[Discuss] SuSe Strikes out so does Mandriva?

[John Blomfield]

Jeremy Kiffiak wrote:
> John,
>
> I would second Deid's recommendation of CentOS.  It is not my distro 
> of choice but it is widely used.  I have learned how to make my way 
> around it primarily for playing with Asterisk distro's (Trixbox, 
> Elastix, PBXinaFlash).
>
> As far as a 2nd distro goes it really depends on what you want to do 
> with the system.  Is it going to be used as a workstation?  A server 
> of some kind?
>
> If you would really like to dig in to some meaty stuff, and have never 
> done an install from "scratch" before, then go for a Gentoo install.  
> Even if you don't use it on a day to day basis going through the 
> install process 2 or 3 times should help you understand much better 
> what is involved "behind the scenes" with most distro's when they are 
> automagically installing for you.
>
> Alternatively, if you want to broaden your skill set why not try out 
> one of the BSD's for something a little different?  I would recommend 
> FreeBSD (huge install base world-wide) or OpenBSD (main developer 
> located in Calgary).
>
> I hope you have a load of fun and positive learning regardless of what 
> you choose to go with.
>
> Jeremy
>
Thanks for the suggestions but the exercise is not for my edification 
but so that we can provide some not too challenging options for the 
newbie attendees at future meetings of the Linux SIG at BB&C.  The 
object of which is to help would be Linux users learn about the use of 
Linux and the possible options available.  So we are looking to solid 
stable distros that can cope with the most common hardware and provide a 
pleasing and useful interface likely to appeal to a wide audience.  For 
myself I find Fedora provides me with a powerful platform with a 
frequent stable updates of most of the software I'm interested in but 
obviously it is not to everyone's taste.

John

>
> On 22-Mar-08, at 5:43 PM, DR wrote:
>> John,
>>
>> Take a look at Centos. centos.org It is a Red Hat Enterprise Server 
>> clone.
>>
>> Deid
>>
>> John Blomfield wrote:
>>> This is a continuing saga of myself and Joan trying different 
>>> distros to prepare for the Linux SIG at BB&C.  Those that have 
>>> followed the discussion so far will have heard Joan's tails of woe 
>>> with SuSe.  I will probably leave it for now on my demo multi distro 
>>> box until I find another likely candidate.  It may be hard to find 
>>> one distro that works on all hardware but at least its worth trying 
>>> to eliminate those that have the most problems.  For the record my 
>>> demo box is rather old and in principle most distros should be able 
>>> to handle it easily.  The critical item is usually the video card 
>>> which in this case is a nVidia GeForce 2 MX/MX400.  So far Debian, 
>>> Ubuntu/Kubuntu, Fedora and SuSe handled it out of the box but Joan 
>>> says SuSe does not like her nVidia GeForce 6600 or her Logitek 
>>> Trackball.  All my cases are full installs whereas Joan is doing 
>>> Live CD's.
>>> My latest efforts are with Mandiva Free Live KDE CD.  I have 
>>> download images from two different mirrors and both had good MD5 
>>> checks but failed on three burn verification (I burned three CD's).  
>>> However, I went ahead and ran one on my demo box which failed to 
>>> recognize my video card.  Just to make sure the CD was ok I ran it 
>>> on my new computer which has an nVidia GeForce 7300 3D card and it 
>>> worked perfectly 3D effects an all!  However, I have not been able 
>>> to get it to work on my demo box.  Mandriva only provides the one 
>>> live CD for free. Its full set (Enterprise) is 49.00 Euro's.  I 
>>> don't think I will bother to try playing around with it any further, 
>>> as I would need to see if I could make it install as Level 3 and 
>>> then configure the X config file with the correct driver.  Not 
>>> something to recommend to a newbie!
>>> So I am now looking for recommendations for two distros for my two 
>>> spare partitions.  Distros that could be suitable for newbies to try 
>>> when they are ready or interested to progress beyond Ubuntu.
>>> John Blomfield
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>
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