[TriLUG] Linux Newbie Resources

[William Sutton]

My $0.02, inserted below...

William

On Mon, 20 Sep 2004, linux r wrote:

> Hi Gene,
> 
> I am biased, but I prefer Redhat based distro's.   My reasoning:
> 
> 1) a little more user friendly than some really advanced distros that
> are more scary-looking etc.  Red Hat has had the default GNOME desktop
> for awhile, which to me is easier to migrate from Windows to, than the
> KDE environment.

Red Hat's KDE and Gnome environments have become virtually 
indistinguishable

> 
> 2) other distros such as mandrake (french), white box linux, etc,  are
> based upon redhat.  The package manager, for example, which is what
> you use to install software.  So in the beginning I would rather just
> use one distro and get good with that until I knew a little bit about
> what was going on, and felt comfortable to try other distributions.

Mandrake (as Tanner no doubt will chime in) is no longer based on Red Hat.  
In any case, Red Hat now costs $$$ to acquire legally if you want a stable 
version (I don't consider the FC* series of "user" releases to be stable).

> 
> 3)  It is easier sometimes to find more support for things
> redhat-related than some other god-knows-what distro, unless you
> really know what you are doing in terms of searching, compiling
> software, etc.  With redhat, if you can get, say, FC3 on your machine,
> then you can easily find rpm packages to download and install on your
> machine.  That is not always the case with other distro's, although it
> is definitely better these days than in the past.
> 
> 4) Red Hat (the company) is definitely a leader in the linux space. 
> More name recognition and support= better hardware support= more
> software packages out there= fewer headaches.  Personally I like that.
> 
> This was just my reasoning.  You could jump right into Debian or
> TurboLinux and do fine, it is totally up to the individual!  The
> beauty of open source software keeps multiplying...:)
> SuSE has a nice interface, I actually like it better than RH9 or FC1. 
>   A beginner could learn SuSE pretty easily as well.
> 
> Also go to http://www.linuxmigration.com/  and check out the 'linux
> quick reference' link.  Tim has done an excellent job with a lot of
> hard topics, including some fun stuff like cd burning etc.  The
> 'learning curve' on linux can be like a cliff, so good luck!
> 
> 
> HTH
> 
> linuxr
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, 20 Sep 2004 14:21:38 -0400, Gene Dupree <gene.dupree at duke.edu> wrote:
> > Hi All,
> > 
> > Since I am new to Linux, I wanted to know if anyone knows of any really
> > good resources (books, websites, etc.) to learn Linux from the ground up.
> > I have a pretty good background in Windows/DOS but want to learn and
> > explore the Linux universe.  Any suggestions would be helpful.
> > 
> > Also, are there any recommendations on which distro to start out with?
> > 
> > Thanks in advance for any info!
> > 
> > Gene
> > 
> > There are only 10 kinds of people in this world.
> > Those who understand binary, and those who don't.
> > 
> > --
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>