bridge I want to sell you for a very good price.
I love Peanut linux. A very good distro. Not for beginners, but I am not much more than a beginner, and I use it.
The perfect distro for beginners, IMO, is the Brazilian distro Kurumin. It’s a 180-Mb Knoppix by-product, with less pre-installed software and more snappy features. It’s real install-and-go with no fuss and hassle, but without dumbing things down like Lindows or Lycoris. I don’t know if it is available in English already.
I wouldn’t recommend Linux from Scratch because it is very likely to void all the “support” you’re normally “entitled” to. Whenever some new software doesn’t work right in your system, if you turn to the discussion lists for help and people ask you which distro you’re using, you say you’re running a Linux-I-Built-From-Scratch and everyone will instantly assume it’s something wrong with your system instead of the software you just installed.
Xandros it is!! Enuff said 🙂
Team,
I am trying to set up a linux server and host a website, I want to do it on a trial basis for my company to show that we can reduce cost. My office is a small office with 15-20 people what will be the best Enterprise version (if available free Enterprise version) I can use for this purpose.
If you guys have time can you brief on +/-
thanks
MKR
get a mac
I agree. It’s pretty scarry realizing that your average computer user reads those magazines! That was my point in using those examples.
Their discussion about computers would be quite different than ours. Yet the average user is who we want to user our operating systems.
Slackware is run by a business too, it’s just a smaller business than Red Hat; and it has free installation support from Slackware and paid support from third parties available. In fact, Slackware is the oldest commercial distribution in existence, and at one time was the leading distribution; I’m surprised you haven’t at least heard of it. I bought Slackware 9.1 at J&R off of a store shelf, unlike Red Hat who is going to abandon that channel.
The main difference of course as far as beginners are concerned is that Slackware is the most Unix-like of Linux distributions, and appears more difficult to install because it doesn’t use a GUI installer. (It’s dialog-based installer is similar to FreeBSD’s.) Slackware however is refreshingly simple compared to the complexity of Red Hat, if you’re willing to use the command line to configure things it’s much easier and less error-prone than Red Hat and similar distributions, never mind something like Gentoo which you included in your survey. (Though I must admit that Gentoo has an excellent user community – though I would call it more of a twelve-step club. 😉 😉 )
This web site: [url]www.tryoutlinux.com[/url] does a good job of profiling specific strengths and weaknesses which the average consumer might care about when investigating Linux.
This web site: http://www.tryoutlinux.com does a good job of profiling specific strengths and weaknesses which the average consumer might care about when investigating Linux.
<blockquote>How dare people call Gentoo bleeding edge… still using freetype 2.1.4, gaim 0.72 amongst many things… yes i went trhough the install took me 4hrs (2.8ghz p4) was very very dissapointed anted and went to the real linux distro – Slackware</blockquote>
…If you wanted bleeding edge Gentoo, you should have set the archtype to ~86 in your make file (which uses the ‘unstable’ version of portage, default is -86 FYI gAIM 0.74-r1 was the newest in it the last time I updated portage… ~2 weeks ago…)
Hmmm… http://www.tryoutlinux.com actually does a godd job of promoting Lindows and bragging about how much better it is than the other “not-so-good” distros. Nothing wrong with a little advertising, but that is not objective and impartial information.