Nicely answered, Niels! Curtis
On Mon, 2004-01-05 at 13:15, Niels Voll wrote: > Hi Doug, > > Many of the other answers you have gotten to your question touch upon > pertinent points. Here are my 2 cents: > > There are several high level forks in the road, all centered around > various flavors of the question, what you would like to do. And that is > a bit of a multi-dimensional question. Some of those dimensions include: > > A: Server Side > vs. Desktop Side > > B: do you like utmost control over your environment and are capably of > some pretty hardcore technical work > vs. do you just want to plug it in and have it working > vs. somewhere in between > > C do you have a "spare" (or semi-spare) computer where you can > experiment over the longer haul > vs. you have one computer, it has to do it' s"production" job, > and you need to keep your experiments very low risk > (i.e. don't impact your primary environment) > > There are more considerations, but the above 3 (at least for me) are > some of the more important one's. Let me start with the easiest one > (point C): > If you need to keep your Linux experiments at zero risk (i.e. you can't > afford to screw up the one and only computer you have), use a bootable > CD based distribution to get your feet wet. My current favorite: knoppix > - http://www.knoppix.org/ > > If you are a pretty hardcore techie (point B), who would like to have > ultimate control, and you are game to face a reasonably steep learning > curve (steeper for Windows or Mac users and administrators(yes!) - not > too steep for experienced Unix system administrators), then look at > Debian or possibly even better, look at Gentoo (source based > distribution - quite cool indeed!). In this case it doesn't matter all > that much, if you are more interested in a server or a desktop environment. > > If both of the above paragraphs don't apply to you, it comes down to the > questions in point A: > > If you are more interested in running a server environment, like a web > server (Apache), maybe email (sendmail, qmail, postfix, etc.), maybe a > database (MySql, Postgres, etc), and some server side programming > environments (PHP, Python, Perl, etc...), then my current favorites (in > order) are: RedHat9/Fedora1, Mandrake, SuSE; Since so many people run > RedHat based servers, it is just easier to find instructions, howto's > and general help for RedHat based systems. > > If you are more interested in a desktop environment, my current > favorites are SuSE, followed by a tie between Mandrake and Fedora. I've > found the SuSE (my last experience is with SuSE 8) desktop based > administration and utilities a bit richer than the others I had tried. > The online updates worked well for me, too, and I didn't even have to go > through a signup procedure. That being said, Fedora's online updates are > very slick, too (and no signup required). Of course, SuSE is a bit > tougher to get for free. > > One point of experience: I've found, that if using rather new/fancy > hardware, then RedHat and SuSE are currently still the best supported. > For example, I have recently set up a machine with a SATA / RAID capable > motherboard, and I found drivers for some versions of RedHat and SuSE - > everything else became quite difficult or even impossible. On older > hardware, RedHat/Fedora, SuSE and Mandrake have all been very good to > me over the last couple of years. > > Disclaimer: These are my current opinions, since I had to decide this > very question for myself about 3 months ago. Just in case you are > curious: I am NOT totally hardcore techie (prefer working with > precompiled packages), I had spare/new computer(s), and I wanted to > learn/build a server environment. As a result, I ended up on RedHat 9 > (because of available SATA/RAID hardware drivers), gently migrating > toward Fedora. > > Sorry about the lengthy post, > > ...Niels > > > > > > > Doug Boyd wrote: > > > Hello, > > > > I'm new to the linux arena. I'm curious if a survey has been done to > > determine the most popular flavour of linux among the Calgary Linux > > Users Group. I'm currently using Fedora, but am thinking of giving > > SUSE a try. > > Which flavour do Cluggers recommend for learning linux with? > > > > Thanks, > > > > Doug (linux newbie) > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > clug-talk mailing list > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca > > > > > _______________________________________________ > clug-talk mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca
