Beginner's Guide to Linux Distros 409
Martin writes "TipMonkies has a nice overview of various Linux distros for those of you with little time to research each distro yourself. The article also discusses some of the advantages/disadvantages of each distro." From the article: "SUSE- The 'U' is hard and the 'E' is soft. Almost like the word sue with an S on the end. SUSE is the other big commercial distro. It was when it was still it's own company in Germany, and now even bigger since being purchased by Novell."
Slackware (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:SUSE (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Slackware (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm still learning when using a GUI, I'm just learning how to do a task without reading a manpage.
But people don't want to learn. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:finally... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Slackware (Score:5, Insightful)
Why?
I can't wait for your reply...
Re:Slackware (Score:3, Insightful)
Why?
I can't wait for your reply...
What if there is no GUI? Not all servers have a 'Start' button...
Re:Slackware (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:a good resource (Score:2, Insightful)
Problem is, distrowatch doesn't do what this guy's trying to do, which is to produce a brief, easy to read, and easy to understand summary of the biggest distros.
Unfortunately, his attempt at doing so isn't that great, for the reasons you mentioned. It glosses over lots of useful information while getting stuck in details that beginners probably don't care about anyway. And he succumbs to acronym soup (HAL, KDE, GNU, CLI) without explaining any of them.
Re:Slackware (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't wait for your reply...
Because a GUI only allows you to do tasks which the GUI designer thought to create a button for. The *nix command-line interface, with its "everything is a file" plus "tools do one small thing and do it well" design priciples, provides a rich environment where you can do almost anything you can imagine -- including shooting yourself in both feet. But *that's* very educational, and since it's only a metaphor, not really so bad.
Re:Slackware (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Slackware (Score:5, Insightful)
If you RTFM, it sounds like this is more geared towards people using it on a desktop.
And it's that kind of zealotry that puts people off trying linux. You may be thinking you're helping, but what the average non-tech geek hears from a statement is this:
"Learn to do it without a GUI. Only stupid people need GUIs"
Now, like I say, that's not what you mean to say, but that's how "Learn to do things without pretty GUIs. That's the best way to learn." will be interpreted by a fair percentage of non tech people.
Re:Slackware (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll tell you why I like the commandline: I can copy lines of commands that I don't understand off webpages and fix problems in Linux without having to read a bunch of GUIs.
I yeah....I guess I don't learn anything. You're right!
Re:Slackware (Score:2, Insightful)
Because with a command line you can execute commands that the designer didn't think of creating a command for?
You can create inadequate command line tools just like inadequate GUI tools. The interface used doesn't dictate the coverage.
Re:finally... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do "newbs" know what HAL or curses are or even necessarily the differences between KDE and GNOME? His use of terminology would be baffling if I didn't know a fair amount about Linux.
I agree. At the very least, he could have provided links to pages describing what these terms mean, or even a short blurb at the beginning of the article. There is much more to Linux than the distro, even for people that do not stray from the confines of the installation CDs. For example, I use Mandriva 2005. Just off the CDs, I have a choice between 8 or 9 desktops, at least 4 email clients, several web browsers, and of course the choice to run in X or the CLI where ncurses becomes an important term to know.
However, I still think this article does a good job. It talks in more abstract terms that do not overwhelm the new Linux user, while providing enough guidance that the user can narrow his search to two or three distributions. This is essential given that too many choices can overwhelm users, and most new users are used to having only one or two choices (e.g. Windows or MacOS).
too many distros (Score:3, Insightful)
Anti-Gentoo bias? (Score:4, Insightful)
But he fails to mention where those "advanced" users went and why it would make sense to recommend a potentially more complex distro to new non-Linux savvy users.
Being a Gentoo user myself, I agree that Gentoo is not a dpkg/rpm-based distro, and that it can take ages to compile stuff, but this blatant bias is just completely partial. He was somewhat neutral on other distros (the ones he mentioned, never mind the ones he just ignored, like Mepis), he even showed some ignorance on Slack, but Gentoo did not deserve those lines, imho!
Re:Slackware (Score:5, Insightful)
Many people who have extensive experience at a command line happily started using GUIs when decent ones came out. Even the early textmode ones. The concept of partitioning tasks into parts of the screen and seeing your work "all on one screen" is powerful. Not to mention WYSIWYG and font and color cues on webpages.
I still use the command line a good chunk of the day - discarding web browsing or movie watching, I'm on a prompt the majority of the time. It just happens to be a konsole with a screen session on each computer.
Being good on a command line doesn't make you "better" or "more in tune" with a machine. It just means you are good on a command line.
--
Evan
Experienced Gentoo users (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Slackware (Score:4, Insightful)
While I agree Linux/UNIX/Windows sysadmins (me) need to use a CLI for many tasks, my grandmother doesn't. She is never going to administer a server.
The concept of a CLI is hard for some people to grasp, even though it is primative when compared to a GUI. When my mom or grandmother wants to open a disk, she double clicks a pretty icon. Simple enough. Typing mount
Re:Slackware (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? Because the command line is more productive and more efficient. Sure it's harder to learn but once you learn it it's easier to use. That's why.
Re:Slackware (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:But people don't want to learn. (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you installed Linux lately for Desktop systems? I installed Fedora Core 4 and Ubuntu recently and was blown away by both. Both detected everything on my relatively new computer and loaded the drivers correctly. With Windows XP, I had the mundane task of installing drivers and programs manually, which isn't fun. Face it: Linux is becoming easier every day.
Re:Got the debian releases wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
"Debian operates with 3 major trees, stable, unstable, and testing, and the bleeding edge experimental tree."
Somehow, that seems to add up to ... four.
The Gentoo conundrum (Score:2, Insightful)
On those systems that would actually BENEFIT from a near-complete self-compiled setup, most are too underpowered to do it in any reasonable amount of time (think days or weeks).
On those systems that are actually fast enough to compile the system in a reasonable amount of time, they see performance improvements measured in fractions of a percentage point. Big flarkin' whoop.
Add to that the dev community (who seem to be taking classes "You're too stupid to use OUR distro newbie!"), and you have just cooked up a rather unattractive pudding known as Gentoo.
Re:Hardly (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Gentoo conundrum (Score:3, Insightful)