Ask Linux.com: Choosing a distro, working with external hard drives, and learning how to write
Posted by: Anonymous
[ip: 66.240.11.2]
on April 15, 2008 06:54 PM
Before trying to choose a distro, you need to dump out your hardware list using something like dxdiag: Start|Run dxdiag.
I think of it as lspci for windows, though not quite. Then google search each piece of hardware for forum discussions about the hardware on linux.
Then you'd find the linux drivers for all of it. If you are missing some drivers, no distro will work the way you want unless you don't plan on using the hardware.
You want to find out what person x had to do to get the hardware working on distro Y. In most cases, Ubuntu takes care of this stuff for you. Just in case, check the Ubuntu forums for discussions on your hardware stuff.
Once you figure out what drivers are available, the rest is cake. Read up on the philosophies of the distros and find one that works for you.
Here are some samples:
Ubuntu: just works(tm), at least most of the time. The "people's" distro. Includes the goodies like video codecs etc. Excellent for new linux users, though their patching policies (quarterly) don't handle 0day vulnerabilities very well.
Debian: only includes completely FOSS stuff. no proprietary stuff allowed (like mp3 codecs, nvidia drivers etc.)
SuSE: stability package distro suitable for corporate desktops, though their server is no slouch.
Fedora: Not exactly sure ROFL. Free redhat workstation/server. Sort of a beta test for Enterprise.
CentOS: Red Hat ES clone built from src RPMs. (God bless GPL!) Excellent server distro.
Red Hat ES: Great server OS, though any of the others will also do this job pretty well.
Gentoo: Performance? Need the best docs in the community? can't be beat when you compile your entire OS from a bunch of text files, YARRR! The community documentation is driven by very talented people who really know what they are talking about. Go there for answers even if you don't run Gentoo. All of it applies to all distros, excepting details about emerge (their packager).
Slack: Like gentoo, only super stable(aka stable but not latest and greatest), though Gentoo can be if you don't use the dangerous stuff.
Basically if you are uncomfortable building your OS from command line in a shell, stay away from Slack and Gentoo.
If you want to pop a cd in and get a nice general build back on your hard drive, Ubuntu or Fedora, though you may have issues with Fedora since they are kind of the beta Red Hat test platform.
If you think like Stallman, go with Debian. Just be prepared to have trouble with multimedia, unless you go outside of Debian for the packages they won't support, like vendor provided video drivers and media codecs.(can be a PITA if you've never configured dpkg before, though the docs are great)
SuSE's a great stable desktop, with lots of eye candy (compiz fusion etc) built in, though it's not free in the truest sense of the word.
Just remember that any distro can do whatever you want it to, as well as what any other distro can do. They just have different paths in getting to the end result. They are all linux OS's and run the same software, with the differences being patches made to programs to modify them the way the distro maintainers see fit.
At the end of the day, they are all the same software mostly, with different packaging systems and philosophies. Each distro has their add-on goodies to differentiate them. Day to day, once the system is up and running, this simply doesn't matter. You can automate them all to patch automagically.
For a beginner, I'd roll with Ubuntu. It's free, stable, and easy to patch/upgrade. I like bleeding edge performance and am a software engineer, so I'm a Gentoo user. Configuring your own kernel using menuconfig, and compiling it floats my boat. The only real differences between distros are attitude, packaging systems and ease of maintenance.
They are all GNU\Linux, have nearly the same software builds, and all have their particular quirks. I love them all for various reasons unique to each distro.
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Ask Linux.com: Choosing a distro, working with external hard drives, and learning how to write
Posted by: Anonymous [ip: 66.240.11.2] on April 15, 2008 06:54 PMI think of it as lspci for windows, though not quite. Then google search each piece of hardware for forum discussions about the hardware on linux.
Then you'd find the linux drivers for all of it. If you are missing some drivers, no distro will work the way you want unless you don't plan on using the hardware.
You want to find out what person x had to do to get the hardware working on distro Y. In most cases, Ubuntu takes care of this stuff for you. Just in case, check the Ubuntu forums for discussions on your hardware stuff.
Once you figure out what drivers are available, the rest is cake. Read up on the philosophies of the distros and find one that works for you.
Here are some samples:
Ubuntu: just works(tm), at least most of the time. The "people's" distro. Includes the goodies like video codecs etc. Excellent for new linux users, though their patching policies (quarterly) don't handle 0day vulnerabilities very well.
Debian: only includes completely FOSS stuff. no proprietary stuff allowed (like mp3 codecs, nvidia drivers etc.)
SuSE: stability package distro suitable for corporate desktops, though their server is no slouch.
Fedora: Not exactly sure ROFL. Free redhat workstation/server. Sort of a beta test for Enterprise.
CentOS: Red Hat ES clone built from src RPMs. (God bless GPL!) Excellent server distro.
Red Hat ES: Great server OS, though any of the others will also do this job pretty well.
Gentoo: Performance? Need the best docs in the community? can't be beat when you compile your entire OS from a bunch of text files, YARRR! The community documentation is driven by very talented people who really know what they are talking about. Go there for answers even if you don't run Gentoo. All of it applies to all distros, excepting details about emerge (their packager).
Slack: Like gentoo, only super stable(aka stable but not latest and greatest), though Gentoo can be if you don't use the dangerous stuff.
Basically if you are uncomfortable building your OS from command line in a shell, stay away from Slack and Gentoo.
If you want to pop a cd in and get a nice general build back on your hard drive, Ubuntu or Fedora, though you may have issues with Fedora since they are kind of the beta Red Hat test platform.
If you think like Stallman, go with Debian. Just be prepared to have trouble with multimedia, unless you go outside of Debian for the packages they won't support, like vendor provided video drivers and media codecs.(can be a PITA if you've never configured dpkg before, though the docs are great)
SuSE's a great stable desktop, with lots of eye candy (compiz fusion etc) built in, though it's not free in the truest sense of the word.
Just remember that any distro can do whatever you want it to, as well as what any other distro can do. They just have different paths in getting to the end result. They are all linux OS's and run the same software, with the differences being patches made to programs to modify them the way the distro maintainers see fit.
At the end of the day, they are all the same software mostly, with different packaging systems and philosophies. Each distro has their add-on goodies to differentiate them. Day to day, once the system is up and running, this simply doesn't matter. You can automate them all to patch automagically.
For a beginner, I'd roll with Ubuntu. It's free, stable, and easy to patch/upgrade. I like bleeding edge performance and am a software engineer, so I'm a Gentoo user. Configuring your own kernel using menuconfig, and compiling it floats my boat. The only real differences between distros are attitude, packaging systems and ease of maintenance.
They are all GNU\Linux, have nearly the same software builds, and all have their particular quirks. I love them all for various reasons unique to each distro.
-AC
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