# Which linux to install? <Noobie :D



## cheese (Jun 22, 2003)

Ive got my old 850MHZ Duron in my garage (with a scary spider in it  ) and im intrested in installing Linux on there, and learning it. I got a free coupon code for Linspire...but i hear its very insecure and very basic that its useless. What is a good begginners linux, if there is one? What should i know before going on with this? How would i go about doing this with windows still on old comp?

P.S. I strongly prefer free


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## tsunam (Sep 14, 2003)

Did you happen to look at the FAQ before posting, we have a answer to the easy to use distro's right there. Also linspire and any other OS you ever use, comes down to what you do and how you do stuff, as far as security. Linspire is actually quite secure. It is probably one of the best first intro's to linux from windows while keeping the same feeling. If you have a free coupon use it, try it, if you don't like it try something else. That's what linux is about...choice.


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## cheese (Jun 22, 2003)

Im going to look into Mandrake linux as well...how do you like that one?


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## tsunam (Sep 14, 2003)

I'm not particulary a fan of Mandrake but that's because i think they make it too hard to install things the way you want to. Its got some nice and easy config helpers though


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## cheese (Jun 22, 2003)

From what ive been reading its a good linux to learn (linspire trying to make it like a windows machine) for begginers. What do you think is a good begginer distro tsunam?


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## tdi_veedub (Jan 29, 2004)

Fedora


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## Chicon (Jul 29, 2004)

tdi_veedub said:


> Fedora


I agree with tdi_veedub. As Fedora is distributed by Red Hat and Red Hat represents 75% of the Linux world, you will have more possibilities to find support on line.


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## cheese (Jun 22, 2003)

I cant find anything that gives information to a noobie bout it, or any screenshots?


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## cheese (Jun 22, 2003)

So if fedora is more of a widely used one by buisnesses and such itd be better to learn?


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## I Fix 4 U (Jul 19, 2004)

IDK, i know alot of small companies that use Mandrake 10. Mandrake was my first linux and was easy to install. I like it very much. I wouldn't use the new mandrake unless you have around 256 ram installed, but for older systems i used mandrake 8. I use fedora but i found it was harder to install and sure did come with alot of problems. I don't know if this is the same with FC3, as that was for fc2. You will also need a good vacuum cleaner to set on medium and get rid of that spider and whatever else is in there.


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## cheese (Jun 22, 2003)

Yes, i shall murder the spider. Im going to try fedora though. What problems did you have?


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## I Fix 4 U (Jul 19, 2004)

Partition hell, it like really messed w/ the partition table, while others say its not possible it did, i had to go through loads of trouble to make the bootloader go in the right place, and after all of that i had to rebuild my 2nd harddrives partition table. Good thing my 2nd hd is my experimental drive. You may not have any problems since it is an old computer that will only have fedora on it taking up its only hd the whole thing too. But i didnt want it to mess w/ my other harddrive and that caused problems, as there was so much confusion of whether it was on hda or hbd that insane things happend and i had to do a few tweaks during install. Mandrake installed like a charm in like 15 minutes. I didn't have any problems with that. I like Mandrake over Fedora is because mandrake is also a commercial product and its a major corporate deal, while awhile back I would have chosen RH9.2 because it was better than mandrake and commercial too, but Fedora is not that anymore and RH9 is outdated.


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## cheese (Jun 22, 2003)

If it makes up that much of the linux world (posted above) how is it outdated?


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## I Fix 4 U (Jul 19, 2004)

RedHat Enterprise Linux is what is used these days. RH9 is no out of support by RedHat. Unfortunately RHE actually costs a bit of money, tho less than M$, but not all is opensource.


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## cheese (Jun 22, 2003)

Which mandrake or fedora, will help me more in the real world?


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## I Fix 4 U (Jul 19, 2004)

I found fedora a little overwhelming while Mandrake was easy to switch from windows to linux without feeling alienated. This install was better than any windows install, giving me customisation, without making things more difficult. Ofcourse i could have selected default and next and just flyby but i wanted to handle things myself. For you i'd just select workstation and wipe harddisk and be on your way. Thats why I like mandrake. Oh, and if you are in education business sun microsystems offers StarOffice7 which is the commercial openoffice, for free for educators/students.


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## cheese (Jun 22, 2003)

Im a student in HS...so maybe i qualify  Im thinking still im going to try fedora, but is it true it cannot play MP3'S?


