Help me start up with Linux

[Steedie]

Hey guys

I'm currently applying for jobs and in my particular area, a lot of jobs mention a basic understanding of Linux, so me never having used it before, figured I better start using it

Thing is I have no idea what the best version/distro of linux to use at all, especially for a beginner, but I also want to use one that would mean I get all the experience of using Linux rather than one thats basically Windows

Also, if possible, I would rather use it on my laptop as my main PC is purely for gaming so don't really like making extra partitions if I dont have to (petty I know ), however, if I'm able to use some sort of VMware to run it then I wouldnt mind as much sticking it on my PC

If not I guess I'll just make an extra partition on my laptop

So help me out guys, whats the best way to get started and what version should I be looking at

Many thanks in advance

 

[Steedie]

Ok thanks guys, I'll give Gentoo a go, see how I get on

I take it I want the latest version of thisyeah?

Cheers again

 

[Steedie]

Well in business the most common distros used are Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Novel SUSE Enterprise Linux so either Fedora 7 or OpenSUSE 10.2 are good choices due to the similarity to their big brothers.

Gentoo and ArchLinux are two great distro's if you fancy getting stuck in at the deep end. Arch is perhaps a little more forgiving due to the binary packages rather than having to compile nearly all the source for gentoo. Both give you very good look at the underlying linux OS.

Ubuntu is the popular home\desktop distro, easy to get most things setup and working in it and lots of ready built packages but tends to "hide" a lot of the settings behind GUI's. It starts as a live-cd so you can easly give it a try before installing. Knoppix is a pure live CD so you can just boot from CD and get messing around without worry of killing your laptop or installing VMWare.

Ah fantastic

Might try that Knoppix first then