Linux N00b - What distro do I want?

Evil-I · 11 Oct 2010 at 13:51

jack.mitchell said:
haha, for a starter distro to install and go; Ubuntu is fantastic. For a distro to learn linux on it's horrific, the amount of vanilla code and linux standards are well.... non existant, which makes it possiby one of the worst distros for learning.

+1

I'd vote fedora as a good learning distro.

FooAtari · 11 Oct 2010 at 14:54

Westyfield2 said:
The Lab PCs are dualbooting XP and Linux, and from Windows we have Remote Desktop access to Solaris...

...We've been told that we'll need access to Unix (Linux) outside of the labs

What does the university use? Surely they made a suggestion of which distro to go with?

I'd probably agree with what a few others have said in that if you want to learn rather than have an install-and-go distro, something like Debian or Fedora would be a good choice.

But I'm going to assume a lot of the course will be based around working from a shell. I'm just learning myself but from what I understand, which distro you choose shouldn't matter to much. Once your learn your way around something like BASH you should be able to transfer your knowledge to other distros and shells fairly easily and quickly

UncertainGod · 11 Oct 2010 at 15:02

I always used to play around with Suse, RHEL, Ubuntu, etc but I only truly got my head around linux when I went for Archlinux and I have never looked back. Ubuntu is a great system but a nightmare to learn linux on as it does exactly sweet FA the way it should do.

Evil-I · 11 Oct 2010 at 15:17

UncertainGod said:
Ubuntu is a great system but a nightmare to learn linux on as it does exactly sweet FA the way it should do.

I couldn't have put it better myself....

russ0r · 11 Oct 2010 at 17:58

Use Debian.
Avoid Ubuntu like the plague. Ubuntu is "Baby's First Distro" - it's for people who want a working desktop, not who want to learn how to use *nix.

If you want to learn a bit more: Arch, FreeBSD
Nightmare mode: Gentoo.

craptakular · 11 Oct 2010 at 18:43

Personally I prefer the way Arch and FreeBSD work makes way more sense to me than even debian.

cb_linus · 11 Oct 2010 at 19:37

russ0r said:
Nightmare mode: Gentoo.

lol

, Gentoo is lovely to use (but understandable comment) - one of the more difficult to install but has always been incredibly easy to maintain in comparison to some of the other distro's I've used

gam3r · 11 Oct 2010 at 19:47

I'd probably say Mint.

Dj_Jestar · 11 Oct 2010 at 22:50

I'm just posting to register my vote that Ubuntu is a very misleading distro to learn on. There is a LOT of stuff they have segregated from the rest of the world of Linux - so much so that they have become hypocritical (wrt linux vs windows and the entire reason for Ubuntu's existence)

robinbredin · 13 Oct 2010 at 19:40

I have Mint 9 running in VT inside Win 7. If your after a distro, then it's Mint 9.

Westyfield2 · 13 Oct 2010 at 19:50

Thanks for all the replies guys

.

I had a poke around and the Lab PCs use Gentoo. Most n00bs seem to be going for Ubuntu, but there's some nerds

that have their computers only running Linux anyways.

I guess the beauty of me doing it through VMs is that I can have as many different ones as I want as and when I want them!

pingwing · 14 Oct 2010 at 03:17

cb_linus said:
lol , Gentoo is lovely to use (but understandable comment) - one of the more difficult to install but has always been incredibly easy to maintain in comparison to some of the other distro's I've used

Oxy said:
Personally I prefer the way Arch and FreeBSD work makes way more sense to me than even debian.

FreeBSD is a good fun way to throw your self in at the deep end! (same for Gentoo if you have a fair bit of time to really learn, which I did at 16). Id say they are all a bit more logical to learn (arch is also a good shout) as they tend to demonstrate some of the inner workings and how to set up a working system, instead of set up a system then force it to work (which has been the case and experience with Debian based stuff as its fun to try and break them a little...)

Personally id bash a cheapy core2 system together in the corner (original c2d parts arnt to expensive now) and just have a whole breakable system in the corner to learn from

(just dont do a Gentoo p2 as no one thought that was cool when I showed off its ability to do sound and scummvm!)

Bes · 14 Oct 2010 at 10:40

Westyfield2 said:
Hello world.

My PC is a MacBook Pro and apparently OSX isn't close enough to Unix .

Um.. OSX IS built on Unix. That's a bit like saying Solaris isn't close enough to unix...

Why not just use Macports?

PhilGQ · 17 Oct 2010 at 20:05

lots of people are saying Debian, Mint or Ubuntu for one reason or another.

I am going to throw in Mint Debian Edition, like regular Mint but based directly of Debian rather than off Ubuntu (which is based on Debian). Less easy to use than Regular Mint but easier than Debian. Just a suggestion though it may be the worst of both world for you.