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## I Fix 4 U (Jul 19, 2004)

Natively no mp3, after isntalling program yah. I have had major sound issues in fedora, but they seem to be overcomable. At start mandrake was able to play mp3's, it came with realplayer 10. I'd give the Fedora series the Geek award and Mandrake the noob award. You qualify for the liscense i belive. I'm a student in 8th grade and it said primary and secondary (k-12) and possibly college.


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## cheese (Jun 22, 2003)

Im going to try out fedora. If i strongly dislike it ill install mandrake. I remember middle school...worst 2 years of my life  .


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## I Fix 4 U (Jul 19, 2004)

lol yah. Ok well here is the deal. Why not install both? Thats what i like the most about linux.

OMG almost forgot. How much ram do you have. FC3 will really mess up on a 128mb system thats below 1 ghz. I have felt it. Mandrake 10 won't work either, thats why i use 8 in most old computers.


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## cheese (Jun 22, 2003)

Why wont it work on 128 < GASP I gave a friend my 256 chip a while back outa it.


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## cheese (Jun 22, 2003)

Also whats this "SuSe" one?


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## cheese (Jun 22, 2003)

If this wont work on my oldy (itd be a pain due to i dont have another monitor,..no router), it'd be cool to do a dual boot. From what im reading SuSe is a very well built Linux.


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## shadowcat (Oct 19, 2003)

You could also try Libranet. I like the Adminmenu that manages updates really well. It also uses Debian's library, so you can use apt-get to update your software that way as well.


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## I Fix 4 U (Jul 19, 2004)

No SuSe for you i'm afraid. You are going at 128 mb and suse was the worse out of them all for ram. I had better performance with hog fedora 2 (my guess 3 as well) but suse, that was pretty bad trying to run on 128. Either use distros meant for slower computers (damnsmall) or older distros (mandrake 8). Or, since its an old computer go get another piece of ram its likely cheap to free. Ur at a highschool, if they have a computer department find out what ram your computer takes and then ask them for some, say its educational and you are making a linux box i'm sure they will hand you some they probably have tons of ram. Oh, don't think of flying with KDE or Gnome, what i'd do is just install icewm and failsafe, and then once working update your icewm.


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## cheese (Jun 22, 2003)

I had a connection to the tech department. (tech aide in middle school heh ).but i tried last year, no luck. Im thinking of dual booting this computer with SuSe. How would it run? Is it a good idea?


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## Whiteskin (Nov 16, 2002)

To be perfectly honest, run whatever the heck you want! Underneath all the purty paper it's the same damn system, so getting to know one, is like getting to know the other. From one distro to another is not a huge jump like from Win to Mac. 

I find slowness issues are not too bad once you get into 400 range, after that it's simple enough to get X running swiftly. If you find it slow, ask, and we will show how to trim down your desktop for faster performance. 

Now, as for a choice of distro, it depends on what and how you want to learn. If you want to just sit down an work, picking up things through diffusion, then pick up a copy of linspire or mandrake (I'd go for the latter rather than the former). If you activly want to learn linux, it may be worth your time to go with a gentoo install. Yes, it will be hard as hell, but you will learn hundreds of times more by doing so. The documentation they have is well written.


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## cheese (Jun 22, 2003)

Im going to go with SuSe...then from that branch off to something more advanced after awile (gentoo as suggested). Now i just need to get the ISO's..burn and ill install 2mrorow.


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## I Fix 4 U (Jul 19, 2004)

I hope you can get yast2 to coincide with 128 MB ram. It was hell for me.


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## tdi_veedub (Jan 29, 2004)

If WindowsXP will run on 128MB of ram, then so will Fedora, or any other Linux distro.

The solution is simple(well not really if you are a noob): Do not run programs or services that you don't need. Once you customize your Linux distro for your computer, you will see a big difference in performance.

It's unfortunate that Fedora (and other distros) install absolutely everything, and use a default kernel that loads too many modules by default.

The big memory hogs are X(especially in framebuffer mode), KDE, and GNOME. You need X, but you don't need both KDE and GNOME. Just use KDE as it is the Fedora default.

Fedora doesn't support MP3, but XMMS does. Use XMMS for MP3 playback. It's just like Winamp2.


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## cheese (Jun 22, 2003)

Neon, im going to try to get this computer dual bootable with SuSE.


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## I Fix 4 U (Jul 19, 2004)

mmmmkay.


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## bigtime (Dec 18, 2004)

cheese said:


> Neon, im going to try to get this computer dual bootable with SuSE.


