Hi!

I want to install Linux on my PC but i don't know what is the best version. Can somebody please help me?


f1shf00t

I'd propose you start with Knoppix distro (bootable cd with linux distr. for x86 cpu's that requires no setup... it just boots up your linux os in 3 mins average...)
After some expirience with this distr. i would say that best of is RedHat and Suse...
Suse is best but RedHat has almost all programs ready in .rpm (no compile needed for proggi's downloaded...)

do you know where i can download Knoppix distro?

thank you for your help


f1shf00t

This question always seem's to come up and you will never get the same answer.
I had no problems installing Suse and for a newbie i would recomend this.I could never get my modem working.In the end i got a ethernet modem which worked fine. Here are some link's to have a look at.
Review's
Newbie's guide (a bit outdated)
Good Luck.

sorry i don't remember google for it...

I'd say go for 'DamnSmallLinux' ... its only a 50MB download ans believe me its worth it. Its not the complete package that one would look for but its something nice and small ... not much to learn and sh!t .... maybe once you get used to it you can switch to RedHat or Knoppix.
I say you check out the web-site : http:www.damnsmalllinux.org
they also have a user forum, which they added recently, so you can ask any questions related to installation and configuration

... good luck (thumbs)

Slackware .. Mandrake Redhat etc are nice to install if you wanna brag youre running a *nix O/S but if you want to jump in and learn try Slack , If you decide you want pretty try Gentoo

There really isn't a 'best' linux distro. What defiens a OS is it's kernel. What changes in a distro is what software it comes with. I think RedHat is pretty amazing becase of its auto-update feature and its ease to install. If you are a 'hacker' than I sugest knppix-std www.knoppix-std.org it has an amazing list of tools and is pretty easy to install, but knoppix-std like all knoppix's are live cd's so you don't have to install them.

Also DamnSmallLinux uses FluxBox which is really asuome, however it isn't for a *nix nubie, Knoppix-std boots into KDE which is easer to use. I do sugest using fluxBox at a later date. (it is easy to change window managers)

i use Gentoo , i love it and its kinda user friendly , but the installation isnt really easy if you really new to linux , umm some irc channels that might help you
irc.freenode.net
#gentoo
#gentoo-n00b
#gentoo-ot (off topic)
#linuxhelp
#linuxfriends

theres a channel for almost everything on freenode

I started with RedHat originally. I found it very user friendly and the update process was extrememly easy to use. Um, Mandrake is good too, but I didn't like it too much personally. I am now a die-hard SuSE fan! I just got 9.0 Personal last night, and its what I'm in right now. Very user friendly, easy update process, install was the easiest I've seen, and its very fast.

Its not a matter of which is better, its really what is better for you. You can download a few flavours from Linux ISO You can even get the live-eval of SuSE linux. (Though you need to buy the full one, unless you know someone who has it, as you are allowed to make copies and install them on multiple machines! ) It took me a year of playing around to find my favourite, which again is SuSE, but I'm not going to say its the best, it just the best for me!

Happy *nixing!

Dave

get slackware, it's a bit harder to learn but it's worth every minute spent on it, or just get knoppix and then get slack... good luck and don't lose hope, you can do it

Well, after the news I wouldn't advise going with RedHat . Their lack of support will leave everyone grasping for fix's. RedHat will no longer be releasing updated versions and there support is going to end some time next year ( i dont remember when exactly ). So essentially RH is dead, personally I'm not complaining.

As some people have said, there is no best linux distro, it depends on what you want to use it for, what you want to get out of it.

My favorite is Slackware, Debian used to be pretty good but haven't kept up on them lately.

But one thing I have to point out is this, *nix by nature can be very insecure. It is after all a server. Ease of use is not always the best criteria when looking for an operating system. Linux can give you the GUI and "point and click" atmosphere of windows, but your box is going to be very insecure if you don't know what you are doing. And most don't come with an "autoupdate" feature, and those that do I wouldn't recommend using, but thats just my opinion.

I am a long time linux user, so i may be jaded, but I still feel that if you are going to use linux, you should learn to use linux, not jumping into a GUI and running clones of your favorite m$ apps or Wine , VMWare , just so you can say you use linux. Try your first 6 months without X

I'm not suggesting that is why you want to try linux, I have no idea.. The above was more for the readers who might try it just to say their using it. If your not careful, everyone else will be too, except.. on your machine.

Go to www.linuxiso.org and just choose one at random. Then read extensively on it, and install it. In order;
*BSD
Debian
Slackware
then rpm based linux (ie RedHat, Suse, Mandrake)
are generally regarded the better *nix OS's for x86 computers, but i would suggest starting with one of the last flavors (RPM based) then experimenting backwards through the list. This way you can grow accustomed to the new environment without being overrun by completely different ways of working. And do not use emulators to run windows programs and they are counterproductive when trying to learn non win32 os's.

redhat does it 4 me

Totally agree intranet.

