It is *not* a dumb question. It is a newbie question, and we've all been there.
Newbs might be looking for "the inside scoop" -- they may have no idea that this is like shopping for a car. (I'll take a VW, please.) They may be looking for advice for their specific circumstance. They may be overwhelmed by the information about all the various distros. It is overwhelming. And it's our job to be patient. The courteous information you can get from the linux community is, in part, what makes it great. Maybe it could be someone's appointment to forward this link to people who ask the "which distro" question: http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/index.php?firsttime=true ~kari On Sat, Nov 8, 2008 at 9:05 PM, RyanMcCoskrie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote: > > This question (from somebody who isn't new's perspective) is both dumb > and much to frequent. > > As far as I know you could be a genius, but which distro is best > entirely depends on _your_ taste > and _your_ needs (in that order, there are so many needs are a > secondary issue). > > Here are the basics: > 0 You're digitally illiterate / don't really care what you use: Ubuntu > or some such. > These systems are not suited to serious technical play > because the > safety nets get in the way to often. > > 0 You want a "jack of all trades" to word process, program, do some > multi-media type things, run a server: Try Fedora or Debian > These require slightly more configuration than the > above but my mum can use Fedora > so it can't be that hard. > They also come ready for serious programming and make > okay servers. > > 0 You're not afraid of spending the weekend on it and you love SPEED: > Gentoo > It's not the easiest but you can tune it to your exact > machine. > > 0 You want to feel like it's still the late 80's / early 90's: > Slackware or Linux from scratch > Slackware is the easier of the two, It's almost totally > command line and > getting a USB mouse to work is awkward at best because > it > all done by hand. > Linux from scratch is a tool kit and manual to build > Linux from raw > programming > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Linux Users Group. To post a message, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit our group at http://groups.google.com/group/linuxusersgroup -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
