Maximum PC

Okay i am a complete linux noob. I want to mess with it as i am going to be having a spare pc soon. I was wondering what yall thought was best for a noobie. I am looking for the distro that has great compatibility with newer hardware and is not to hard to install for a first time. If there is good docuementation available, i could just use that as a reference. Any ideas are appreciated!

I'd probably go with Fedora out of the box. Just my opinion, but the documentation for that seems better then most.

Mandrake isn't a bad choice either, but I just haven't seen as many dedicated forums outside of the actual mandrake site.

Slackware. The best of the best. The most unix like of all linuxes and one of the oldest ones too.

Mandrake. I was a total noob, and I was recommended Mandrake, it is a painless install, and easy to use.

Yea, thanks for all the replys everyone. Im gonna go mess around with a couple different ones. Seeya!

I would go slackware or freebsd

Good distro's for new users are usually SuSE, Fedora, MDK. If you want to take more time and learn some things on the way I would suggest Debian, Gentoo, and Slackware. There are a couple Debian based distro's that are pretty nice and easy to use but they are NOT FREE .

Personally I would suggest Debian or Fedora...depending on what your looking for.

Wazer

Suggestions, in order of what I would generally recommend depending on your knowledge level, comfort level, and willingness to "dive in":

1) Mandrake. Easy to set up, but they do some things a little "backwards". Lots of people use it, easy out of the box, some level of community forums and whatnot.

2) SuSE. Also very easy to set up, good configuration tools. Fewer people use it, but it is easy out of the box. I'm not sure on the level of SuSE community, however.

3) RedHat/Fedora. RedHat's consumer version is a little out of date for the desktop. They've gone to a "community" and "enterprise" distribution model -- Fedora is their "community" distribution and what you will commonly see used. Possibly some instability and configuration issues, but the install is pretty decent and lots of people are using it. Fair amount of community, too. A little rougher out of the box than the other two.

4) Knoppix (and other LiveCD distributions). LiveCDs allow you to get your feet wet with Linux without having to go all out and partition a hard drive right away. With Knoppix and several other LiveCDs, you can choose later to put them on your hard drive (or you can always choose another distribution). Install is easy, stability is good, a fair amount of people using the bigger names, and a bit of a community. Pretty easy out of the box, but you may run into issues since it is on a CD and not something you really "install".

5) Debian, Gentoo, Slackware, and other more difficult distributions. These are going to pose a challenge. Although they have installers that do the job and they are very capable distributions, they are going to be more "roll your own" and challenging than the others that I've listed. Their community support is generally really good and they do less out of the box autodetection/configuration than the other distributions might.

6) BSDs (Free, Open, Net). These are not linux, but more to think about. FreeBSD is the most "friendly" of the BSDs, but I would leave it lower on the list because you are going to run in the same issues as you would in #5, plus some compatibility issues that make things harder when you want to use some random piece of software. They generally have good communities, too. OpenBSD is targeted more at security, NetBSD more at platform support variety.

7) Linux From Scratch. This is the ultimate in roll your own distributions. You'll learn a lot about linux, but not without a lot of trial and error and occasional frustration.

Colby I dont know what kind of crack you been smoking lately.

But debian testing tree and slackware since v9 have autodeteched and setup properly all my hardware except video. and then i know the xf86config aka xorgconfig by heart and can configure it in my sleep.

Sorry there is very little manual configuration left . Colby you bore me with your ideas about slackware. But what should i expect from a debian user.

Debian's installer for testing is still being tested and has had issues in the past. I wouldn't stick a new person in front of it without the risk that they would run into something weird or get caught in a not quite complete part of the installer.

The fact that you have to run xf86config means things weren't perfectly autodetected or configured. If they were, why would you have to run a configuration tool?



It's about more than automatic configuration. How often do you have to drop to the command line to do something? How many GUI tools, are they installed by default? Did you have to configure your printer, USB devices, other devices by hand?

There's more to a system than how easy it is to install, that's just one piece of the puzzle. I can walk a newb through installing any distribution, but that doesn't mean it's good for day to day work or a good way to "learn" without being overwhelmed.

I want people to enjoy linux. I want their first experience to be positive, so they want to learn more, and can "graduate" to other distributions. I don't want them to be swamped with too much information that they don't understand, unreadable man pages, documentation that assumes a level of knowledge that they don't have.

