Linux?

[Galarandel]

I just partitioned my harddrive and set out on a journey to try and get to know the little penguin, but my journey was cut short when I found out that because linux is open source, there are about 99999999999999 versions of it. Does ANYBODY know of one that's preferably less than 200MB(1.5Mbps connection, not too worried about size, but still.....)and good for learning how to use a linux system?

[Ember]

good for learning how to use a linux system?

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Knopix - i belive thats how its spelt >.< its one that boots off a disk so it shouldt take up any hard drive space at all exapte for the dl' then burning to disc part.. its a good one to start off with to learn linux and see it you like it

[crusadingknight]

DSL - http://www.DamnSmallLinux.org

 

49.1 MB, and it's still great.

As well, if you want a larger one, you can get Ubuntu shipped to you free, from http://shipit.ubuntulinux.org

Edited April 16, 2005 by crusadingknight

[Entropy]

Mepis is the BEST linux distro ever (at least for those who don't care to spend days compiling and configuring stuff).

[Tornado]

I'm using Debian GNU/Linux since about 2000 and i love this distro

[Entropy]

Mepis is based on debian.

[Nequaroth]

I would suggest SUSE linux.It is perfect for linux starters,but it is a complete distro( 650Mb).

If you realy need smaller one,i would say Vector Linux.

It is based on Slackware Linux,that prefers most configuration by hand,but it has fast install(about 20 minutes total) so if you smeg up smething ...

 

And it has good forum suport .

 

More suggestions:

goblinx -live cd based on (guess what) Slack ,350 MB

 

slax - Nice looking live distro based on S. as above but 180Mb

[Lachesis]

lachesis@cami public_html $ du -hc --exclude=distfiles /usr/portage/|tail -n 1
401M    total

You'd probably also like Gentoo Linux. It has the nice property that only metainformation of the packages is stored on disk, which results in an incredibly small package tree (401M on my machine) compared to the number of packages (9172 at the moment). The actual package data is downloaded on demand when installing it. Of course, you can also prefetch a package selection if you desire. Gentoo automates a lot which is very convenient once you get used to it, however it's not equipped with graphical configuration tools like the large major distributions, most of the configuration is done in a few text files. Using them however is easy to learn, and Gentoo Documentation is a really good help.

 

With regards

Lachesis

[obionek]

I would never suggest Gentoo as a system for beginner. Debian would be (imho) best for you to start with. I havent use Mepis but many ppl do like it so it could be also "nice".

[Entropy]

If you are a newbie when it comes to Linux, don't even try to use Gentoo. I am not a newbie, and still got frustrated with the complexity of the install procedure, so I gave up.

[Lachesis]

Personally I started with SuSE, which is really cute, intuitively and easy to use as long as everything works fine. But very soon I got frustrated by this distribution because a lot of things were not working, and it was hard to step in the internals of SuSE and fix the problems as a beginner. The same time my much more experienced linux mates were crazy about gentoo, and finally I decided to give it a try. Back those days, gentoo was younger and still had several issues that today are solved in its typical clean and convenient manner, and I got even more frustrated at first, but I dagged through the sparse documentation and got a steep learning curve. I was amazed everytime I had a look at some internals, I saw clean and concise code, no comparison to the unflexible, lengthy, cluttered and quirky scripts of SuSE. However, I would have never suggested an unexperienced user to use gentoo linux at that time.

 

Nowadays, gentoo provides detailed and comprehensive documentation and introduced many features that solve past oddnesses and simplify its use a lot, such as slots, per-package keywords and user-overriden masking and lots of useful tools and scripts. And by now, I don't hesitate to suggest gentoo anymore, especially if I encounter that someone particularly requests one of the many advantages it features compared to most other distributions. Though I have to admit, many of them are borrowed from debian.

 

With regards

Lachesis

 

P.S. I hope I didn't get completely off topic, I don't want to split the thread.