 I kinda like Gentoo Linux it took a while to install but the instruction were easy to follow along and you can use kde or gNome desktop and to add something or update you just type emerge ???? and it seens to work about 90 % of the time 
it is comand line base untill after you get it going but i seem to like it 
I have ran 
fedora, linspire, mandrake and suse and went back to gentoo 
good luck what ever you choose
later
bigtime 
under gentoo 2.6.9


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## I Fix 4 U (Jul 19, 2004)

Welcome to TSG bigtime!


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## bigtime (Dec 18, 2004)

iXneonXi said:


> Welcome to TSG bigtime!


thanks.
i was looking around for a configuration on google and this board came up and ran across cheese's message and thought i would add a comment 
later
bigtime
Under gentoo linux 2.6.9


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## I Fix 4 U (Jul 19, 2004)

if you got questions we got answers too.


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## bigtime (Dec 18, 2004)

iXneonXi said:


> if you got questions we got answers too.


Cool thanks , I am fairly new the the linux game when it come to configuring your system, that why i didnt stay with the others distros, but i like gentoo and learned a lot because i built the system from the ground up. I even built the box which is; a duron 1600 overclocked to 1800, 256 meg of ram, a TDK dvd Burner, tnt2 64 video ,117 gig hd and a msi mother board what i an trying to get to work is the VisionDTV sat card (1020a) under gentoo but had to reinstall because all the options for the sat card were not there but they are now just waiting on KDE and Gnome to install and will be able to use it again
I am sure i will have qustions later on


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## I Fix 4 U (Jul 19, 2004)

You run FTA? i hear you have a sat card.


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## bigtime (Dec 18, 2004)

iXneonXi said:


> You run FTA? i hear you have a sat card.


trying too on a pc. i have the twinhan 1020a pci card with a 32" dish
I herd that Linux IS better at PVR than windows. I herd that mythtv is the best. so i would like to give it a spin, but i need a good working version of linux with a 2.6 kernel. l Had gentoo working but somehow lost the sat card options and for some reason there is no front end for the card. so i did a reinstall
the sat card is the info i was looking for when i found this site in google but didn't learn much though. didn't understand on what it was saying . tried to follow the thread but it didn't help


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## I Fix 4 U (Jul 19, 2004)

http://forums.techguy.org/t298053&highlight=FTA.html
i think i have a thread on this i'll go find the link.


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## tdi_veedub (Jan 29, 2004)

> i an trying to get to work is the VisionDTV sat card (1020a) under gentoo


I haven't had much luck with this card either.

It is based on the bt878 chipset. I can get the card to be recognized by mythTV, but that's about it. I don't have the time to play with it lately because of christmas. I have worked with bt878 cards in linux before with Xine etc. and I got them all running great, but this one has me stumped ... I guess my ultimate PCHT box is still a pie in the ski for now ..

btw, using Fedora.


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## akad (Jul 31, 2004)

slackware 10.0 all the way. not part of the way, all the way.


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## I Fix 4 U (Jul 19, 2004)

yah, slackware is good. esp for noobie. i think it is slightly harder to install tho. (then ofcourse i'm about to install gentoo LOL)


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## druid628 (May 26, 2003)

I started with RedHat I would recommend SlackWare to anyone wanting to get into the *nix world. I'll agree it is kind-of a tough install at first. Slackware will give you a better appreciation for *nix. 
I run *BSD (mostly Free and Open) and Solaris now.


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## tdi_veedub (Jan 29, 2004)

It's good to see that there are still lots of slack users out there. I started out with slack 3.5 and today my web server runs slack 10. Slack is nice and simple and follows along the lines of the bsd unix system. 

It's definately not the hacked up version sysV we are seeing with all of the Fedora's mandrakes, etc....It's so bad I can't find my way around anymore. Slack is nice and pure, and hopefully it stays that way


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## I Fix 4 U (Jul 19, 2004)

solaris and bsd aren't linux, but they are *nix. Well, i have them both and like them. Solaris is neat and since sun offers both 9 and 10 free now, i got them. BSD has a neat way to install and thats cool. But if you are actually interested and being truly linux, opensource, and a noobie, i'd say mandrake. If you want to put the time up to learn linux, go gentoo, it will be rough, but the handbook is there. I'm about to make a big gentoo install. Everyone i hear who used it loves it.


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## tdi_veedub (Jan 29, 2004)

> solaris and bsd aren't linux, but they are *nix


That is true, however, there are alot of very striking similarities between FreeBSD and slackware, but make no mistake, slackware is not BSD. It's all unix, just different platforms (bsd, sysV). Then there's my old ibm rs/6000 server running aix 4.3 .... it doesn't get any more unix than that  That old hog (Betsy is her name) still works perfectly, and will soon be my mail server.


