Red Hat Topics - Recommendations on switching from RedHat to new distro?

Author

Recommendations on switching from RedHat to new distro?

Scott Smith

2004-12-29, 5:45 pm

Some time back, I installed RedHat Linux on a Dell Dimension XPS T800r box
at home and set up CVS, Samba, Eclipse, and a few other things on it. About
a year later, RedHat stopped free updates/support for weekend users like me,
so I'm looking to switch to another distro.

A friend at work recommended SuSE. I went to the web site, but had trouble
figuring out what to download. The RedHat stuff came on CD and was easy to
set up.

I don't want to start a war here, but can someone recommend a distro that is
friendly to a non-power user such as myself? (and maybe point me to the CD
images or whatever?)

Thanks very much in advance.

-Scott

Digitlcoup

2004-12-29, 5:45 pm

["Followup-To:" header set to comp.os.linux.]
On 2004-12-29, Scott Smith <scottseansmith2_NO_SPAM@NO-SPAM.hotmail.com> wrote:
> I don't want to start a war here, but can someone recommend a distro that is
> friendly to a non-power user such as myself? (and maybe point me to the CD
> images or whatever?)
>
I personally prefer Debian.

Official CDs: http://www.debian.org/CD/vendors/
Network installations: http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/

I find it very easy to install and very user friendly and can has some
features that have kept me with it for a long time. There are plenty of
other opinions out there and there aren't to many bad distros out there
(There are a few!).

--
"Saying your OS is the best in the world 'cause more people use it is like
saying McDonalds makes the best food in the world."

Dave Bush

2004-12-29, 5:45 pm

Scott Smith wrote:
> I don't want to start a war here, but can someone recommend a distro that is
> friendly to a non-power user such as myself? (and maybe point me to the CD
> images or whatever?)

If you want to stick with an RPM based distro then I'd recommend
Mandrake. Very user friendly, and you can find the ISO's at
http://www.linuxiso.org/.

If you're interested in something easier to keep up to date you could go
with Debian. A lot of people will tell you it's difficult to install,
but that's because they haven't tried the new installer. Go to
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ and grab it from there.
Piece of cake to install.

- Dave
--
Dave Bush <statman.onay.pamsay@twcny.rr.com>

Remove the pig Latin to reply.

Andy Fraser

2004-12-29, 5:45 pm

In alt.linux, Scott Smith uttered these immortal words:

> I don't want to start a war here, but can someone recommend a distro that
> is friendly to a non-power user such as myself? (and maybe point me to the
> CD images or whatever?)

ATM I like Mandrake 10.1 and Fedora Core 3 although FC3 does seem to cause
some people some trouble on some hardware.

http://www.distrowatch.com for URLs to the homepages and much more.

--
Andy.

Amol Vaidya

2004-12-29, 5:45 pm

I would actually reccomend checking out Slackware. I used Fedora Core
for quite while. I must say that Slackware is easier in some respects to
use than FC, despite the fact that many Linux users call FC a
"beginner's distro." Many of the headaches you have with an RPM-based
distro are gone. Installing new packages is really easy with great tools
such as pkgtool. Installing Slackware took me 20 minutes on a relatively
slow computer. Most of the configuration was done. If you don't mind
editing text files for a little bit of configuration then I strongly
reccomend Slackware. It doesn't come with too many graphical
configuration tools, though. It has many nice packages it comes with,
and you also get a huge array of choices of which desktop you want to use.

