On Thursday 11 November 2004 08:00, David Feldman wrote:
> I'm evaluating various Linux distros in order to recommend one to
> novice users, particularly Windows switchers. Mandrake has been
> recommended to me, especially since it can resize NTFS partitions.
>
> I downloaded 10.1 Community and tried to install but have been unable
> to do so. First I got a text-based installer instead of graphical, and
> the best I was able to achieve was a system that booted to a text login
> prompt instead of GNOME or KDE. Then I tried the low-res graphical
> install, but the best I was able to achieve there was that it would
> hang at the post-install configuration. Any thoughts?
>
> Also, hoping for some clarification:
> - How does 10.1 Community differ from 10.1 Official?
> - If 10.1 Official might work better for my purposes, is there any way
> to download it for eval purposes?
> - How does 10.1 Official differ from 10.1 Discovery?
> - How does 10.1 PPC relate to the various Intel versions?
Mandrake would definately be one of the top ones for novice users, in my
experience. I can sympathize with your installation problems, however,
though I've never had the same with Linux. I had similar problems installing
RedHat 8 on a certain box, but on others it installs flawlessly. I've had
better luck with Mandrake overall. However, though it's a bit uncou for me
to recommend it on a "Mandrake" list, for brand-new Linux users coming over
from Windows I'd recommend SuSE. I haven't tried Mandrake 10 yet, so I don't
know if it's easier than SuSE or not, but SuSE is definately one of the
easiest to find your way around when fresh from the Windows world. Mandrake
is a close second though, next being maybe Fedora, but I haven't tried all
that many distros myself, so I'm not a real authority. Whatever you do don't
try plopping a newbie in Debian. Nothing against Debian, I like Debian, all
14 discs of Debian, but a newbie is liable to give up and never touch Linux
again for ten years before he even makes it past the base system installation
(Okay, maybe a little exageration, but still, there's a point)
I recently got a friend started on Linux and burned him copies of
Mandrake
9.2 and SuSE 9.1. Once I'd told him how to get the BIOS set to boot off CD,
he had little trouble installing, and he'd never installed an OS before :-P.
Mandrake might be better if you want them to get an idea of how vast the
open source community is, or if they plan on running a server; to a Windows
user 3 discs with thousands of programs seems impossibly huge. The only
ISO's available for download from SuSE are for the "Personal" addition, which
basically contains media, IM, web, and office software for a home system,
which is still an amazingly large amount of software to a newbie.
That's my two cents;
Cheers,
SigmaChi
PS: I might add that, though smaller in volume, I've found this Mandrake list
much more helpfull and prompt on response than the higher-volume SuSE list.
--
Registered Linux user #366862
This message was sent from a Microsoft-Free 750MHz Athlon system running SuSE
Linux 9.1 (Kernal 2.6.5)
"Failure is not an option with Microsoft; it's bundled with the software!"
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