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## I Fix 4 U (Jul 19, 2004)

And don't forget solaris, and bsd are not linux. One may be opensource, and both may be able to run linux apps, they are not linux. 
They are unix though and the whole style is quite neat, considering even apple uses unix.


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## druid628 (May 26, 2003)

AIX wow I thought I was one of the few who still had to use that (j/k)
We have one AIX server at work, yeah it doesn't get any more unix than that.

As far as solaris and bsd, no they are not linux, but what I was getting at was it's once you get the feel for linux and I mean really get the hang of it. Then it's easy to begin moving over to more unix-level type systems, *if* you want to. A lot of the guys I know that started learning linux the same time I did still prefer it to BSD. It's all a matter of choice.

I haven't used GenToo very much but I'm planning on jumping in and playing with it oneday hopefully soon.


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## tdi_veedub (Jan 29, 2004)

I found a copy of AIX 5.1 on ebay for cheap, my little C10 is getting an upgrade  It'll be the last one too, now that AIX no longer supports the MCA bus ...


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## I Fix 4 U (Jul 19, 2004)

now i'm confused. And that doesn't happen alot.


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## tdi_veedub (Jan 29, 2004)

Confused about IBM's Micro Channel Architecture(MCA bus)? It is a prioprietary bus created by IBM in the late 80s and was the first that was 32 bits wide. It predated PCI and VESA and only IBM machines ever had it. It was the fastest bus around until PCI came along, and also supported bus mastering and Plug and play.

However, It became extinct for 2 reasons

1. IBM pulled a Sony and wouldn't let anyone else use it.
2. It was incompatible with the ISA bus.

So back to my above post. After AIX 5.1, there is no support for IBM's MCA bus. So to make it simple ...

IBM, no longer supports IBM


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## I Fix 4 U (Jul 19, 2004)

naw, wasn't confused about the bus, but never new about AIX. PS, isn't it more likely to say apple, as its apple who keeps their parts, though apple still thrives.
?


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## tdi_veedub (Jan 29, 2004)

Nah, I said Sony because their Betamax story is quite similar to IBM's MCA story. The only difference is Panasonic nearly bankrupted Sony when they decided to licence out VHS to everybody for practically nothing thus killing the Betamax. Too bad it didn't actually happen  I hate Sony(even though my TV is a Sony).


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## I Fix 4 U (Jul 19, 2004)

I like sony for some things. Same as HP. I hate their computers but i like their printers.


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## tdi_veedub (Jan 29, 2004)

Ahh yes, HP. I feel the same as you do. I always wondered how a company that makes such good printers can make such bad computers.


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## I Fix 4 U (Jul 19, 2004)

Because they don't spend much money on these things. I even feel they buy discounted parts or something, judging by how they have so many firmware updates for pretty much all of their internal parts.
Oh, and their case, thats another story.


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## robomatic (Nov 5, 2004)

I've been concentrating on Mandrake Linux. Started dicking around with 9.2, and had music up. More recently I upgraded to 10.1, and have had problems getting it to install properly. I gather there are some major 10.1 problems out there, so while I like the system, I wouldn't play with 10.1. I know someone working with 10 and that seems okay.

I think your Duron 850 will work just fine with Linux, which seems to run a bit more efficiently then Windows. RAM memory is pretty cheap so load up and banish the worry.

Good luck and keep posting!


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## I Fix 4 U (Jul 19, 2004)

I think cheese has it working now, but that is worthy info. BTW, i stopped using mandrake at 10. I use it for some things, but i liked 9.2 better after i tweaked it for the 2.6 kernel. Now its gentoo time


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## physician (Jul 13, 2004)

cheese said:


> Im a student in HS...so maybe i qualify  Im thinking still im going to try fedora, but is it true it cannot play MP3'S?


I did not read thru all the thread, so if someone beat me to this I apologize. You can download free versions of many of the distros that are called LiveCD's. I am surfing here right now running Mepis. It is running on the Cd and in my 1 gig of ram but not installed. I tried to run Ubuntu today, but it would not bootup completely. Other flavors of linux that you can download liveCD versions of include Suse Mandrake and Knoppix. All of these you download the .iso image, burn an .iso CD, then reboot with the Cd in the ROM. The distro will boot up, yet won't install to the hard drive leaving your current OS intact. I actually have all five of these liveCD's burned to disk and it is quite easy. Many more are available...doc


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## physician (Jul 13, 2004)

iXneonXi said:


> And don't forget solaris, and bsd are not linux. One may be opensource, and both may be able to run linux apps, they are not linux.
> They are unix though and the whole style is quite neat, considering even apple uses unix.


