Jeff Mandrell wrote:
>
> I am currently running winblows95/S.U.S.E. 5.3, but will soon be setting up
> a second pc with Linux only. I would like to hear from people on the list
> as to which Linux distribution they prefer. I am extremely new to Linux
> (less than a month) and have RedHat 5.1, S.U.S.E. 5.3, and Caldera Open
> Lite. Any opinions as to which distribution would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Jeff,
I put the same question on many lists and I tried till now Slackware and
RedHat. Now I am downloading Debian to try it also. I did so because I
want to find out which is the best for a home PC user. Why Microsoft
would be the biggest on the mass market ? On this point of view I
searched also for applications with the most interest for the free ones.
As a matter of fact I am not working anything on Linux, I am only trying
which is the best for an intelligent home user who also wants to put his
mind at work not only to click the mouse.
So, that is what I find out:
Slackware is very reliable because its owner, Patrick Volkerdink, is
testing himself everything he is putting in the distribution. And now he
made also his own web site. It was simple to install but you have to
configure yourself, it is less automatic.
RedHat seems to be very good for home-PC users because it has GUI tools
and peple are used to this from Windows. As a matter of fact configuring
the modem, printer, mouse must not be a filosofy. This distribution is
encouraging the newbies. The RPM GUI tool is also a good thing for
installing applications.
The DEBIAN, I didn't try it yet but I was on the list. They said the
Debian is the most stable Linux but is not very user-friendly. They said
it is better to begin with RedHat and then to come to Debian Because
"you
don't learn to drive on a Ferrari". The Debian is very dinamic, if you
want to make a name in the programmers world there is the best place.
I found applications for all the distributions: Netscape Com, The GIMP
(an ADOBE Photoshop for Linux), Email, Text Editors, Midnight Commander
(kind of Norton), Corel's Wordperfect8 is now free for personal use,
StarOffice and KDEOffice are now free. KDE is now distributed packages
for RedHat and Debian and in bin.tgz, the Qt tool which served for
building KDE is now free. It seems also the game makers began to make
Linux versions of their games.
The distribution you choose depends only of your taste an of you want to
work on linux.
For myself I choosed a Mandrake distribution which is a RedHat with the
KDE allready installed, with Netscape, GIMP (I am a photography fan),
Midnight Commander (I press mc and my usual Norton Commander appears),
the filter for my printer was in the distribution, and now I have the
best home-PC, and all for free.
Contrary to all advices I use the Netscape Composer as a text editor
because so I have the compatibility with Microsoft. I am working now to
install Wordperfect8 to see if it has a feature to turn the files in
.doc files for MS Word.
All above was only a personal opinion as a home-PC user.
Cristian Carnutu
