i'm thinkin of switching from xp to linux, i really only use my computer for listening to music ans surfing the web. what is the best linux type os out there

Hello,

First, let me congradulate you on daring to leave Windows. One thing to bear in mind: Linux is different, but not so different. Think of upgrading from a car to a Truck.

There are a variety of Linux flavors out there. I work a lot with Red Hat Linux, although RH changed their business model, and the family is now called Fedora. People have mentioned that Fedora is not quite ready to go, and yes, there are rumblings of anger against Red Hat for dropping of the map. Fedora should be ready to go soon, and have all wheels rolling. I find RedHat to be the easiest to work with, and I am able to do a lot of programming / networking / filesharing with it.

If you have Macintosh hardware, the Yellow Dog Linux (www.yellowdoglinux.com) is a "RedHat for Mac". Go check it out -- it works well for me too!

I tried Debian to see how well it would work, and was deeply disappointed with it. I had to install from CD's, instead of my preferred FTP method I use under RedHat (able to setup many machines at once over FTP, and no disks to flip or replace). Debian also would not get things right with my Laptop, such as proper screen depth and size. I was disgusted enough to just throw the disks out.

I do not know much about Mandrake or Slackware. Other friends here can offer an opinion.

I am intrigued by FreeBSD, and while it is not a Linux (it is a UNIX), if I get some hardware freed up, I think I will explore that OS.

There are tools for the internet (Mozilla), Office-type work (Open Office), Instant Messaging (Yahoo so far!), Tunes (XMMS), Burning CD's and so forth. Even Palm stuff for Syncing. The only lacking tools that I see are Quicktime/Windoze Media Player abilities, and a disk optimizer for clearing fragmentation.

Enjoy your quest for the best OS. Let us know how it went.

Christian

Incidentally, Mplayer can handle both Quicktime and .WMV files. And as far as fragmentation is concerned, you shouldn't need to-- Linux does a great job of making writes to disk in a manner that it shouldn't ever need to be defragmented-- it's not unusual to barely have 1% fragmentation in several years worth of usage. To optimize hard drive performance, look into tools like tune2fs and hdparm

Hope this helps some!

Other great and friendly linux is Mandrake. think about it and good luck.

Eduardo

Hello,

SuSE isn't to bad either, for a "Newbie" distro. That's what I learned on, now I'm huntin' down another distro, for the concept of, "Dependecy hell," as some like to call it.

So just watch it your dependience issues, and you should be fine. =D If ya need help, go ahead. Ask us.


G'luck,
Alistair

Hi,

In the RedHat environment, I found it smart to basically install everything that I could really want at installation time to avoid the dependency issues. Yes, they have bitten me before, and I did get in trouble once with rpm -i --force options.

If you have ample hard drive space with Redhat, you might want to make your own rpm tree, so that you have everything there if you need it. I put the rpms in the ftp directory, so that I can also install over the LAN with a floppy disk. If I ever need something (and being a server, somtimes it is not easy to get down to it in another room, or from another state), the files are right there.

Christian

They are right, Redhat and Mandrake are really good 'newbie' OS's, granted Mandrake when it was first created was stolen from redhat, so much that still said 'welcome to redhat linux' on the installer screen, that is why you might notice a few similarities. As far as defragmenting goes, you don't need to, that is the beautiful part about ext2/3 and any other Linux/Unix filesystem. To be honest, stay AWAY from Lindows, it is the worse linux distrobution I have EVER seen, yes, EVER!!!!!! As far as the dependency issues, you should be able to use things like up2date and yum to resolve a lot of dependencies, however I recommend you NEVER use --force, unless you get at least 3 other people to confirm it is a good idea, I've seen many people pay others a lot of money to correct the mistakes this has caused.

Slackware is also a nice OS, not as newbie friendly as redhat, but I've finally gotten my chance to play with it, and it's pretty cool, I would definatly recommend this as a 2nd OS after you get the 'feel' of linux.

*BSD's are also nice, however they require a LOT more knowlege than most have to function the way most of us would like. The upside to the BSD's is that you will not have to update your kernel like once every 2-4 weeks due to some new kernel expliot. at least not at this moment in time.


Hope this helps!

Wouldn't you like to try Linux before you actually 'install' it? Live CD's are the way to truly give linux a try without venturing too far into the Linux ocean.

There are really only 2 Live CD's that are leaders of the pack:

1. Knoppix
2. MEPIS

I've tried both of these and I find that by far MEPIS is the better operating system. It autodetects just about anything I throw at it and it installed a Debian based linux system in 7 clicks!


With point click updates and upgrades as well as all the office tools you can shake a stick at along with tons of multimedia software and chat clients...you can't lose with MEPIS. I've used over 20 Linux distros since 1995 and I haven't found one this exciting ever.

My sound autoconfigured and I was listening to music within 3 minutes of my install. I loved this for a desktop linux system...in my opinion, all other desktop OS's can't compare. That's one of the reasons it is #8 on http://distrowatch.com and it isn't even 2 years old! Give MEPIS a go...you won't be sorry and you'll never go back to any other desktop.

http://www.mepis.org
http://www.mepislovers.com
http://mepisforum.sytes.net

Another nice thing about a *BSD system is that there is usually EXCELLENT documentation on how to do many tasks most people would be interested in doing. From setting up FTP servers, configuring X, getting sound working, or even doing IP Masquerading, you should be able to use each *BSD's handbook to learn how to do so.