Larry I Smith

2004-12-29, 5:45 pm

Scott Smith wrote:
> Some time back, I installed RedHat Linux on a Dell Dimension XPS T800r box
> at home and set up CVS, Samba, Eclipse, and a few other things on it. About
> a year later, RedHat stopped free updates/support for weekend users like me,
> so I'm looking to switch to another distro.
>
> A friend at work recommended SuSE. I went to the web site, but had trouble
> figuring out what to download. The RedHat stuff came on CD and was easy to
> set up.
>
> I don't want to start a war here, but can someone recommend a distro that is
> friendly to a non-power user such as myself? (and maybe point me to the CD
> images or whatever?)
>
> Thanks very much in advance.
>
> -Scott
>
>
>

Normally, you purchase 'SuSE Linux Professional' from your
nearest computer store (Best Buy, Fry's, etc) for $89 US.
It includes 2 printed manuals, 2 dual-layer DVD's, and 5
CD's. The Install DVD (DVD 1) contains the entire distro
(Linux and 1000+ apps). DVD 2 contains all of the sources.
The 5 CD's contain a 'reduced' version of the distro (not
as many apps) for those folks who can't boot from a DVD.

As of SuSE Pro v9.2 (the current version), SuSE no longer
provides downloadable ISO files for the entire distro.

Regards,
Larry

--
Anti-spam address, change each 'X' to '.' to reply directly.

Larry I Smith

2004-12-29, 5:45 pm

Larry I Smith wrote:
> Scott Smith wrote:
>
>
> Normally, you purchase 'SuSE Linux Professional' from your
> nearest computer store (Best Buy, Fry's, etc) for $89 US.
> It includes 2 printed manuals, 2 dual-layer DVD's, and 5
> CD's. The Install DVD (DVD 1) contains the entire distro
> (Linux and 1000+ apps). DVD 2 contains all of the sources.
> The 5 CD's contain a 'reduced' version of the distro (not
> as many apps) for those folks who can't boot from a DVD.
>
> As of SuSE Pro v9.2 (the current version), SuSE no longer
> provides downloadable ISO files for the entire distro.
>
> Regards,
> Larry
>

You can also buy it here, and have it delivered.

http://www.novell.com/products/linu...al/pricing.html

Regards,
Larry

--
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Enkidu

2004-12-29, 5:45 pm

On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 21:33:02 GMT, "Scott Smith"
<scottseansmith2_NO_SPAM@NO-SPAM.hotmail.com> wrote:

>Some time back, I installed RedHat Linux on a Dell Dimension XPS T800r box
>at home and set up CVS, Samba, Eclipse, and a few other things on it. About
>a year later, RedHat stopped free updates/support for weekend users like me,
>so I'm looking to switch to another distro.
>
RH stuffed not only home users but also those with paid subscriptions.

Imagine, you have racks of 1U servers all running RH, all with up to
date subscriptions. Suddenly RH announce that they are no longer going
to support you *unless* you "upgrade" all your servers to RH
Enterprise and also pay them a large sum of money annually.

A sum which they could not quantify for me when I rang them! I asked
the simple question "I have x servers running RH. How much would it
cost me if I were to change to RHE?" They also could not tell me what
the benefits were of using RHE over RH. It seemed to revolve around
the support issue, but I'd only ever called them once, and that was
the call about conversion to RHE! So support is not an issue.

So Debian wins a convert. That's what I'd recommend over any DeadRat
variant.

Cheers,

Cliff
--

The National Party manifesto can be viewed here:

http://www.labour.org.nz/policy/index.html

GreyBeard

2004-12-29, 8:45 pm

On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 21:33:02 +0000, Scott Smith wrote:

<snip>
> I don't want to start a war here, but can someone recommend a distro that is
> friendly to a non-power user such as myself? (and maybe point me to the CD
> images or whatever?)
>

To each his own! No matter what anyone says, someone else will have a
counter-argument.

I run RedHat ES3 and SuSE SLES9 for business. For personal use I usually
use Fedora FC3 and SuSE Pro 9.2. I also have considerable respect for
Mandrake, Debian and Knoppix for different uses, having used all of those
as well. I order SuSE Pro from from SuSE/Novell's Digital River site at
http://www.novell.com/products/linu...al/pricing.html)

For teaching & testing environments I generally use the free RedHat RHEL3
clones WhiteBx Linux and Tao Linux, especialy since they emulate /
duplicate the RHEL and provide updates. This gives a very good indication
of what RHEL will do when it's rolled out in paid-form. The ISOs are at
http://whiteboxlinux.org/ or http://www.taolinux.org/

Consider doing some needs analysis (eg: why do you want Linux, what
are you trying to accomplish) and some additional research on the
different distros (based on your analysis) possibly using the list
at http://www.linux.org/dist/index.html

You can always go to http://www.linuxiso.org/ to get other free CD images.