[Lachesis]

If you are a newbie when it comes to Linux, don't even try to use Gentoo. I am not a newbie, and still got frustrated with the complexity of the install procedure, so I gave up.

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The installing procedure is essentially equivalent to any other Linux installation procedure, the main difference is that there is no setup tool that nicely presents you the steps through a graphical user interface, instead you are directly using the tools intendend for these individual steps, and the guidance and default configuration task is solved by the guides in the documentation. I recommend to have a second system running and/or print all the necessary documentation when installing it. IMHO this is much better suited to cases where you have to severely adjust the system -- or the installation procedure itself -- to your needs, which usually is the case when you have few space or slow internet connection respectively. And last not least, you gain worthful knowledge about your system that otherwise you would have never heard of, but that can save your health when you ever run into trouble. You may say you don't want to have to learn these things, and rather just reinstall the system when something has gone wrong. If so, I highly recommend you not to use linux, use windows instead then. Linux is not a good choice at all if you don't want to care about how your computer works. Windows is an operating system that from its beginning has been designed to accomodate to users with little experience, and certainly will suit your needs much better then.

 

With regards

Lachesis

Edited April 17, 2005 by Lachesis

[Entropy]

You may say you don't want to have to learn these things, and rather just reinstall the system when something has gone wrong. If so, I highly recommend you not to use linux, use windows instead then. Linux is not a good choice at all if you don't want to care about how your computer works. Windows is an operating system that from its beginning has been designed to accomodate to users with little experience, and certainly will suit your needs much better then.

 

With regards

Lachesis

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While I am not a Linux expert, I am not a newbie either. I know how to use it and how to configure some stuff. Furthermore, I know more about how computers work than most of the people here.

But if you think that Linux means that you have to manually edit all the configuration files with vi in order to be able to write an e-mail (this is a metaphore, not a real example) then you are wrong.

Maybe you like the "Holly quest of making Gentoo boot in X", but I'd rather use an OS that can install itself with minimal intervention. I am not very thrilled about editing all kind of configuration files that can be done by the installer program in the first place.

[Lachesis]

Maybe you like the "Holly quest of making Gentoo boot in X", but I'd rather use an OS that can install itself with minimal intervention. I am not very thrilled about editing all kind of configuration files that can be done by the installer program in the first place.

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$ emerge xorg-x11
$ xorgcfg #automatic X configuration
$ rc-update add xdm default

Look, doesn't require any manual configuration. Usually the ebuilds do a good job at configuration upon install, unfortunately X11 still requires some additional work, but as you can see it's not really worth mentioning. And it is all explained in detail in The X Server Configuration HOWTO. If you prefer this to be done fully automatic, so that you don't have to type these three lines, ok. But Galarandel does not necessarily share your opinion. And hm, well personally I consider the comfort in every day use much more important than installation procedure. How often do you install a distribution? Usually not more often that once in two years, and if it's gentoo even only once ever. But that's a matter of taste and I don't think it's worth starting a discussion about.

 

I just want to stress that you don't need to be an expert anymore in order to install gentoo, if you just follow the guides on gentoo.org it's quite simple and straightforward. The problem with DSL and Knoppix is they're quite limited in their features, and the problem with debian, fedora & Co is the default installation puts lots of things you don't need on your harddisk that you may not even have space for. Gentoo's core installation has neither of these problems, but instead you have to work a little more to get it installed (in return you don't need to reinstall it ever, and you get good guidance). So I think it's worth to be mentioned in this thread. Galarandel can decide what s/he wants her- or himself. S/he can have a look at the guides on gentoo.org and see if it's too much of an effort for her or him.

 

With regards

Lachesis

[Entropy]

It takes quite a LOT of typing (fdisk, mv, mount, etc.) until you can emerge X. Then you have to wait until everything gets compiled, and pray to god that it will compile fine.

 

I tried Knoppix once, but had big bugs when asked to install itself on the HDD. It complained there is not enough space, even tho I had 20GB free.

