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MighMos
04-02-2003, 11:00 PM
I have a friend who hates windows. Only up untill a few weeks ago he didn't know there was an alternative that wasn't a mac. Hes going to switch to linux soon, but being a (sort-of) newbie my self, I wanted to get some advice on a distro to recommend. I my self have used Red Hat and Gentoo and thats it. I wouldn't really recommend Gentoo to a newbie, and im looking for some advice from some people who maybe have used many distros and have one to recommend.
stumbles
04-02-2003, 11:09 PM
Why not install RH9, Mandrake 9.1, and another of your choice on his machine and let him chose? If you do the default package selection from them I am sure you can get them all on one hard drive.
hop-frog
04-03-2003, 01:34 AM
Get one of the big three: Mandrake, Red Hat, or SuSE. Mandrake is the best distro for Newbies IMO. I prefer SuSE and it is almost as easy to setup and use, but it costs money. I've had a bad time with Red Hat, but that is just because it didn't like my hardware.
serz
04-03-2003, 03:30 AM
I would recommend him to start wtih Mandrake, or.. maybe Redhat...
kZahradnik
04-03-2003, 03:37 AM
I would recommend RedHat. Mandrakes future is uncertain...
Don't get me wrong, my first ever distro was Mandrake, and I really liked it. It is just the financial trouble they are in right now...
bosox79
04-03-2003, 03:52 AM
My vote would be for Mandrake 9.1

this is a great distro to use becuse of great hardware Dectition plus it has NTFS read support & the ablity to play MP3 right after setup. whereas redhat is missing these things out of the box so to speak. What type of hardware is your friend going to use?
redhat is great to it just takes a little more work to setup as a home desktop for the reasons mentioned above. I have never used SUSE myself Mandrake 9.1 is very user friendy. I consider it to have the best both both worlds ease of use via gui tools & all the power of linux under the hood. Mndy 9.1 is eaiser to setup then windows IMO. But like others have said stick with one of the big 3 comerical distro's & you should be safe.as long as you are not try to install linux on totly weried hardware

thats just my .02:D
MighMos
04-03-2003, 06:32 PM
He's got old hardware, put together from other machines, so I think most distros would support his hardware. I personally like the look of RedHat's blue curve, and thats the one he's really noticed so I think I'll burn him some ISOs of RH9. Thanks for the help.
bosox79
04-04-2003, 12:15 AM
Originally posted by MighMos
He's got old hardware, put together from other machines, so I think most distros would support his hardware. I personally like the look of RedHat's blue curve, and thats the one he's really noticed so I think I'll burn him some ISOs of RH9. Thanks for the help.

your welcome,

I am always glad to help a fellow linux user:D