<rant>Sadly, the majority of people reading this will likely go striaght
to download and will forget the analysis.</rant>

lol/FGB

General Schvantzkoph

2004-12-29, 8:45 pm

On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 21:33:02 +0000, Scott Smith wrote:

> Some time back, I installed RedHat Linux on a Dell Dimension XPS T800r box
> at home and set up CVS, Samba, Eclipse, and a few other things on it. About
> a year later, RedHat stopped free updates/support for weekend users like me,
> so I'm looking to switch to another distro.
>
> A friend at work recommended SuSE. I went to the web site, but had trouble
> figuring out what to download. The RedHat stuff came on CD and was easy to
> set up.
>
> I don't want to start a war here, but can someone recommend a distro that is
> friendly to a non-power user such as myself? (and maybe point me to the CD
> images or whatever?)
>
> Thanks very much in advance.
>
> -Scott

If you want to stick with Redhat then go with Fedora Core 3. Fedora is
Redhat's free distribution. Fedora is a developement platform so it can
get broken every now and then, however I've found it to be quite usable.
Another Redhat alternative is to use Whitebox Linux which is a Redhat
Enterprise Linux clone with the logos removed (the logos are the only
thing that's copyrighted in Redhat). The best alternative is to use
Mandrake 10.1. Mandrake started life as Redhat plus but it's moved way
beyond that now. Because of it's history you'll find that Mandrake
feel familiar to a Redhat user. The configuration and installer tools in
Mandrake are a little better than Redhat's. You can download the ISOs for
any of these. I'd forget SUSE, there is nothing wrong with it as a
distribution but they don't make it easy to install it for free. SUSE
doesn't provide free ISOs, they require a net install (at least they did
the last time I tried it).

William

2004-12-29, 8:45 pm

anonymous

2004-12-30, 2:45 am

William wrote:
> Scott Smith wrote:
>
> Mepis.com
>
> William

As someone else said: to each his own. If you want Linux just to have it
and have no requirements for an enterprise version (you would have that
requirement if you wanted to run Oracle AS 10G, for example), I'd go
with SuSE. It is much less weird to administer than Redhat, it gives you
a reasonable choice of GUI as Novell have not yet invented their version
of 'Blue Curve'. I also find it more hardware tolerant.

Alas, Beauty and everything else is in the eyes of the beholder..

ric_man

2004-12-30, 2:45 am

Scott Smith wrote:
> A friend at work recommended SuSE. I went to the web site, but had trouble
> figuring out what to download. The RedHat stuff came on CD and was easy to
> set up.

I'd say SUSE was one of the best Linux distros I've ever used... was
great at detecting many things straight out of the box...

> I don't want to start a war here, but can someone recommend a distro that is
> friendly to a non-power user such as myself? (and maybe point me to the CD
> images or whatever?)

If you're lazy (like me), I'd say giving Gentoo ( http://www.gentoo.org/
) a go. You'll only go through the pain of installing once, and then
you'll be incrementally upgrading bit by bit... the only problem is that
you'll have to compile a lot (which takes time on slow systems), and
you'll have to compile your own kernel (not so bad if you choose the
defaults, or if you've had experience in it before).

I hear absolutely great things about Ubuntu (
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ ) but I have no experience with them excpt
to see an installation occur.

Out of the three distros I've mentioned here, I would suggest giving
Ubuntu a go, as it provides a great system, based on Debian, and will
probably offer you an experience that's similar to the one you're used to...

