Linux 4 newbies

[Calum]

i just thought i would mention that i thought mepis stank, not trying to pick a fight but somebody said it was great for a newbie, i think that's entirely incorrect. all i am saying is that taking recommendations is fine, but you will want to try some out before you make any serious decision, because it really is all a matter of opinion. if there isn't an answer now to "what's the best distro" then there never will be.

[H_TeXMeX_H]

As a linux newbie myself (dispite many years of trying to learn it), I am interested to find out what your recommendations would be for a good distro to use. Unfortunately, as a PC gamer, I'm stuck using windows, except for a few games that come out for linux, and I'm not planning on bying a Mac anytime soo. Personally, as I want to be using it somewhat regularly, I am only interested in installable distros and not live CDs, though they have their uses (I almost exclusively use linux fdisk when I have to muck around with HD partitions now). One major concern I have is while graphical tools are all well and good, I want to be able to really learn the ins and outs of linux, editing confs and rcs by hand and whatnot. So if you experts have any recommendations where I could go to start learning this, that would be great.

I suppose you could try slackware, I wouldn't say it's for newbies ... but it's not that hard if you read the manuals

[Calum]

actually it's not a good distro for a windoid, but that's not the same thing as a newbie, though nowadays it is harder and harder to find a linux newbie who isn't a windows veteran, impatient for a system that does everything windows should but without any of the bugs, hassle or expense (and then they complain when they don't get exactly what they want, but that's another story).

what i'm saying is that slackware is actually one of the easiest linuces to use (and administer) so long as you don't come at it from a windows perspective.

[ReggieMicheals]

Well, if you want to learn how to use something you might as well pick something easy to install and difficult to use when you've used windows for a long time - that was the only way I could learn and appreciate *nix. FreeBSD will give you quite a taste of setting up UNIX, using the command line, and vi. Just print off the docs or have a spare windows machine handy with the online documentation on it so you know what you're doing. Then, when you've setup the system with a graphical environment, you can use Wine to run many of your PC games. I think they got things like WoW and Half-Life running on it. Check out the Wine app database to see what people have tested to run properly.

[Calum]

that's good advice for somebody who has the patience, but most people don't. it's really whether we are talking about a "most people" newbie or an enthusiastic newbie that's at issue here.

one of my friends quoted to me once (i don't know the original author): "linux is only free if your time is worthless", and there's a lot of truth in that, but my response of course (after careful consideration) is: "windows isn't free, even if your time is worthless".

[pofnlice]

you should have said windows is expensive, especially when your time is.

[H_TeXMeX_H]

Whatever man, some Linux distros are actually much easier to administer than any Window$ piece of shit.

[mobrien_12]

Exactly.
 
There's this whole myth thing going on that Linux takes a lot of time to use.  The only time it takes a lot of time is when I need to compile some oddball program that has a bucketload of dependencies and I have to compile all the dependencies.  You know what?  I don't find that to be an issue anymore.  

With yum, I can get almost any package I want pre-compiled, and it pulls the dependencies for me automatically.  If there's a program I want to compile that isn't pre-packaged, like workrave, suprise, I found all the dependency libraries already built for me and ready to download with yum.  

Windows, however, wastes a lot of time.  Crashes, endless reboots, patching all the damn time, system instabilities, frustrations, hitting ctrl-alt-delete all the time.

Then there's other stupid shit.  Yeah... I like waiting 5-10 minutes for a 2 GHz machine running windows XP to shut down/reboot when a linux box on a 450 MHz Celeron will shut down in a fraction of the time.

And that's just the intrinsic suckitude of the OS.  Put on antivirus/antispyware software and watch your cpu power get sucked away to maintain this POS OS.  Get a virus or spyware infection anyway and your PC slows to a crawl.

[Pathos]

Hmmm, I have spent hours and hours learning linux .. well gnu really...

but people don't realize how many hours it took to learn windows and expect a instant transition. And then they try do things that they don't do on windows...get wifi/Ati gfx working when the manufacturer doesn't support the OS.

I prefer linux for administration (well ubuntu at least so far)

I don't have Crashes, reboots, patching, instability, or frustrations on windows XP btw (except when the belkin driver was crashing).

That 5-10 minutes to shutdown

[H_TeXMeX_H]

Exactly, it took me what 1 month to learn most of the Linux basics, but it took me several years to learn how to keep Window$ alive for max 2 years, after which you gotta reinstall ... cuz it FUCKS ITSELF OVER !!! And it gives you a headache all the while.

[pofnlice]

Maybe the meaning wasn't as clear as I thought...

you should have said windows is expensive, especially when your time is.

Windows is expensive - In money and time, it takes a lot of it

especially when your time, thus making it all the more so expensive.

Hence, the quote....

If you rely on GP for your product distribution, and you use windows, to maintain the profit margin, you need a higher GP to maintain the distribution system.

If Linux is your method, the GP can be lower to maintain a similar level of profit margin.

There's a basic business principle involved there, less for more where possible.

[cymon]

Well, it's not significantly faster per se, but don't forget that you're talking to the guy that uses Fluxbox because it loads in two seconds rather than two MINUTES.  The more performance I can squeeze out of my hardware, the better.

My P3 system can boot XFCE in under one minute, and fluxbox is supposed to be ultralightweight, even more so than xfce.

[pofnlice]

Unless you're one of those Gentoo junkies...

HAHAHAHALOL!!!!!!111!!!111 My syst3m 1s .0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000018 s3ks faster cuz 1 d0z t2h gentooz!!!!LOL!O!!!O!l!O!L!O

[H_TeXMeX_H]

I think fluxbox is better than XFCE, and faster (for me at least).

BTW, did you know that KDE uses up about 50 MB of RAM on startup ... fluxbox uses only about 3 MB.

[superken76]

i'm a reformed winaholic i just switched to freespire and i'll not switch back if my life depends on it. ps.i've been reading posts here a long time

                                            superken76