[lug:14188] Re: moving to linux - advice on distribution selection

[BluesRenegade]

Another consideration is whether you will be using any commercial UNIX products which have been ported to Linux. I say this because I have experience doing work for universities, and in the engineering world they are teaching students to use the same commercial UNIX products which are used in the marketplace. For those situations, Red Hat is the undisputed major distro of choice, with SUSE Enterprise Linux finding ever increasing support. Having used both, I can tell you that Red Hat is the best choice, at least from a system administrators point of view. And, btw, you don't have to spend university $$$'s on Red Hat, you can get it's open source variant, CentOS (Community Enterprise Operating System), and you have RHEL with all the copyrighted logos, etc., removed. Thank you Red Hat for adhering to keeping your code pen source, or this would not be possible. Centos home page http://www.centos.org/ I installed CentOS on a gf's old PC which was having trouble running Windows 98 without crashing (due to only 128 MB of RAM)!! She has been using it for three years, and in that time I upgraded the RAM to 256 MB with some used RAM from a broken computer. Despite having a 500 Mhz Celeron processor, an integrated S3 video chip on the motherboard, a 6 GB 5400 RPM hard drive (you read that right, 6 GB !!), and only 256 MB of RAM... it works!!.... albeit, slowly at times cause of the outdated hardware, but nonetheless, it works reliably. As for the university, I'm running CentOS on a Sun Server w/2-dual core AMD processors, 4 GB of RAM, etc. The complete opposite of that home computer, and it runs wonderfully in the school research lab. The commercial Flex license manager software and the commercial engineering software all work very well, (really better) on the Linux server than the same software running on a Sun SPARC server running Solaris. When I went looking for a Linux distro to use, the commercial UNIX software vendors made my mind up for me, Red Hat. The dept. did purchase SuSE Enterprise Linux 10 and we tried that and the first problem I encountered was that the default Reiser file system was incompatible with the Flex license manager software, an oversight the vendor's website never mentioned. I had to scrap that installation and start all over. On the advice of another university I tried CentOS, and have never looked back!! Hope all that info helps you. Regards, John m_buell wrote: I want to throw $.02 on this pile. I agree with Roy Charles <<All three choices, Ubuntu/Kubuntu, Fedora, and SUSE, have strong community support.>> I don't agree with a lot of the other statements here. You've tried Ubuntu, it worked -- marvelous! My experience has been different. Over the past 10 years I've tried multiple distros, including Ubuntu, and had a few modest successes, but until now, NONE that I kept. Too many issues. I tried Ubuntu a couple years ago - it was running, but had too many issues to resolve. I figured if the installs couldn't work better than they were - it was time to try another distro. A couple months ago I started this process anew, after laying off for a couple years. Tried Oracle, then Debian, then Fedora. Oracle ran well, no java, no firefox, couldn't update. Nope. Debian ran well, couldn't get my java working, I couldn't insure I was secure. Had some other issues, and after a few days I hit another issue. Time for Fedora. It ran, it updated, I could find and get java working, I got security running, and some other priorities. So Fedora is up and running, and so far, so good. I'm not keen on Ubuntu because it restricts its offerings to freeware. And, I wasn't happy the one time I tried it. SuSe I have installed twice, a year ago most recent. Both times it was slow, slow, slow, but worked. Fedora is slightly slower than the Debian Gnome desktop to boot. So, imho, Fedora is #1, SuSe #2. Ubuntu may be fine, and seems to be from the public response, but I don't think it is going to be the windows-killer. BTW, Vector does a monster job with the super-slim setup. If I knew enough about the internals and all the command prompts, I think it would strongly tempt me. Vector is FAST. But too many ways for me to mess up, and not enough ways to safely install all my daily apps without messing up. Cheers; M On Feb 22, 6:53 pm, "dr. Hannibal Lecter" <lecter...@gmail.com> wrote: Hah, indeed it does make Vista look like a cheap toy. Not to mention all the nice free software you get with Linux, all free. As an added bonus, no IE (eeew), no Media Player (yuck) and no M$ Office (bloated and overly eager to mess up). I am still relatively new to all this, but luckily I love to learn new stuff.... :-) On Feb 23, 12:37 am, gtxli...@centurytel.net wrote: It' great that you decided to give Linux a try. Ubuntu is a great disto. I personally use Linux Mint, which is a variant of Ubuntu which gives you a bunch of in-house developed system tools, flash player, and multimedia codecs. I love it how Compiz makes Windows Vista's compositing look really lame. Don't hesitate to ask any questions you have. Best of luck! On Feb 22, 8:13 am, "dr. Hannibal Lecter" <lecter...