....Ric
--
Send email to Ric using: rdefrance_NO_SPAM_@_NO_SPAM_gmail.com
Just remove both instances of "_NO_SPAM_"
== Do you, uh... Gentoo? Gentoooo-hooo!! ==

Madhusudan Singh

2004-12-30, 5:45 pm

Scott Smith wrote:

> Some time back, I installed RedHat Linux on a Dell Dimension XPS T800r box
> at home and set up CVS, Samba, Eclipse, and a few other things on it.
> About a year later, RedHat stopped free updates/support for weekend users
> like me, so I'm looking to switch to another distro.
>
> A friend at work recommended SuSE. I went to the web site, but had trouble
> figuring out what to download. The RedHat stuff came on CD and was easy to
> set up.
>
> I don't want to start a war here, but can someone recommend a distro that
> is friendly to a non-power user such as myself? (and maybe point me to the
> CD images or whatever?)
>
> Thanks very much in advance.
>
> -Scott

I moved from RH to Debian Sarge. Haven't had a cause to complain. Its solved
my package management problems too.

Madhusudan Singh

2004-12-30, 5:45 pm

ric_man wrote:

> Scott Smith wrote:
>
> I'd say SUSE was one of the best Linux distros I've ever used... was
> great at detecting many things straight out of the box...
>
>
> If you're lazy (like me), I'd say giving Gentoo ( http://www.gentoo.org/
> ) a go. You'll only go through the pain of installing once, and then
> you'll be incrementally upgrading bit by bit... the only problem is that
> you'll have to compile a lot (which takes time on slow systems), and
> you'll have to compile your own kernel (not so bad if you choose the
> defaults, or if you've had experience in it before).
>

If you use that argument, Debian is an even better bet. Here also, one needs
to install only once and upgrade incrementally through apt-get.

Plus, he won't have to compile anything.

Trog Woolley

2004-12-30, 5:45 pm

While stranded on the hard shoulder of the information super highway scottseansmith2_NO_SPAM@NO-SPAM.hotmail.com typed:
> Some time back, I installed RedHat Linux on a Dell Dimension XPS T800r box
> at home and set up CVS, Samba, Eclipse, and a few other things on it. About
> a year later, RedHat stopped free updates/support for weekend users like me,
> so I'm looking to switch to another distro.
>
> A friend at work recommended SuSE. I went to the web site, but had trouble
> figuring out what to download. The RedHat stuff came on CD and was easy to
> set up.
>
> I don't want to start a war here, but can someone recommend a distro that is
> friendly to a non-power user such as myself? (and maybe point me to the CD
> images or whatever?)

I've just upgraded my box from RH7.1 to FC3 with hardly any effort.
It did rearrange my desktops a bit but pretty well everything just works.
The only thing I'm having grief with is playing videos. The xmms as
shipped doesn't handle MP3's (err why?) and the xine that I downloaded
gobbles up all the cpu and swap space about 10 seconds into an MP3 and
the box sits there thrashing. It's BRS time. I've tried recompiling xine
but it won't, complaining somethings aren't installed (SDL and ARTS which
they are). But playing videos is something I rarely do, so I don' care.
On the other hand, I've just installed FC3 on a desktop box at work,
downloaded the same xine and it handles videos perfectly. The user for
whom this is destined is going to love using Linux in preference to M$.
(She is the prototype for what is hoped to be all of the staff moving
to Linux on the desktop - we are making sure everything is 100%).

Some people love SuSE. I tried 8.1 when it first came out but I found
YAST to be a complete waste of time; fine for installing anything but
if you want to change the config on say your modem, you had to uninstall
the device and reinstall it (ie there was no change facility)
I also wasn't impressed with some of the dependancies. SuSE
insisted on installing K3B and if you delete it and then want to install
something else from the CD's, K3B comes back. It also runs KBEAR
constantly - why run an FTP client unless you are downloading a file.
I like as little running on my box as possible - remember an idle box is
a happy box.