While gnome, kde etc may look nice an all...Ive actually found most GUIs on Linux to be quite unstable...maybe the only advantage being is that if it does sieze, you can go into CLI and just kill X, instead of having to reboot etc.

I would 100% recommend anyone whose new to Linux to visit hackerslab.org and try out a few of the challenges there...its an excellent way of finding your way about on *nix CLI...file manipulation and traversal, shell script, permissions etc.

Ive found it better to actually have hands on experience, with maybe a reference book by your side, then just reading a tutorial and expecting to finish the manual expecting to know your way round an OS.

As intranet said, you have to ask yourself why you want to use linux..is it to have more control and power over your computer, to learn more about how your computer actually works than you would using windose or dos....or is it because youve heard others talk about it and you think it will be cool, or, dare I say, leet?

If its the former, youre on the right track...if its the latter..then maybe you should think twice before partitioning your drive.

I started of with Redhat and then mandrake, but both of them lul you into a false sense of security. You think you are cool for using linux but all of the big names are as easy to use as Microsoft.

I am currently testing FreeBSD, Gentoo and a couple of others before moving onto something more taxing.

Jax

As mentioned, depends on what you are after - learning unix/linux, setting up a server of some kind (www, mail, dns, dhcp, etc), code development (C.C++. Perl, Ruby, etc).

If you are going for a server that is going to be hit from the internet, then you want something that has been built with security in mind - OpenBSD tends to be the choice here. This release has security as a primary philosophy.

If you want something with wide spread general use - RedHat in North America, SUSE in Europe (or as a secondary choice). FreeBSD is also quite popular.

For code development - pretty much any Linux or BSD offering will support pretty much any language...

If you want something with integrated and "long term" patch support, then you may want to consider Solaris for Intel. SUN is at the moment claiming to be behind the Intel port .... for now... a pregnant pause. I am not a fan of the Linux/BSD patch mechanisms as a needed patch in a system library may not (for obvious logistical reasons) also result in a static dependent binary also being updated. <this is hard to explain>. With the Solaris release, the patches are not so much bundled on a narrow application basis like Linux/BSD but are bundled with the whole OS in mind. The patches/updates for Solaris-Intel follow the same paradigm as mainstream proprietary vendors (Microsoft, HP, IBM, etc). Downside to this is a security patch is not generally released as quickly compared to the Open Source systems.

Solaris for Intel also has the advantage of being supported by sunsolve.sun.com with probably one of the best documentation/patch/troubleshooting web sites of any of the vendors. When you are making a choice of a OS version, you may want to spend some time noodling around the vendor web site to see what the support is like - and also what kind of support groups are out there. Picking an OS like Plan9 is cool and all that but limited support can become a hassle.

I find Redhat to be rather irritating as things keep breaking from release to release - but it is the most common platform for 3rd party linux-based packages.

check out gentoo, uber optimizable. possibly one of the best linux distros out there today.
www.gentoo.org

Slackware rulez!

maybe i am alone in the dark but my favorite is red hat, easy install of new software with .rpm, muchas software avaible, stable and easy to handle, provided that you ve a small comprehension of linuX at all

aTa

SuSE is a great distro its very easy for beginners

First off you need to get your terminology right linux is a kernel, asking which version of linux to run is like asking what version of kernel32.dll do you have, what you are looking for is a distribution or distro. A distribution is a set of apps, scripts, a kernel, and a method for installing everything and keeping it up to date. Way back when when linux was new, computers were slow so people gave out binaries in tarballs (think zipfiles) so that you didn't have to compile everything from scratch youself saving literaly weeks of compile time. Then redhat came along and decided that they could do things a bit better a created the rpm (redhat pacakge manangement) system where a data base kept track of what apps you had installed and made sure they didn't step on each others toes. Mandrake came along and decided that they would take the stock redhat distro and compile it targed at pentiums to give a speed boost, they continued improving redhat's stock distro with assorted tweeks. Somewhere along the way Debian came along with their own package system that allows you to easily install software in both binary and source form, they are the ideological distro and try to only include "free" software (gpl, lgpl, etc). Then there is gentoo, which is modeled after the bsd ports system, it's just a collection of scripts that can fetch, build, and install software from scratch.

