Best build / version for a 'starter' ... & any advice ...

[confus-ed]

Ok then you linux dudes .... for a complete novice who wants to 'have a go' ... what do we recommend ?

Any hints on required equipment, disk space etc etc ... I know you can run certain 'incantations' on a calculator , but for a GUI what do I need for it to be practical ....

Then there's some software (of course free) to run on it ... in fact just tell me (us) the whole story !!!

[craigmodius]

RedHat and Mandrake seem to be the two big dogs and have been around for a few years.

I think the support and documentation is out there for both which is my deciding factor, because with Linux it's all about reading up on how to do it.

As far as hardware requirements I would steer clear of trying to get it on a P1 system and go with the recommendations of the package you choose if not double them.

As far as software to put on it goes what do you wanna do?

[+Daemon+]

yes to start out use mandrake or redhat... hehe when i first started with unix I ran netbsd when i was in 9th grade, back in 1994 (a wee lad) it was kinda ahrd at first, then i went to linux which was 100000 tiems eaiser

any who, if you want a distro that you dont have to install I suggust http://www.knoppix.org/

you can run linux off a cdrom

when you get better at linux you might want to take on the challenge of Genttoo and Slackware..Slackware is myt fav. Distro


hope this helps

[confus-ed]

I just discovered Red Hat 9 & Bible ! ... best £30 I spent for a while .... bought in my local geek bookshop.

Usually I'm too tight to pay for anything but the bible bit is spot on ... covers everything from install client to server setup to bridging to a mac network ! .... 1000 pages of clear well written text ... linux Guru here I come !

I seem to have a bundle of apps too ...

[Dark Millennium]

Truthfully, a friend bought the Red Hat 8.0 Bible, and tried out Red Hat 8.0

His skills have now surpassed my own by far with Linux.... Though I still make his brain churn on Unix.

Moral of story: Definetly a good purchase.

[gtiseb]

Yeah it's a good buy. However red hat is very limited 'out of the box' compared to windows. What I mean is, you're gonna have to search the web to be able to hack it enough to get stuff like mp3's or NTFS compatibility. Mandrake 9.1 however is VERY similar to redhat and has all those functions built in. I remember spending a whole weekend trying to get my DVD and mp3's to work and trying to access my ntfs partition on redhat and then wiping everything and installing mandrake 9.1 and having all that functionality as soon as it was installed. PlusI find it looks better than RH.

[confus-ed]

Can any 'flavour' of unix correctly accesss NTFS ?? ... All the unix guys I know ... say no way Hosé ... there are some utils for early ntfs but not apparently NTFS 5 like w2k / xp use ... or so I'm told (permissions issues) ... if you want to share files use fat32 which linux 'understands' ....

(But I'm recommending the book (bible) ... not the 'flavour' )

[+Daemon+]

Originally posted by gtiseb
Yeah it's a good buy. However red hat is very limited 'out of the box' compared to windows. What I mean is, you're gonna have to search the web to be able to hack it enough to get stuff like mp3's or NTFS compatibility. Mandrake 9.1 however is VERY similar to redhat and has all those functions built in. I remember spending a whole weekend trying to get my DVD and mp3's to work and trying to access my ntfs partition on redhat and then wiping everything and installing mandrake 9.1 and having all that functionality as soon as it was installed. PlusI find it looks better than RH.

true this si one reason why most people goto linux, one its not windows, it doesnt function like it, which I like, another, is you can do so much it makes you think ehhe...damn point n click environment...doh