In the recent LinxFormat distro rating, the top five were Mandrake,
RedHat, SuSE, Debian and Yellow Dog. As someone else suggested, pick
an rpm distro and go with that.

--
Trog Woolley | trog at trogwoolley dot com
(A Croweater back residing in Pommie Land with Linux)
Isis Astarte Diana Hecate Demeter Kali Inanna

ray

2004-12-30, 5:45 pm

Larry I Smith

2004-12-30, 5:45 pm

ray wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 21:33:02 +0000, Scott Smith wrote:
>
>
>
>
> SuSE does not have iso images of it's pro distribution, however, you can
> do an ftp install. You download a small iso, burn, boot and follow
> instructions to get the install going from the internet. It has taken me
> about 3 hours over a DSL connection in the past.
>

That's no longer true for the current version (9.2).
SuSE Pro v9.1 was the last version to support the procedure
you described. Starting with 9.2, you can download a small
ISO that you can boot from, connect to another machine THAT
HAS THE RETAIL SUSE DVD MOUNTED/SHARED, and install from the
DVD mounted on that other machine.

>
>
>
> www.distrowatch.com
>
>
>
>

Larry

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brazz

2004-12-31, 2:45 am

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Hash: SHA1

Trog Woolley wrote:

> I've just upgraded my box from RH7.1 to FC3 with hardly any effort.
> It did rearrange my desktops a bit but pretty well everything just works.
> The only thing I'm having grief with is playing videos.Â_Â_TheÂ_xmmsÂ_as
> shipped doesn't handle MP3's (err why?)

The MP3 situation is very well documented at this point. Basically, since
the MP3 codec is a licensed property of Fraunhofer (technically closed
source), its inclusion in Fedora or Redhat would "taint" the distro.
Additionally, MP3's creators would like an, ahem, donation every time the
decoding algorithm is used. I think this may have changed since
Fraunhofer's original plans in 2002, but either way, Redhat is having no
truck with software that isn't strictly Open Source these days. Here's an
old article that will explain it.

http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2...20829016109.htm

I remember Redhat 7.x :-) Solid OS. A lot has changed since then. Hang on
for a sometimes bumpy ride!

brazz

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Clive Dove

2004-12-31, 7:45 am

Dave Bush wrote:

> Scott Smith wrote:
>
> If you want to stick with an RPM based distro then I'd recommend
> Mandrake. Very user friendly, and you can find the ISO's at
> http://www.linuxiso.org/.
>
> If you're interested in something easier to keep up to date you could
> go with Debian. A lot of people will tell you it's difficult to
> install, but that's because they haven't tried the new installer. Go
> to http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ and grab it from
> there. Piece of cake to install.
>
> - Dave

Mandrake has an update utility as part of its Mandrake Control Center,
clicking on it the first time gives you a choice of update mirrors then
presents a list of updates for security, bugfix and normal updates.
Select any of all of the update packages and they install themselves.
Subsequent accesses simply use the selected mirror. Updating can't get
any simpler.
Adding packages from the mandrake main and contrib mirrors is just as
easy.

Clive

Trog Woolley

2005-01-01, 7:45 am

While stranded on the hard shoulder of the information super highway NA@perfect.life typed:
>
> The MP3 situation is very well documented at this point. Basically, since
> the MP3 codec is a licensed property of Fraunhofer (technically closed
> source), its inclusion in Fedora or Redhat would "taint" the distro.
> Additionally, MP3's creators would like an, ahem, donation every time the
> decoding algorithm is used. I think this may have changed since
> Fraunhofer's original plans in 2002, but either way, Redhat is having no
> truck with software that isn't strictly Open Source these days. Here's an
> old article that will explain it.
>
> http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2...20829016109.htm
>
> I remember Redhat 7.x :-) Solid OS. A lot has changed since then. Hang on
> for a sometimes bumpy ride!

Thanks for the info on mp3's - I thought it may have been something like that.
I'm not completely giving up on RH7.1 - I'm keeping it running on the laptop.