So your choices are a ports based system (gentoo, compile everythign from source, highly optomized but time consuming), a rpm based system (Redhat and Mandrake, everything is binary, very easy but can be a bit tricky to install oddball stuff and keep your libraries updated), a binary tarball system like slackware, or the debian system which is a sort of binary tarball and ports system cross easy to maintain but a bit difficult to install and deal with some of the zelots

Using linux is like setting up a machine shop, if you don't know what you want to do you can't get the tools to do it. You have to decide what you are going to do with the machine and then get the distro that let you do those the easiest. If you want to play mp3's I suggest you do not use Redhat because mp3 libraries are not included do to fear of pattent claims. If you want to run shrinkwraped linux software then redhat is most likely your best choice while debian isn't. If you want the ultimate optimization and have time to read the docs and compile then I suggest gentoo. If you just want to get your feet wet for the first time I suggest knoppix or a derivative as it is a fully working distro on a cd. The best recomendations will come if you post a list of things you want to be able to do.

Gentoo

One of the best linux distribution.

i vote for redhat interms of ease , and slackware in terms on speed.

I would say that RedHat is the most used and best in all tests version.. But SlackWare is a very great version too..! Its fast and is freeeeee

Excellent explaination ikkyu!

Ive been running RH for little under a year now but will be changing soon, mainly because its a bit of a no -brainer. Great to start on once youve decided to take the step and partition your drive, and good for getting used to basic shell control and compiling, but as far as the stage where Im at now, ie trying to get my "hands dirty" so to speak, such as compiling kernels, drivers, etc, and basiclly gaining control over what goes where on my system (where up to recently...one click on up-to-date and *voila*, rpms unpacked and installed), I find myself drifting towards gentoo or slackware, and going as far as purchasing another box and setting up QNX or Solaris.

As you say, each to his/her own. Whatever you hope to accomplish, theres a distro out there to suit you. If that doesnt satisfy you, then build your own. Thats the beauty of open source!

That question is almost like asking "What is your favorite color, and why?"... It's been completely controvertial (?) since ages, and it's more a subjective thing than something with a real reason.

Basically all versions hace the same kernels so, the OS's heart remains for everyone... However there a few things to take care about, some distributions to open way to some devices, or having new tools, forget the main characteristics for the ones the kernel was designed to: Stability, Efficience. Remember this two words, because they are always the ways for every kernel line.

So my first opinion is that u should probe the ones that u r interested on and just get the one that fits you better.

My second opinion, is: "DEBIAN has no opponents " (maybe slack but i used both and i'm far from choosing the last one)
Why? Ok. Stability: in this way i have reached the best results, with debian, (sid), if you use w00dy (stable) it will be better anyway.
Is the only distribution that is 100% GNU.
Finally is the one that someone called Torvalds recommends, and i think he knows something about this topic.

A disadvantage: Debian instalation program is not so easy/clear like others, but it aims that ones who think that a not too easy instaler would keep away from itself the undocumented croud that doesn't deserve such a wonderfull OS.

I would try Knoppix first to see if you really want to install Linux on your PC.
All you have to do is download and burn the image to cd then boot from it

Knoppix Available at http://mirror.csee.wvu.edu/knoppix/knoppix/


The easiset to install are:


Red Hat 9 Because everything has a GUI and there is a lot of documentation avaialbe right now. Support will be going away so if you plan to do anything but test or development choose a different Linux vendor.

Mandrake similar to installing Red Hat but they have there own spin on the GUI interfaces. There is a lot of documentation available for this flavor as well.

Debian I have not tried this one but I have seen alot of people using it, and there is a fair amount of doumentation at the website.

I use suse + some modifications. I also tried a few others. Suse + mandrake have the best hardware support.

I prefer SuSe or soon to be Novell linux. I do prefer FreeBSD and OpenBSD over linux. But thats just me.

I have also found Redhat and suse both run great on VMware, which all you need is diskspace and it won't affect your booting it runs righnt inside of windows. My only issue I have had with VMware is I can't audit wireless with tools like kismet and airsnort due to VMware seeing my wireless interface as just a standard ethernet interface.

there are simple Linux ...^^

AnNyung Linux 1.0

small install size

- base mode : 294M
- development mode : 437M
- total install : 593M

http://annyung.oops.org

for long term n00b install redhat 9.0 painless install and setup, 8.0 if your looking to war drive with a cisco card.

for quick installation nonperm go knoppix, if your looking for security in mind Knoppix STD

Other notable mentions gentoo and freebsd if you got the knowledge and time.

My choice : Gentoo

If you want to learn how it works that's the best IMO. Coz you still have to check config files in da old way, that's the only way to understand how thinks are linked together.

Gentoo provides one of the best community working on it, with great effort of documentation. Installation is not so hard if you follow the step by step documentation.

With Gentoo you only install packages that are needed, not like Redhat or Slackware that install a bunch of crap by default.

Cya

I started with Red Hat Linux and build servers (http, mail, ...) until the year 2002.
Now i switched to SuSE Linux (ver.7.2-ver.9.0) and it´s my favourit distribution.

It´s absoluty easy to install (i think for everybody) - but if you want to play around, you´ve got to read a lot of manpages/books .

sysadmin