Easy but want to learn

[scottmso]

I am looking for a Linux distro that is moderately easy to use, but will still allow me to learn something. I have used a little Linux before (not a lot) and have a lot of Windows experience. It doesn't need to be too "dumbed down" like Lycoris or Lindows/Linspire; SuSE/Mandrake/etc seemed to be about fine for me. It would need to be fairly easy to manage. I plan on using it for average computer tasks (Internet, email, word processing, etc etc etc), some games on WineX (and some native to Linux games - eg UT2004), and possibly some programming in the future. I want to also use it to be able to learn Linux - shell, text editors, etc - and possibly start using more "advanced" distros (Slackware, Debian, Gentoo, etc) in the future. Any recommendations would be appreciated. Thanks!

[JGJones]

I'm in the same boat as you (minus the programming thing) but since I have a P2 400MHz laptop with 64Mb I've gone for the VectorLinux

Due to the laptop, I'll be installing it on a desktop P3 800MHz as well (I figure it's best to keep to the same distro so that I get used to their way of doing thing)

I would suggest that although my last experience (first time properly) was on Fedora Core 2 and it wasn't so bad. Not as user friendly as Mandrake but still easy to use so that it's ideal for the newbie that have good understanding of computers enough so that they learn very quickly.

I'll say go for Fedora Core 3 (which is out now), but more experienced users will post better suggestions perhaps! :)

[DSwain]

FC3 sounds about right to me.

Hmm that's an interesting combo that I haven't ever really seen. It's usually one end of the spectrum or the other for most. Yes, Red Hat or Fedora would do the job pretty well. I'd also say possibly Slackware. It's really not all that difficult to manage as you might think, but it does have a bit more of a curve than FC will. Ubuntu might be good to look at also, though that's pretty easy to use. Possibly too easy?

I'll post again if I think of any better ideas for you. For now, my money is on FC3.

[eskiled]

I agree that Slackware would be good. Actually to me, really with any distributations (except Lycoris, Linspire, etc) would be fine. Just stay clear of KDE. Its bloated, and its got to many menus/setup programs that let you work around the terminal. There are some things you must learn to do from the command line, and I feel pretty strongly that KDE discourages new users from doing this.

Good luck with whatever you choose!
eskiled

[scottmso]

I have another question - I have a GeForce4 Ti4200 with dual (DVI with DVI to VGA adapter and VGA ports) monitor ports on the card. Two monitors are connected. When I tried SuSE, without the official nVidia driver, it would show the same thing on both monitors but on the main one (VGA port) it would show no cursor. With the nVidia driver it would only show a picture on the one connected to the DVI port. In both cases SuSE's dual-monitor feature said that 2 display devices were not connected. Do other distros have a good way to run dual monitor using only my GF4 card?

[scottmso]

Yes I think I'll try Fedora FC3 for now. FC2 seemed fairly nice when I played with it. Now does anyone have a recommendation for a good GUI/desktop environment - don't know what its called? One of you said not to use KDE - I guess next to that GNOME is the most "Windoze-like" of them. That's what I'm thinking of using right now - any other recommendations? (I tried a couple of others - WindowMaker it might have been - they seemed a lot "slimmer" than KDE/GNOME)

Also when I install FC3, should I just install everything in case I need it later, or if I need to put it on there (RPM dependencies etc) I should just install it from the CD then?

Thanks for the advice!

[DSwain]

Either way should work perfectly fine, depends on how much you do or how much you want to do and disk space. I generally only go for needed-packages for the sake of being compact.

Gnome is good. I guess it's Windows like somewhat, but KDE is more so than that. I just like Gnome over KDE a lot. Easier feeling to it. I also like XFCE4 for good GTK-interfaces.

[infiniphunk]

Now does anyone have a recommendation for a good GUI/desktop environment - don't know what its called? One of you said not to use KDE - I guess next to that GNOME is the most "Windoze-like" of them. That's what I'm thinking of using right now - any other recommendations?

Try out Fluxbox; its beautiful. Its minimal while still giving you the option of having menus if you want.

[ArtVandelay]

I was in a similar situation to you
about two years ago. I got redhat 8.0 and updated
to fedora core 1 awhile after it came out.

I started out small, just doing unix tutorials I found on the net, then gradually started trying cooler, more involved projects.

A fun project I did that really turned my into a Linux enthusiast was installing and running PS Doom, so I could kill processes by shooting monsters. :) I even had to change a small amount of source code to get it working, so there was a little of everything happening there.

[scottmso]

I decided to start running Slackware on my system. I like it and I've learned some stuff. A mistake in installation was installing the "bare" kernel that was being run off the CD so at first I couldn't figure out why X and my NIC weren't working. Finally I figured that since I installed the bare kernel it wasn't working. So I downloaded the full 2.6.9 kernel source code, put it on my thumbdrive, configured my fstab to make the thumbdrive work, copied the kernel over, and compiled it. First time it didn't work successfully and I was getting some error about it not being able to read a filesystem. I was puzzled until after some searching on the Internet I figured out that I didn't include ReiserFS support in the kernel and I had a ReiserFS root FS. So I went and recompiled the kernel again and it works nicely! Right now I'm running GNOME on it.

[saikee]

I am newbie too started 5 months ago.

I am booting 32 Linux plus some Windows and a DOS in a box.

Haven't had a need to get a driver yet and find this way great to learn Linux. I think I begin to understand how the Linux bootloaders work.

[eskiled]

saikee: WHY! lol why would you ever need some many OSes???








Edit: 50th Post!!!! :)

[saikee]

I store them in 5Gb per partition. One 200Gb has 43 partitions as DOS, some Windows and swap use less space. Haven't been able even to fill up one disk yet. Some distro can take 2 hours to install. I prefer to keep them for use rather than destroying them.

It is nice to be able to get into any one whenever I want. Also I can concentrate on learning the bits which are common to them all.

It is less stressful when you find one Linux fail to kick start a piece of hardware when most of the others have no problem with it.

Highly recommend for anybody wishing to learn about the bootloaders. With that amount of installed systems you can stretch every bootloader to its limit.

[vontez]

saikee: I'm not a betting man, but I would wager that after your 5th distro, you had learned quite a bit about your bootloader. You must've mastered the bootloader by the time you installed your 50th!

[Sbbath]

Im a new learner, My friend DSwain is teaching me some things, so far somethings on the CLI in windows. But im not ready to get linux and I wanted to know whats good and easy to use and learn on. I haven't really been able to do anything like this before because i just got a box for christmas. Also some good online manuals or info site on linux would be nice. Anything along these lines. Thanks

~sbbath

[Sbbath]

Well i just got my HD partitioned and installed MDK, which is pretty easy. So I recommend Mandrake(MDK) im new and im already hooked so probably for now it's just MDK untill i get better and live-cd's.

SS - http://images.modblog.com/files/mbgallery/Sbbath/files/snapshot1.png

~sbbath

[XiaoKJ]

I say go gentoo

[TaNeK]

Originally posted by XiaoKJ
I say go gentoo

Gentoo is a bit hard I think, using a more friendly distro would probably be a good step before venturing deeper into the distro jungle to enslave the Gentoo :)

My first/current distro is debian, I've sure learnd alot, but actually I'd rather taken an easier distro to start with, and then switched...

It's all up to you, if you cannot choose, just put a few small notes in a basket, each one with a distro's name, and just pick one at random. They're all linux, and all linux is good ;) (almost ;);))