@gmail.com> wrote: Hi again, and thank you all for your advices! My laptop arrived yesterday, I've installed Ubuntu 8.10 and everything worked on the first try (wireless included!). I'm really impressed with Linux, the way it has progressed this far in a few short years (unlike Windows which made the same progress from 95 to XP...or at least it feels like that). I'm very happy about the fact that I am now 50% free from M$. And I'm also positive I'll make some of my friends very jealous with Compiz :-P If I ever get stuck, I know where to come. :-) Cheers! On Feb 20, 8:45 pm, JTF <jfla...@gmail.com> wrote: If you need to, you can get VirtualBox and boot up a Windows Guest as a virtual machine and develop MS Based applications that way. As far as hardware compatibility is concerned, when you boot the liveCD, check your system for functionality.....If it works in LiveCD Mode, it will work when installed as your OS.... Any issues, please connect tohttp://ubuntuforums.org/ This is the official community support forums with literally, thousands of people who want to help others....Questions are generally answered within a few minutes in my experience Also, if you use Pidgin (Ubuntu's IM client), you can access freenode IRC and connect to #ubuntu for live chat support. On Feb 20, 1:40 pm, "dr. Hannibal Lecter" <lecter...@gmail.com> wrote: Thank you for your posts. You have both steered me towards Ubuntu, as I have tried it and liked it. Now that you've confirmed that it has a bright future, I like it even more. The fact that Mono is included is another plus, since I work with C#/ASP.NET at work I guess I could also try mono. :-) I only wonder if my hardware will work (i.e. will I be able to connect to "the internets" via WLAN etc..). In the past I've had many hardware issues with linux. But that was a long time ago... I will post the results of my "ventures" here, but please don't hesitate to post more opinions. Cheers! On Feb 20, 5:13 pm, Jeremiah Bess <jeremiah.b...@gmail.com> wrote: Being new to the Linux world, I would suggest *buntu or Mandriva. I use Mandriva on several computers at home, and have for many years. I have looked at other distros and found no reason to switch. It just works for me. Ubuntu is popular because it's the one the media has picked up as the poster child for Linux. It is not a bad distro, don't get me wrong. It has a great user base, and lots of community support. Mandriva has great support too. Most distros have a Live-CD version you can boot to and try out without installing anything. Do a few of those. It really comes to personal preference. If you have a big hard drive, install several to try out with dual booting. Welcome to the LUG, and good luck. Let us know what you end up using and why. Jeremiah E. Bess Network Ninja, Penguin Geek, Father of four On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 07:32, dr. Hannibal Lecter <lecter...@gmail.com>wrote: Hi all! I'd like to tell you something about my current situation and why I decided to post this question here. I'm a software developer, and my primary OS is WindowsXP. I'm getting a notebook now, and being an open source supporter/fan, I've decided to make my primary OS linux. I'm relatively new to linux, I've experimented with it several times in the past, but I would call myself experienced in any way. Basically, I know my way around, I know how to run ./configure and make, but if those two fail, I normally just go to the corner of the room and cry all night. :) Another problem is the fact that I'm going to share that notebook with my wife and sister, which are "technologically challenged" as far as linux is concerned. That's how I came to this point of asking myself which distro is "appropriate" for all of us. I went through the "linux distribution chooser" onwww.zegeniestudios.net, and unsurprisingly I got the following results: 1. openSUSE 2. Kubuntu 3. Ubuntu 4. Linux Mint 5. Mandriva I've used openSUSE and Mandrake in the past, tried Ubuntu in vmware. Kubuntu is out of the question because I don't want to limit myself to KDE (reminds me of windows..and that's just not it!). Until now, I've never heard of Mint. So in the end, which distribution would you suggest? What are your opinions on the distros above? I want something that has a future (openSUSE is backed by Novell, so that's one point pro-SUSE), and updated regularly. Also, the distro should be easily configurable/maintainable, but not too limited either ("for the utter noobs"), I would like to develop in it (mostly PHP) and learn the advanced stuff on the way. I'm assuming there are some differences regarding media codecs/ players, so if you know which one does the best job with audio/video, that would certainly have some weight. I apologise for the long post, I thought I should be precise in this matter to get good answers :-) Cheers and thanks in advance! --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Linux Users Group. 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