which distro should a noob choose? pros/cons

@wazdog:

Howdy y'all. I'm a new Linoder, as I just purchased the 96 a few days ago. And guess what? I'm a brand-spanking new Linux user as well.

• j

What follows is OPINION. It's entirely possible many people here will disagree with me vehemently, and that's OK, because they have a right to their opinions too.

I started out with RedHat, figuring that as the industry leader (RedHat, not me) I couldn't go wrong learning RedHat. I ended up switching to Debian, partly because of RedHat's EOL of Red Hat Linux, and partly because I had heard so many good things about Debian.

It's stable, and stuff pretty much works the way you'd expect it to. I don't know if I'd recommend Debian for a first distribution, though. You won't really appreciate it unless you've wrestled with another distribution first. Here was my experience installing the linuxdoc-tools package, both on my redhat system and on Debian: 1) RedHat – download the linuxdoc-tools RPM, and rpm -Uvh linuxdoc*.rpm. LinuxDoc has a dependency, so I had to go to rpmfind.net and track it down. That package reported a dependency, so I had to track that package down. That package had a dependency…I ended up going through that cycle about five or six times before I got linuxdoc-tools up and running. 2) Debian -- "apt-get install linuxdoc-tools" That's it. Plus, update the entire system (without having to register with Red Hat Network) with this: "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade" and you'll have all the bug fixes and updates Debian has.

Which brings us to the updates. Debian is just as fast as anyone with security updates, but upgrades and new versions take a LOOOONG time to make it into the stable Debian distribution. They go through a somewhat paranoic testing period before releasing any product as stable. This means that the software included in Debian is somewhat stale -- long past the bleeding edge -- but very, very stable. Debian stable isn't well suited for a desktop OS, but for a server I want rock-solid stability, not flash. Debian gives me that. (Plus, you can compile any program from scratch, just like you can with any *nix OS -- but you give up the easy Debian upgrades.)

Debian is the only distribution I know of that actually recommends doing an overlay install of a new version of the OS over the old version. It's as simple as "apt-get dist-upgrade".

As a side note, I'm looking for a free (both open source and free as in beer) disribution for my home desktop, currently running RedHat 8. Any suggestions?

Hi there wazdog. I'm also a Linux beginner, and after getting a linode mainly for learning purposes, I had to make the same choice. What follows is my personnal opinion, based on my personnal experience. I'm sure you're aware that there's no best distribution. It all depends on what you're looking for and on what you're planning to use your linode for.

I didn't consider going with Mandrake because I've had a bad experience with it a couple of years ago. So bad that I didn't return to Linux before last month…

I found out that many people I know are using either Debian or Gentoo. So I thought it would be a good idea to pick up one of those, to be able to find someone to ask my questions to :) If I were you, that's a point I'd definitely take into consideration.

Both Debian and Gentoo seemed to be great as far as security and stability is concerned. I eventually decided to go with Gentoo, but after one day with it, I didn't feel very confortable. I switched to Debian. Now I'm pretty convinced Debian was the good choice for me.

Some great things about Debian : it's stable (I'm speaking of Woody), it's secure, it's a mature distribution and is widely used (means I can find tutorials and help very easily with Google, most books about Linux give examples for Debian, etc.), it's lightweight. Another killer feature is "apt-get". I you ever want to install some unstable pieces of software on Woody, you can use "apt-pinning".

To help you make up your mind, I'd recommend you have a look at this website : http://www.distrowatch.com/ And eventually, go with whatever distribution, try out and you'll build your own opinion.

All the best !

My vote goes for Debian or Mandrake.

Debian has apt-get, Mandrake has urpmi-tools. Both of them pretty do same thing. (Easy installation of packages, easy upgrading on the fly, etc). Additionally, both tools allow for the upgrading of the entire distribution.

Debian does edge Mandrake out by a little because of its suprior debconf configuration system. (which doesn't matter too much if you install things by hand). Mandrake lacks such a configuration system, and all updates to /etc and whatever else need to be done via the etc-update command. (Which is very similar to FreeBSD's mergemaster tool).