--
Trog Woolley | trog at trogwoolley dot com
(A Croweater back residing in Pommie Land with Linux)
Isis Astarte Diana Hecate Demeter Kali Inanna

Scott Wertz

2005-01-01, 5:45 pm

On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 22:43:56 +0000, Larry I Smith wrote:
[vbcol=seagreen]
> You can also buy it here, and have it delivered.
>
> http://www.novell.com/products/linu...al/pricing.html
>

Any recommendations on how to (or whether to) upgrade from 9.1 to 9.2?
I'm looking forward to the improved wireless support of my laptop, but I'm
not sure what the consequences will be if I just slap a new CD in it...

Larry I Smith

2005-01-01, 5:45 pm

Scott Wertz wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 22:43:56 +0000, Larry I Smith wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> Any recommendations on how to (or whether to) upgrade from 9.1 to 9.2?
> I'm looking forward to the improved wireless support of my laptop, but I'm
> not sure what the consequences will be if I just slap a new CD in it...

SuSE does sell an 'upgrade' package on their web site at a lower
cost than the full distribution. I have no idea what might be missing
(other than the 9.2 printed manuals) from their 'upgrade' package.
I always just go to Fry's or BestBuy and buy the full Pro version
(with DVD's and printed manuals).

I've never done an 'upgrade'. The SuSE install DVD menu has that as
one of the install options (upgrade an existing installation), but
I've never used it. I keep the system files on a separate partition
from everything else; so, I always format that partition and install
the new version 'clean'.

Going from SuSE 9.1 to 9.2 the user and group number ranges changed.
So after the install is finished, login as root, recreate the original
user id's, then do 'chown -R' on each of the pre-existing home dirs to
correct the owner/group id numbers.

Regardless of which install type (new or upgrade) you choose,
BACK UP YOUR IMPORTANT DATA FIRST. You never know what might
go wrong.

Try the SuSE mailing lists (on their web site), or one of the
SuSE newsgroups (alt.os.linux.suse) for additional details and
support.

Good Luck,
Larry

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Walt L. Williams

2005-01-01, 5:45 pm

I am using Debian Sarge (testing) on my laptop.
It works great.

WW

Scott Smith wrote:
> Some time back, I installed RedHat Linux on a Dell Dimension XPS T800r box
> at home and set up CVS, Samba, Eclipse, and a few other things on it. About
> a year later, RedHat stopped free updates/support for weekend users like me,
> so I'm looking to switch to another distro.
>
> A friend at work recommended SuSE. I went to the web site, but had trouble
> figuring out what to download. The RedHat stuff came on CD and was easy to
> set up.
>
> I don't want to start a war here, but can someone recommend a distro that is
> friendly to a non-power user such as myself? (and maybe point me to the CD
> images or whatever?)
>
> Thanks very much in advance.
>
> -Scott
>
>
>

J.O. Aho

2005-01-01, 5:45 pm

Scott Smith wrote:
> Some time back, I installed RedHat Linux on a Dell Dimension XPS T800r box
> at home and set up CVS, Samba, Eclipse, and a few other things on it. About
> a year later, RedHat stopped free updates/support for weekend users like me,
> so I'm looking to switch to another distro.

If you like RedHat and don't want to relearn admin tools, I would suggest you
stay with RedHat, the only differences today is that the "home user" RedHat is
called Fedora, check fedora.redhat.com

> A friend at work recommended SuSE. I went to the web site, but had trouble
> figuring out what to download. The RedHat stuff came on CD and was easy to
> set up.

SuSe don't allow you to download the latest version of it untill a month or so
after release, they want you to buy it. If you want to have easy to download
links, then visit www.linuxiso.org

> I don't want to start a war here, but can someone recommend a distro that is
> friendly to a non-power user such as myself? (and maybe point me to the CD
> images or whatever?)

