Linux Format forums

RE: newbee

fingers99 — Thu Apr 21, 2005 6:48 pm

Author: fingers99

Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2005 6:48 pm

Don't buy. Download Kanotix. It's a 700Mb liveCD, with a bang up to date kernel, brilliant hardware detection, KDE and you can install it to HD (where it becomes Debian).

Go here for instructions.

RE: newbee

palepaul5 — Thu Apr 21, 2005 5:11 pm

Author: palepaul5

Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2005 5:11 pm

Hi Reepz,
firstly let me say I'm not trying to be smart here! To put your question in context - I'll ask you something similar.
" What car should I buy???"
See what I mean? If I don't tell you anything about my lifestyle, needs etc., you wouldn't be able to give me a good car recommendation.
If you state what you require of an O.S. and how dirty you want to get your hands as regards what is under the hood, people would be able to give you a good recommedation based on what you are looking for and what you want to do with it.
H.T.H.
(Y) Paul }

RE: newbee

ggsinclair — Thu Apr 21, 2005 8:46 am

Author: ggsinclair

Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2005 8:46 am

As a newbie myself I always found Mandrake, or whatever the hell it is called now, to be the most user friendly distro with, in my opinion, the easiest partitioning on installation.

I found version 10.1 to be a bit unstable and kept hanging on login so I would start with 10 if I was you.

Also, if you are moving straight from Win XP it may be an idea to migrate to a distro that has KDE. It is a lot more user friendly for newbies than GNOME or the other desktop managers out there, in my opinion.

Would everyone agree with this?

Good luck.

Gordon

RE: newbee

nordle — Thu Apr 21, 2005 12:37 am

Author: nordle

Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2005 12:37 am

Maybe don't buy any just yet, unless you have no other means of obtaining the discs and also need manuals+support. Download, if you've got broadband, or get off of magazine covers, or buy from ebay or magazines for �2-3 LIVE CD's of lots of distros eg (if available):
Xandros
Suse
Mandrake (Mandriva)
Knoppix
ubuntu
Slackware
Fedora
etc
You can boot the LIVE CD and see what they look/feel like without making any changes to your current system, then if you like one or two, try getting copies (again download from net or get from ebay or similar) then try them for real, then If your really happy with it, buy a full version.
OR
if you prefer to have chunky manuals and a bit of support, buy the boxed ed straight away eg
Suse
Mandrake (Mandriva)
Not sure which others have chunky manuals.

Most distros allow you to re-partition your drive, so you can dual boot linux + winxp, but it's probably worth getting a couple of LIVE CD's so you can see and get an idea without doing any damage...

newbee

Anonymous — Thu Apr 21, 2005 12:22 am

Author: Anonymous

Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2005 12:22 am

hi can anyone tell me what linux i should buy. there are so many im lost and can i still keep xp