Re: [LUG] Which Distribution?

["DAVID BROOK" <david.brook@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I would recommend SUSE professional, bought, boxed.

 

You get probably the best manual set (Mandrake written manuals are very skimpy) although REDHAT 9 comes with useful documentation.

 

I've tried all the major releases recently and had nothing but hassles with Mandrake mostly minor, but things which can be a major stumbling block to a less computer literate user. I was however trialling  release 9 and not the current release 10.

 

Cheers

 

David

----- Original Message -----

From: Solfius

To: list@xxxxxxxxxxxx

Sent: Saturday, June 05, 2004 1:40 PM

Subject: [LUG] Which Distribution?

Okay, so I was wondering if you could offer me some guidance.

 

I have next to no experience in configuring and installing operating systems, but want to install a version of Linux on my spare computer to see what it's like.

 

I've had a browse on the net and it seems the "best" distro for new users is either Mandrake or Red Hat. I've looked at Red Hat but don't fancy a now unsupported version, so I was wondering what Fedora is like for a new user. What would you recomend for a distro?

 

Like I said, I don't have much experience in fiddling round with this sort of thing, but my spare computer has got something like this coming to it - past experience when I fiddled round with a Win 3.0 machine tells me I could experience interesting and inexplicable results once I start playing - still, I'd prefer it to carry on working (it doubles up as a CD player ever since my stereo broke).

 

I'm assuming I'll have to find a new set of drivers for my sound card, or worst case the card is incompatible with Linux (it's a Sound Blaster Live! Player 5.1 on the offchance someone has any idea what will happen to it) is there anywhere in particular that is a good place to start looking for Linux drivers? I'll check the manufacturer site when I get round to looking at the sound card, but I was wondering if there was anywhere else other than Google.

 

So basically what I'm about to try and do is exterminate all remnents of Windows 98 and install Linux, is there anything I should look out for that could render the machine kaputt?

 

Mainly I'm after advice on a distro, beyond that I've got a couple chapters of a book from the Linux Documentation Project lurking in a folder somewhere that should be useful and I'll take it from there.

 

I don't know how relevant system specs are, but FYI currently it has Windows 98, Pentium 2 (alledgely - I always thought it was a pentium 3 as the sticker on the side says), 128 MB of RAM, and any other hardware info would take me a while to work out.

 

Anyway, thank you for any help,

Krysia Bunney