RedHat/Fedora

fedora.redhat.com

x86_32: http://download.fedora.redhat.com/p...ore/3/i386/iso/
x86_64: http://download.fedora.redhat.com/p...e/3/x86_64/iso/
PPC: ftp://ftp.yellowdoglinux.com/pub/ye...4.0-orion-*.iso

Have fun...

//Aho

Harold Stevens

2005-01-01, 5:45 pm

In <TIzBd.8522$1U6.6437@trnddc09> Larry I Smith:

[Snip...]

> (other than the 9.2 printed manuals) from their 'upgrade' package.

I used this (several versions back) and IIRC that's all that's missing in
the upgrade compared to the full Pro shrinkwrap.

If you're familiar with Linux installs, the manuals are nice, but missing
them is not a showstopper, IMO. Might be worth saving a few bucks.

(Not used shrinkwrap upgrade option lately--new installs seem "cleaner")

> I always just go to Fry's or BestBuy and buy the full Pro version
> (with DVD's and printed manuals).

Be very careful which SuSE distro you pickup at BestBuy. Those clowns have
a way of leaving older versions out for months after the latest version is
shipped; make sure it's 9.2 and not 9.1 (caveat emptor).

(I observed it over several stores/versions; I don't think it's innocent)

Fry's always has the latest version (prominent) when I've looked.

> one of the install options (upgrade an existing installation), but
> I've never used it.

I did a couple of years back, and it seemed more messy, especially when it
started to span more than one version. As you noted, saving data and doing
a "clean" install seems to avoid a lot of mysterious bugs, IME too.

(Upgrade may be better now, but new install seems still to be the advice)

> SuSE newsgroups (alt.os.linux.suse) for additional details and
> support.

Good suggestions; very helpful folks generally in aols, IMO.

--
Regards, Weird (Harold Stevens) * IMPORTANT EMAIL INFO FOLLOWS *
Pardon any bogus email addresses (wookie) in place for spambots.
Really, it's (wyrd) at airmail, dotted with net. DO NOT SPAM IT.
Kids jumping ship? Looking to hire an old-school type? Email me.

Joe Cipale

2005-01-01, 5:45 pm

Larry I Smith wrote:
>
> Scott Smith wrote:
>
> Normally, you purchase 'SuSE Linux Professional' from your
> nearest computer store (Best Buy, Fry's, etc) for $89 US.
> It includes 2 printed manuals, 2 dual-layer DVD's, and 5
> CD's. The Install DVD (DVD 1) contains the entire distro
> (Linux and 1000+ apps). DVD 2 contains all of the sources.
> The 5 CD's contain a 'reduced' version of the distro (not
> as many apps) for those folks who can't boot from a DVD.
>
> As of SuSE Pro v9.2 (the current version), SuSE no longer
> provides downloadable ISO files for the entire distro.
>
> Regards,
> Larry
>
> --

GO to linuxcd.org. They are a eurpean outfit that have ALL of the
distros
available for order. I purchssed a 3-pack (SuSE 9.2, Mandrake 10.1,
Fedora Core 2) for $30.00 USD (Including shipping!)

They are prompt, courteous... and ssecure! As far as a distro to use, I
prefer SuSE, but simply becuase it has a look and feel closer to Solaris
to me.

Joe
--
#----------------------------------------------------------#
# Penguinix Consulting #
#----------------------------------------------------------#
# Software development, QA and testing. #
# Linux support and training. #
# "Don't fear the penguin!" #
#----------------------------------------------------------#
# Registered Linux user: #309247 http://counter.li.org #
#----------------------------------------------------------#

Luka Vuletic

2005-01-02, 5:45 pm

Amol Vaidya wrote:

> I would actually reccomend checking out Slackware. I used Fedora Core
> for quite while. I must say that Slackware is easier in some respects to
> use than FC, despite the fact that many Linux users call FC a
> "beginner's distro." Many of the headaches you have with an RPM-based
> distro are gone. Installing new packages is really easy with great tools
> such as pkgtool. Installing Slackware took me 20 minutes on a relatively
> slow computer. Most of the configuration was done. If you don't mind
> editing text files for a little bit of configuration then I strongly
> reccomend Slackware. It doesn't come with too many graphical
> configuration tools, though. It has many nice packages it comes with,
> and you also get a huge array of choices of which desktop you want to use.