Mandrake also edges debian out by having an amazing default Postfix install. Debian uses exim by defualt, and has only Postfix1 packages. (not Postfix2). Mandrake also has a sophisticated Apache setup via http://www.advx.org/ (rather nifty if you like installing apache, and related via packages.)

HTH

Sunny Dubey

I haven't read all the helpful posts above, so sorry if this is repeated, but - be mindful of choosing Debian. When installed through Linode it's an extremely bare-bones distro (taking up <70MB space). If you want to do anything other than installing very common applications with "apt-get install", then you are bound to run into a number of missing packages whose names will not be handed to you on a plate (unlike RedHat's RPMs). For ease of use, RedHat is still a winner in my opinion - most stuff works out of the box so you'll be able to slowly figure out how things work rather than jumping in at the deep end. Don't let the fact that support for it is being discontinued put you off too much - RH9 support doesn't end until April and by then you're bound to have messed about a bit and moved onto another distro to do the same :)

Good luck!

Regarding Debian:

@Quik:

If you want to do anything other than installing very common applications with "apt-get install", then you are bound to run into a number of missing packages whose names will not be handed to you on a plate (unlike RedHat's RPMs).

Sounds like you just haven't found the plate on which they're handed.

apt-cache search <search-text></search-text>

@inkblot:

Regarding Debian:

@Quik:

If you want to do anything other than installing very common applications with "apt-get install", then you are bound to run into a number of missing packages whose names will not be handed to you on a plate (unlike RedHat's RPMs).

Sounds like you just haven't found the plate on which they're handed.

apt-cache search <search-text></search-text>

What exactly does that do? I haven't got any Debian installations to test on at the moment.

@Quik:

@inkblot:

apt-cache search <search-text></search-text>

What exactly does that do? I haven't got any Debian installations to test on at the moment.

Here is an example (using 'money' as the search text):

[inkblot@dorothy:~]$ apt-cache search money     
dtaus - Paperless money transfer with German banks on floppies
gpal - a friendly GUI frontend for the PayPal micropayment service
gnome-games - games included in GNOME2
grisbi - Gnome-based personal financial management program
kmymoney2 - Personal finance manager for KDE
myphpmoney - Finance manager written in PHP
python-pgsql - A Python DB-API 2.0 interface to PostgreSQL v7.x
python2.1-pgsql - A Python DB-API 2.0 interface to PostgreSQL v7.x
python2.2-pgsql - A Python DB-API 2.0 interface to PostgreSQL v7.x
python2.3-pgsql - A Python DB-API 2.0 interface to PostgreSQL v7.x
smstools - SMS Server Tools for GSM modems
smtm - Show Me The Money is a configurable Perl/Tk stock ticker program

It's generally best to do a few searches with various words that might match the stuff you're looking for. In this case, I'd probably try 'finance' next.

Looks handy inkblot - thanks!

For beginners I'd still recommend RH9 though as RPMs take out 99% of the hassle when you just want to see something working ;)

I am a redhat user. I would recommed loading what your use to using to just get your feet wet. Then go play in the pond of distros, before you lock your self in distro. My feet are soaking wet.

I'm pretty sure that I have never, ever, typed a word or moved the mouse on a PC running Linux, though I've logged into a variety of Unix and Windows servers and spent lots of irritating time with NT desktops. So I think that qualifies me as a Linux noob.

I tried Debian first, but I love the freedom of choice I get with Gentoo (don't flame me, please, because I'm too ignorant to fight back). Spending time with their packaging system, Portage, has got me doing stuff I didn't expect to do, like configuring my own builds where even Gentoo's edge wasn't bleeding enough.

Most important for this newbie – it's got a great community!

Whichever one you choose, you came to the right place -- Linode gets better every day!

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone!

In the end I decided to go with Debain, so here goes….!

Having fun already! And I'm super-glad to be in such a wonderful, helpful community.

• j

well caker added ferdoina