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Nov 6, 2001, 11:28pm

well i've always wanted this. And i know theres several versions like Red
Hat and so on....

well what do you think is the best version and where is it avaliable

Nov 6, 2001, 11:39pm

Suse has quite good management tools, but it's bloated.

RedHat has a minimized version that comes on only one CD,
that looked quite acceptable to me.
Mandrake seems to be similar to RedHat in what they
install for a basic system, not too bloated.

I heard about the Corel that it's a good starter system

I think the best would be to check http://www.linuxiso.org/
for the smallest systems, look if it contains all components
you need (kernel version, hardware support, web support, DSL)
and decide then.

Always a quite slim option : Free BSD


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Nov 7, 2001, 12:08am

In my opinion Redhat is the best for a beginner (which would be an expert in
windows, no matter how good you are linux is a very different OS and has a
steeper learning curve compared to windows ) to pick up and really get in
depth with it fast. Plus WINE (good for AW) seems to be readily available
and well documented for RH 7.1 and 7.2. Of course you have to account for
the ISP too.. if they support linux's dialup most DUN will ie. Earthlink and
Juno (I think). If you're on cable it should be very easy with DHCP.

--Bowen--

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Nov 7, 2001, 1:20am

Just from personal experience...

I tried Redhat 7.1 and Suse 7.2 at about he same time...then both were the
current releases. Doing out of the box installs with no manual tweaking...
Redhat seemed like a cleaner install process. But after I had used both
for a while I noticed that Redhat became a bit flakey. Soundcard, touchpad
and various other devices would work one time, but not the next. Suse
never supported the touchpad on my laptop, but everything else was fine and
always worked.

Suse is done in Germany, Redhat in the US. Suse has a few problems in the
area of documentation. There is a tendency for error messages to be poorly
translated into English. Of course BOTH systems use open source from all
over the world, but I would say Redhat had been more thoroughly "cleaned up"
for English speaking people.

Another MAJOR difference IMHO is that Redhat favors the Gnome user interface
while Suse favors KDE. Gnome and IDE are the "windows" part of Linux that
provide you with a desktop, icons, and the basic toolset for doing things.
Since both use the X-windows as a base, many programs will run under both
KDE and Gnome, but there are also quite a few that only work in one or the
other. Both Redhat and Suse include Gnome and KDE, but to me they each work
better with the one they default to (which might explain some of my problems
with Redhat).

Having used both for a while I decided that I preferred KDE over Gnome (at
least for now... they both are under active development). Since Suse
defaults to KDE, I found that its administrative tools tended to work better
in KDE. The same is probably true of Redhat and Gnome.

And finally, Redhat is the only Linux company coming close to making a
profit at this point. They invented the RPM system that is used to package
applications software distributions. Suse uses RPMs too. Redhat is
slightly more likely to be around in 5 years than Suse if that's an issue
for you. (Wasn't for me).

I am running Suse on an older desktop machine and on a new laptop. The
Laptop is dual-booted with Windows ME (*holds nose*). Using the included
WINE package I got AW running on both systems with a few hours tinkering.
At first only AW 2 would work there since the 3D graphics card support
doesn't work under WINE. With 3.2 I get fairly fast graphics under Linux
in software mode... almost the same frame rate as with windows USING the
hardware 3D!! There are a few minor "bugs" running in this mode, but no
crashes or hangs, just convenience issues. I started it up the other day
and got into a chat and forgot that I was using Linux. I had several
other active programs running at the same time in the background, something
that doesn't work too well for me using Windows.

If you decided to try Linux: make sure you get the new Netscape 6.2
installed right away, it totally replaces all the functionality of Internet
Explorer and Outlook Express. Netscape is BACK ! Also, both products
include Star Office which has the functionality of Word, Excel and a few
other MS office programs. Star office takes some getting used to. Its a
bit slow, especially getting started. Once I launch it I just leave it
running. If those two products aren't enough to worry Microsoft, check out
http://www.lindows.com who's plan is to make just about all Windows programs
run under Linux (without having to pay royalties to Microsoft). If they
succeed (and they only think they need about a year) the most secure jobs at
Microsoft with be the corporate lawyers.

We live in interesting times.


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Nov 7, 2001, 1:51am

Nice informative post :) but WINE has supported 3d cards for a while.. but
you needed to get a CD application that has directX instal since the directX
install goes from the web now (MS's approach to stop WINE). But Redhat 7
works perfect for me in KDE, might just be your configuration since not all
things are compatible (majorly being window oriented hardware like winmodems
and winsound cards). Redhat is, like I said, more towards beginners, but is
still great for experienced people who can change the stuff fast (I don't
use the non-professional versions of redhat so I don't know if that's true
for the normal one). KDE is better IMHO too (my redhat defaulted to KDE not
gnome). This is my rave for now :)

--Bowen--

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Nov 11, 2001, 10:41am

I run RedHat Linux 7 ( It's about time to upgrade...lol ) on a Dell
PowerEdge server. I've had absolutly no problems with it. Dell supports
RedHat, and has several great newgroups. ( You can speak directly to the
head engineer of the Linux division ). The only complaint I have aginst
RedHat is the FTP server they include. wu-ftp has root exploits right and
left... so, that'll be the first thing you have to change. I must admit,
I've never used any other distro of Linux, but why would I? ;-)

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jeremy Booker
JTech Web Systems
(www.JTechWebSystems.com -- Coming Soon)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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