which distro?

Other talk that doesn't fit elsewhere.
This is for General Discussion, not General chat.
Post Reply
medavox
Rookie
Rookie
Posts: 17
Joined: 18 Jun 2007, 21:34

which distro?

Post by medavox »

ok, so I decided a while ago that windows XP would be the last I saw of microsoft on my computer. I've shopped around a bit over the past 2 years for a linux that suited me, but never came to a proper decision; I installed Ubuntu on some old hardware that stopped working with windows, ran many versions of knoppix, got damn small linux running, installed slackware on an old laptop, etc...

the warzone community hasn't done me wrong in the past; rman's old wiki/newsletter often introduced me to interesting things like Will Wright's Spore, and different rendering engines for NPRquake (which eventually led me to eye-bending MagicEye Quake 2...)

what I want to know is, what you, the warzone linux users, use, and why?
do you prefer gnome or KDE?
how long did it take you to adjust to windows (if you started out with M$)?
and what do you think would be the best distro for a linux n00b to learn the ropes (while remaining functional) running on oldish hardware?
User avatar
kage
Regular
Regular
Posts: 751
Joined: 05 Dec 2006, 21:45

Re: which distro?

Post by kage »

i primarily use debian, because of the especially low administrative burden that tends to go with it.

however, lately i've been having some build issues that are making the manual building of libraries a possibility, which is making me think about a source-transparent distro such as gentoo
medavox wrote: do you prefer gnome or KDE?
no ;)
medavox wrote: how long did it take you to adjust to windows (if you started out with M$)?
i decided to learn how to use linux/unix with the keyboard exclusively before ever i touched the mouse (i would have seriously regretted learning a gui before a shell), and so it took me about 6 months to go from "linux, huh?" to entry-level admin capabilities.  if you don't care about "power user" whatever, you could probably get very comfortable with gui-oriented linux distro, including gui-based day-to-day administrative stuff on the inside of two weeks.
medavox wrote: and what do you think would be the best distro for a linux n00b to learn the ropes (while remaining functional) running on oldish hardware?
if you really want to "learn the ropes", and know how everything works under-the-hood, you might try linux from scratch. with that distro, you actually have to build it up from almost nothing, and so is essentially boot camp -- one way or another, by the time you get it working, you'll know more than most of the linux users here (though i make it sound 3x harder than it probably would be).
Kamaze
Regular
Regular
Posts: 1017
Joined: 30 Jul 2006, 15:23

Re: which distro?

Post by Kamaze »

I suggest Ubuntu or OpenSuse for absolute new-to-linux people. (preferably ubuntu)
Because they forgive common user mistakes and are really user friendly in the new versions.

So, you aren't stucked anymore if you wanted to install the ATI restricted driver and killed the X.Org server... for example.
At least, ubuntu has a big and very newbie-friendly community.

I don't know much about suse, because i never used it, since it shoot up my partition table while installing.
(Thanks to my knoppix live cd, so that i could boot up and search on the internet for a solution, because FIXMBR or a reinstallation didn't work...)
We all have the same heaven, but not the same horizon.
medavox
Rookie
Rookie
Posts: 17
Joined: 18 Jun 2007, 21:34

Re: which distro?

Post by medavox »

kamaze wrote:do you prefer gnome or KDE?
no Wink
So, do you use XFCE? blackbox? the terminal exclusively?? please tell :P
I have experience using DOS, and can (and have on my laptop) get around without the GUI. What is frustrating for me, is that I even need to learn how to use a terminal again, let alone the GUI.
Damn, I should never have got near being a 'power user' on windows...
User avatar
kage
Regular
Regular
Posts: 751
Joined: 05 Dec 2006, 21:45

Re: which distro?

Post by kage »

Kamaze wrote: I don't know much about suse, because i never used it, since it shoot up my partition table while installing.
maybe you were being secretly attacked by microsoft :-X
medavox wrote: So, do you use XFCE? blackbox? the terminal exclusively?? please tell :P
I have experience using DOS, and can (and have on my laptop) get around without the GUI. What is frustrating for me, is that I even need to learn how to use a terminal again, let alone the GUI.
Damn, I should never have got near being a 'power user' on windows...
yeah, i could say i use the term exclusively... so long as i've been using linux, i have never done any kind of file management stuff (or management stuff of any kind in general) outside of a shell, aside from stuff like the save dialog for things like firefox (and at times, i feel like forking that codebase and replacing the menus and dialogs with a vi-like interface).  i do run blackbox, and i am doing that now, because i find it's the cheapest way to have a dozen terms on screen at once while still being aesthetically pleasing (though i think curses is pretty, so i don't have high requirements), as well as having efficient window management ops (alt+lmb drag anywhere on a window moves that window, alt+rmb drag anywhere on a window resizes it -- i even got rid of the resize 'handles' at the bottom of the windows, because in blackbox, i don't need them).  the main thing about blackbox, though, is that i've never seen it use more than 6 mb of ram: personally, i tend to loathe anything aside from games that use over 100 mb of ram just to display something (which tends to include anything described with the words 'desktop environment') -- the root image seen here actually takes up a lot more ram than my wm, i'm proud to say.

that's not to say that i would be entirely opposed to using something like the metacity (gnome) wm or the kwin (kde) wm by itself -- i just have no need to control panel style functionality, or 3 generations of nested menus to get to something (if i can find a program on the outer nest of a level, and i don't need to give it special arguments, i'll use the menu. otherwise i'll use a shell), and thus the 'environment' part of a desktop environment does nothing for me aside from eat up ram, and often enough eat up cpu cycles doing the ipc (inter-process communication) stuff.

and if i got off my arse and figured out how to increase the resolution of textmode display to take full advantage of my screen, i'd probably be happier using splitvt to run a dozen adjacent shells, and directly using xinit to run gui apps when i need them  ;)
Martyr Ops
Greenhorn
Posts: 12
Joined: 01 Oct 2007, 00:30

Re: which distro?

Post by Martyr Ops »

As I am teh noobzor at making live cds (this would be my first one) I need help on what fine to put on it for ifs and also if I need any extracting programs.

Thanks
-Martyr Ops
User avatar
Buginator
Professional
Professional
Posts: 3285
Joined: 04 Nov 2007, 02:20

Re: which distro?

Post by Buginator »

Martyr Ops wrote: As I am teh noobzor at making live cds (this would be my first one) I need help on what fine to put on it for ifs and also if I need any extracting programs.

Thanks
-Martyr Ops
Ubuntu 7.10 is a ISO, you just burn that to CD/DVD and you put it in and you can play with linux all you want WITHOUT installing it on your computer.  There are other liveCDs also available, like knoppix.

If your coming from windows, and you don't want to try CEMENT, then Ubuntu is a fine choice.  It pretty much found all my hardware, and even offered to install 'restricted' drivers for my gfx card.


If you do want CEMENT, then I will point you to this:
http://www.theblimp.blip.tv/scripts/fla ... player.swf

:D
and it ends here.
Post Reply