Just tossing this out, I heard a rumor that SUNW is buying either Novell or Redhat this year as they need a presence in the linux server market. Any thoughts on this? Appreciate it...doc


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## I Fix 4 U (Jul 19, 2004)

I don't know about the most recent, but i think most of us here in this thread have used a livecd once or twice. I have a case full of like 12 livecds 
glad you are enjoying linux


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## physician (Jul 13, 2004)

iXneonXi said:


> solaris and bsd aren't linux, but they are *nix. Well, i have them both and like them. Solaris is neat and since sun offers both 9 and 10 free now, i got them. BSD has a neat way to install and thats cool. But if you are actually interested and being truly linux, opensource, and a noobie, i'd say mandrake. If you want to put the time up to learn linux, go gentoo, it will be rough, but the handbook is there. I'm about to make a big gentoo install. Everyone i hear who used it loves it.


Any thoughts on Debian? I have read a lot on the distros and it seems debian has a lot of positives. It seems that they have many other distros that are debian based and very well thought of like mepis and xandros. They regularly update and use the apt-get command which seems pretty intuitive and easy to use. I am surfing with Mepis right now from a liveCd and it installed and ran without a hitch - well it did say it dint detect my Audigy sound card, but I did see Alsa install so I'm thinking it wouldn't be too hard to install the drivers. I am liking this distro. I have a dual boot system with win2k and Suse but had nothing but problems with suse - had to d/l and compile the nvidia drivers and never could get the old sound card to work right. Knoppix liveCD ran easily, MandrakeliveCd would not surf the net, SuseLiveCd surfed the net but did not detect my sound card or vid card and ubuntu did not finish its boot up...doc


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## I Fix 4 U (Jul 19, 2004)

I'm about to install gentoo, and reading about it, i think emerge stomps apt-get, but debian is widely used, and i like knoppix very much, which is debian based. If you want to learn alot about linux and get a headache, but the outcome will be well, people say do a stage1 install of gentoo, and do it all yourself. I am about to attempt that. I'll tell you how easy it was and how stressful when it's complete. That should help you choose.


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## Whiteskin (Nov 16, 2002)

The sun rumor is just that. There's no evidence that that this will happen.

Debian distros are very very nice.


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## tsunam (Sep 14, 2003)

I like solaris, I also like sun as a company they've done a lot for the opensource community and not gotten credit for it unfortunately, Openoffice being one, though they still release staroffice as a product.

As far as solaris being ready to be used on x86, well only on certain systems. Support for a wider range of hardware will grow in time but for now it'll be too hard to work with.


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## druid628 (May 26, 2003)

Yeah the only things talking about it are this on the Register:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/15/sun_needs_linuxbuy/

and stuff from back in August 04:
http://today.java.net/pub/n/SunNovell
http://news.com.com/Sun+mulls+buying+Novell/2100-7344_3-5292579.html
Nothing has been made official as to either way


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## I Fix 4 U (Jul 19, 2004)

Solaris is neat.


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## badale (Jan 8, 2005)

Have just joined & seen the enquiry. I suggest go go to the site of distrowatch where you can read reviews and have a choice of so many distos which can be purchased for US$2. Mandrake is probably the distro that many begin with, I did. However perhaps the wise thing to do is to send for one of the "active" distros that you can run from the cd without having to install it onto your hard-drive. I think the best of these is "SimplyMepis". You might consider purchasing the book, "Point & Click Linux" from Amazon for $20.39 plus shippng which comes with the distro cd and a dvd video to guide you thru' the install. A wonderful way to start. If you then want to install it on your hard-drive you can. Some "active" distros are designed to run purely from the cd but this one is deliberately designed otherwise. Of the commercial distros, I prefer Libranet with it's wonderful band of helpful guys on their forum. You can get their current v. 2.8.1 for $2. I was so impressed with this distro that as a 72 year-old from downunder, I wrote a "tongue in cheek" review for v. 2.8 last year which can be read on their website. Read their review by Robert Storey however. He is a great reviewer and user of linux and is a wonderful character. His review of WinXP on the DistroWatch site is hilariously funny. Good luck and best wishes.


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## I Fix 4 U (Jul 19, 2004)

Welcome to TSG
I agree in all ways except buying that book or the cds. I'd just download linux iso files and instead of buying a book guide, read one of the hundreds of internet guides.
Yes, Mepis was my start distro. I moved around with knoppix. I eventually installed Mandrake. Had fun. Wanted more stuff installed fedora core 2. Got rid of it. Gonna move to gentoo, which is really active and updateing is made really neat.


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