Switched Back (Linux)

[DanGrease]

As probably Xeroid knew, I used to use Mandrake 9.1 a lot, and I got used to it. But yesterday I got the idea to get a bit higher on my so called "Distro Pyramid" which is: I start with the easiest distro and when I start to learn more about Linux I get higher and get more difficult distros to use. To the point, so I was using Mandrake, and decided to go a bit higher and get Red Hat (since most people believe Mandrake is the most newbie friendly so I started with it) but after trying out Red Hat a bit I decided to go back since I didnt like it at all. Maybe because I got so used to Mandrake that I didnt like Red Hat or maybe because its just not my distro. I am posting this because I really want to try something new without it being so complicated, like for example Debian or Slackware. I really want it to be free, so SuSE is out of my choices. Xeroid said that Knoppix is not that hard to handle so maybe thats my next distro to go with, but I am still not sure. Anyways I really want to try a new, easy, and kind of more advanced that Mandrake, since I can handle Mandrake pretty well now. I really like the thing called .rpm since its the easiest thing for me right now, but of course I want to as I advance in my "Distro Pyramid" to know how to install and handle things in Linux without needing the .rpm's Hope I didnt make this thread a bit long and hard to read, but what do you think would be the most appropriate distro to me after leaving Mandrake? Thanks for listening

dan

[Epyon9283]

I moved from Mandrake to Redhat to Gentoo. I honestly didn't think Redhat was any more difficult to use than Mandrake. It was just different. If you want to stay with an RPM based distro I don't really know where to go.

[Xeroid]

I know Mandrake is the easier distro to get up and running, but I still like it.

Knoppix is mainly for running from CD but there are ways to install it to your HD. LINK I'm not sure which version this covers (possibly 3.1)

[washe]

Dan, I heard Gentoo linux has a lot of features and its quite easy and challenging on some things, personally i havent tried it yet, but I have read some post on other forums about it.

[linux_guru]

I have tried them ALL and have stuck with Mandrake. Sure it's newbie friendly, but it's also just as powerful as any other distro out there.

My installation of Drake resembles nothing like the stock install. I have tweaked, tuned & modified the hell out of it. I remove all the "dumbed down" features, build a custom kernel, optimise all the performance settings, etc.

There's nothing stopping you or anyone else learning to do the same.

[ChrisK2972]

Dan,

I am a linux newbie myself and have played around with several distros. What I did was burn a bunch of cd-rw's and installed a number of them before I made my descision. Fact is, Linux is Linux is Linux. Differnt faces, same thing, IMHO. And, it really all comes down to how it "feels".

If I were you, I think I would give Slackware 9 a try. It is a really great distro that forces you to learn by doing allot of stuff that other distros use wizzards to do. However, the documentation is excellent (there is a book on their site that will pretty much answer most any question you would have).

If you are really in for a challenge, I would go with gentoo. I recently loaded it and doubt I will ever change. It is awesome. And, for a newbie like myself, the documentation is second to none. The installation process itself taught me more about the commandline than any other I have done. And, from one who has installed at least 12 different distros, it is lightening fast. Although compiling things from source takes a while to do, it yeilds great results in terms of speed and stability. Also, it allows you to build you system like you want it without a million different pieces of software that you will never use or need. (USE flags are great tools!) The portage system is the easiest manner for installing software that I have ever used.

Well, I could go on, but, you get the picture.

HTH

[DanGrease]

I think I will probably stay a while with mandrake for now since I am used to it and I dont have any problems at all with it. Although maybe in th near future I will change distro, but for now I don't see why. Thanks for the opinions

dan

*more* I think my next distro that I will try is Knoppix or Slackware, but as I said for now Mandrake will be used.

[Foggy]

I have both Red Hat and Mandrake up and running so just for the halibut I downloaded Lycoris and installed it and I was really surprised by how easy it went in, it found all the hardware inc. the printer and it even setup the lan and internet without a hitch also it's very intuitive for an old windoz user.

[washe]

Well Vert depends on your system specs mainly..

Like me I have an Asus A78NX, ATI Radeon 9500

The Nic on the A7N8X ingregrated from 3COM works... the one from NVIDIA not..
The Radeon 9500 works at the beggining but on 2D and its very slow.... for that there is a whole trick to make an NFORCE2 board to work with an ATI card with 3d acceleration support and the other features from the card..... But actually was quite fun to get it going, I spent over a week to get it...

But just in case you want MDK 9.2 now, you can get the Release Candidate 2 and upgrade later when the released version arrives.

[CMonster]

Start with a horribly complex non-friendly Linux, get it working and everything is easy after that...

1998 with no previous Linux experience, after doing a text only install of Caldera OpenLinux 1.3 with the ancient 2.0 kernel on a POS P133, 32MB, 1MB Cirrus, Opti 82C931 sound -going through X config he1l -recompiling he1l just to discover that my 100% Sound Blaster compatible sound card was NOT 100% compatible -and why the he1l was Apache running by defautl -wasn't this thing slow enough?

Months went by and I finally had everything working -sort of- I even got online... oh the headaches of those days.

I am embarrased to say it now but when I first got a gui up on Linux (Caldera's "Crisp-lite" desktop) I went around double clicking everything ...when I finally thought I was getting savy I got Samba working between that box and a Win95 box -text only using "put" and "get" --Then I decided to "clean up" Linux and get rid of all those "unnecessary" directories ....and subsequently got further practice in reinstalling Linux.... then in another fit of genius I decided to remove all those unnecessary accounts -starting with "nobody" -who the he1l was this nobody guy anyway and what was he doing with an account on my system -thinks he's slick... I removed his account. My system locked up and I had to reboot, when I went to log on again I was greeted with this message:

"Go away. You do not exist."

honest

and I got another lesson in reinstalling..

"...after that, shrimp'un was easy.."