Which Flavour of Linux.

[TheMajor]

I had SuSE 7.0 Pro, it was pretty complicated especially making a dual boot with Windows using LilO...it just didn't work.
I had to set the kernel manually but it still did not work.
I had Mandrake 9 too, it was very nice but too heavy for my specs.

Some guys say RedHat would be easy.

 

[xotix]

suse 9.1 nice and pretty, easiest of them all to use.

red hat - ok, not as nice as suse.

mandrake and fedora - not as much functions as suse, but faster.

 

[kostas]

i have tried Red Hat 9, Fedora Core 1, Mandrake 9, SuSE 9.1. out of all of them, the best is SuSE 9.1 Pro. the only downside is that there is no iso available for the download. you'll have to do an ftp install. the best way is to download the SuSE 9.1 Personal eition iso. install personal edition, then download the iso for the ftp install, boot off that, install the drivers for the NIC, and start the ftp install through a server. there's instructions how to do it on the SuSE site. the reason i suggest you get Pro instead of Personal, because you really don't have much to work with in Personal. it's only one CD!!!!!

if you want to avoid al that, try Slackware 10. it's been around very long, and i've heard only good things about it.

you can find all those at www.linuxiso.org

 

[TheMajor]

be careful while making a dual boot..it went totally wrong with me, but these newer version of Linux should handle it very well

 

[horndude]

Want to just screw around before you buy, google for basiclinux and download it.Its a floppy install that loads into ram, something to play with.Its primitive but good for learning the command line.It can be put on a hard drive and a gui and all sorts of other stuff can be added.Try the old version 1.Its based on slackware 3.5 and pkgs from that can be added.The other versions are more up to date.Might want to try them too.Slackware 3.5 is getting hard to find download wise.The others are based on slack 7.1.I think they can be put on a windows partition as well, something to toy with.The PC im typing this from is using basiclinux 1.8 and I have X installed and I have it set up as a thin client to run a browser on another machine with the display exported to this machine.Good way to use an old pentium 100 system with 16mb of ram !!

 

[kostas]

relating on horndude's idea, a Linux version you can run off a CD is Knoppix. forgot to mention it...

 

[urbanwks]

If you want to learn the most about linux and also have the most stable operating environment possible, I say go for slackware. It's not the easiest of all of the distros to get configured all of the time, but it will help you to know what your system is actually doing.

 

[horndude]

Ya Im a diehard slackware man myself

 

[NeoNemesis]

yeah im downloading suse right now. i tried downloading it from the www.linuxiso.org site but it didn't work. your better off just downloading it from the official site.

 

[OIDanTheManIO]

ya sounds good, although i have heard good things about Fedora and Mandrake, but thats just wat ive HEARD