It's easy for you to dismiss my comments because I don't "amen" to your sermon on Slackware, but I stand by my recommendations. You will note that I did not suggest debian at the top of my list, either. But then if you admit that you might be wrong, you might have to take back your comment about me being "inbread". What kind of bread did you have in mind, anyway?

Things that work out of the box with out me having to touch a thing

Everything listed was in slack 9.1 which has been out a long time now and I will make notes to new features in 10

The following was autodeteched and installed
TV tuner card 1 wintv go Bt848 card
ATI all in wonder tuner card 98 ( pci)
sound card
proper setup of IDE to scsi emulation
USB/Firewire Maxtor ext drive both fire wire and usb sides auto deteched and loaded the proper modules for it. ( slack 10 ask you on install if you want ot mount any other paritions with a list of all drives and partitions)
USB thumb drives
IBM microdrive in 6 in 1 usb card reader. XD and Memory stick also properly deteched and installed.
Gigabit eithernet
wireless nic
Basicly everything i threw at it.

Things that i had to manually configured using simple config tools
Video card.

Thats its sorry


Printer???

KDE has a printer application that works just fine at deteching and installing the printer no harder than what you would have to do in windows.

From what i can tell with debian testing tree is that not that is not stable just assholes who man the support channels.

I think your wrong in putting Debian and Slackware in the same grouping as Gentoo. Gentoo is really somewhere between slack/deb and rolliung your own even though doing a stage one gentoo install is almost the same as rolling your own with a little assitance.

slackware install it no harder than installing windows 98.

Sorry you feel that people are dumb and cant read. sorry reading one tiny sentence every couple of minute for 15 minutes does not require a rocket sciencist.

What kind of bread are you well i cant tell you here as it would be rude but your fellow mpc mods did not have nice things to say about you in chat. But i am above calling you what they call you as it was simply uncalled for. I personally think your not in your right mind. If i had to tell you what kind of bread you be that nasty bread in thebakers that never sells goes moldy and has to through it in the trash.

To some everything up.

stop acting like the assholes in debian chat rooms and maybe would not think your a crack head.

to qoute Jack Nichlson from As good as it gets " Sorry lady, go sell your crazy elsewhere because where all full here"

I can't disagree that there aren't assholes on the IRC channel, but I see more people get help there than people that get RTFM.



It's not that they have to read, it's *what* they have to read. man pages aren't very readable, especially to a new person (90% of the time), and a lot of online documentation isn't readable either (or isn't made for their distribution). That's when you fall back on people to help you, or you give up, and it really depends on your experience and willingness to learn whether you choose door #1 or door #2.



News flash: I can see everything that happens in chat through chat transcripts. Everything is logged in the Delphi forum chat.



I don't see anyone in here calling me a "crack head" except you.

I started out on Slackware as a noob. Only requirements are that you know your hardware and can use google. I've tried others (debian, gentoo, fedora/redhar) and I always end up back with slackware (prolly cause I started on it).

Slackware is the most unix-like of distros (as well as the oldest). It is known to be stable and fast.

www.slackware.com

if you learn slackware first, it seems all other distros will be easy to learn/use.

What you really should ask yourself is how much time do you want to put into Linux. 9 times out 10, you'll get a recommendation about Distro X and then it doesn't work out for you. If you really want to learn the nitty-gritty of Linux, I suggest Gentoo, Arch, and Slackware. If you just want out of the box usage, without having to manually install everything, go with Fedora, Mandrake, or SuSE.

As with all things, I suggest learning the nitty gritty of things, Linux is a great OS with lots of possibilities to tinker to no end. As many have said, Slack and Gentoo, those are great distros. I've used both Slack and Gentoo, and Gentoo is still number one on my list.

I thought only hardware developed this kind of fanboi'ism.

Slack is a great distro ... but I'm confused.

What do you and jawa mean by 'most unix-like' ? How is Slack more 'unix-like' than debian or gentoo?

On a side note: stability and speed are dependent on the sys admin, not the distro.

Its both. its like a house. You have the foundation which is the distro which is made up of selected packages the creators decided they would put in. Using betas and what not can add function but may also have bugs. Even certain stables may have issues.

The sysadmin part is the western platform framing you built on top of the foundation. even the best foundation will not help if you try to use 1 nail to hold it all together.

And a bad foundation can foil even the best admin.