I second this... I was using slack few years back, than due to some
circumstances, I was forced to go win-only (oh, agony).

A year and a half back I switched back to linux with slack 9. After that I
tried Mandrake 9.1, 10 and 10.1 and found that every new version had a few
_more_ bugs than previous one. Then I tried Fedora 2 and since I never
liked RH-ish distros I tried SuSE 9.2 - it was awfully slow. Tried ubuntu
also, but on my system both APM and ACPI simply refused to work properly.

So I am happily running Slackware 10 now

Some may say it is hard for beginners, but I would say that it is pretty
easy to use if you are not too lazy to use brain.

One more thing on the positive side: it will force you to go under the hood
and learn some stuff, so if you ever switch later to some of the more
"user-friendly" distros you will see that you will not use any of that
graphical setup tools - whatever new distro you get or try you will feel
like at home.

Excuse my poor english.

A Nengineer

2005-01-03, 5:45 pm

chris

2005-01-03, 5:45 pm

A Nengineer wrote:

> Why not go to Fedora Core?

Because FC1 was OK but had lots missing, FC2 was a mess and shouldn't have
been released, and FC3 still misses out much of the useful multimedia stuff
and assumes you want their "look and feel". Everyone I've known to install
any version of FC has moved to Mandrake very soon afterward!

Chris

--
Everything gets easier with practice, except getting up in the morning!

....

2005-01-04, 8:45 pm

Personally, I would say you should run what makes you happy. Forget tech
support, there are enough users out there who are usually willing to help.

If you are comfortable with RedHat, there's no reason you HAVE to change.
If you decide to change, however, I'd say try a few distrobutions out and
see what you think of them yourself. Enough people are around who will help
talk you through the paces, that you can get up and running on a few
disrobutions using the docs available from the internet.

For what it's worth, that's my opinion.

"Scott Smith" <scottseansmith2_NO_SPAM@NO-SPAM.hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ioFAd.55134$gd.44310@twister.socal.rr.com...
> Some time back, I installed RedHat Linux on a Dell Dimension XPS T800r box
> at home and set up CVS, Samba, Eclipse, and a few other things on it.
About
> a year later, RedHat stopped free updates/support for weekend users like
me,
> so I'm looking to switch to another distro.
>
> A friend at work recommended SuSE. I went to the web site, but had trouble
> figuring out what to download. The RedHat stuff came on CD and was easy to
> set up.
>
> I don't want to start a war here, but can someone recommend a distro that
is
> friendly to a non-power user such as myself? (and maybe point me to the CD
> images or whatever?)
>
> Thanks very much in advance.
>
> -Scott
>
>
>

Stefan Patric

2005-01-05, 5:45 pm

On Monday 03 January 2005 19:19, .... wrote:

> Personally, I would say you should run what makes you happy. Forget
> tech support, there are enough users out there who are usually willing
> to help.
>
> If you are comfortable with RedHat, there's no reason you HAVE to
> change. If you decide to change, however, I'd say try a few
> distrobutions out and
> see what you think of them yourself. Enough people are around who
> will help talk you through the paces, that you can get up and running
> on a few disrobutions using the docs available from the internet.
>
> For what it's worth, that's my opinion.

Fedora. It's supported by Red Hat, initially was Red Hat, open source,
and free. Perfect for the non-power user. www.redhat.com/fedora

[vbcol=seagreen]
> "Scott Smith" <scottseansmith2_NO_SPAM@NO-SPAM.hotmail.com> wrote in
> message news:ioFAd.55134$gd.44310@twister.socal.rr.com...
> About
> me,
> is

--
Stefan Patric
NoLife Polymath Group
tootek2@yahoo.com