Mepis, on the other hand, is perfect. The installation process is extremely easy, it detected ALL my devices on the laptop (sans the widescreen monitor) and has all the good stuff preinstalled (including non OS program and plug ins).

It has very few problems:

1. Had to manually edit the X conf file to add the widescreen monitor.

2. Doesn't save the sound settings by default, so you have to use "alsactl store" from the console, to save them.

3. The ACPI support (hibernate and suspend) don't work. In fact, they WORK, but restoring doesn't

Other than that, it's perfect. I even registered my copy, for 10 USD (just felt like supporting them)

So far I tried about 6 distros, and Mepis is the perfect one.

[Ciara]

I like Gentoo very much, but it's probably not the best idea for a newbie unless you have someone guiding you through the process, and/or read the documentation very well.

 

I myself tried Mandrake, Suse, Slackware, Arch, Debian, and Fedora before switching to Gentoo, which I've been using for over a year, and I'm very content with it.

 

I suggest using Knoppix to check and see if your hardware works OK.. if that works OK, perhaps try Fedora Core 3? It's easy to use, professional, up-to-date and very secure.

[chatterbug89]

Well, my favorite has to be slackware and it is what I use for my personal server, my secound bootable OS on my main computer, and my secound bootable OS on my old laptop. Thou it may not be the best begginer's distro..but ...you will more than likely learn a whole lot...

Oh...as for something small..may I recomend R.I.P (Rescue Is Posible). Only 1.44MB ^^ ...it's the ultimate rescue disk.

 

Also, entroypy..what is it with you and spending a little time to get somethign to work 0.o Guess you woudlen't be interested in LFS would you :lol:

 

Oh yeah, I will be using LFS on my next personal server I am soon to set up as a project of mine. Thou that is after my single board computer

[Entropy]

I'd rather spend less time than more time for doing the same thing. If I would live forever, then I guess time wouldn't be an issue. But since most of the people don't live forever, I'd rather do more pleasant things than installing/configuring an OS

[Brom]

The age long debate of Linux Distobutins. Well, Ill add my input. In my world there are about 3 types of linux. the out-of-box easy to install ones and the ones you build yourself and the really easy ones, the ones you download, burn to a Cd and reboot your computer (liveCD's). to start I used Mandrake/Redhat/Suse I actually used Suse with the most success in the begining because the install was SO easy. If I dare say it, it was as easy if not easier than installing Windose! If you can spare the 40USD, go grab yourself a copy of Suse at your friendly local non-linux-hating computer store. Or, if you dont care about downloading, Mandrake (I think it has a new name) and Red-hat are both free.

When you have learned more about linux, you can try something else. After some prodding from my guild (Long Live Linux Warriors) I worked my way through Gentoo, I learned so much just in the install but now Im so much happier with an OS that I personally built and customized. Im now somewhat a Gentoo fan too.

To be completely honest I will say that I have not tried Debian or BSD, but I hear lots of good things from Debian.

 

Lots of pros and cons for any OS, so just pick one and make your own decisions, forget ours.

 

Note: If you need help or have questions, dont give up! please dont give up, seek help, the EL Linux community is behind you. LNX Fourms We will help you out as well as pretty much any Linux Advocate.

Edited April 18, 2005 by EWQ222

[Astrocreep]

personally i've tried slackware, redhat, mandrake, debian and gentoo... currently using the last mentioned, started with slack ~8 years ago..

 

if you're allergic to text mode (console), go for Ubuntu.. it's based on debian and comes with graphical tools for installing software. http://www.ubuntulinux.com , 1 full sized CD image (~600MB+)

 

another easy way out is redhat's desktop versions successor fedora, but their software packaging format is somewhat confusing (rpm). it's easy to use but so many distros use this same format and they're not compatible with eachother. http://fedora.redhat.com , full sized CD image(s), don't know how many of them.

 

if you don't mind a little extra work and having to work with console commands, get original debian.. the netinstall CD image is a bit over 100MB, but you will of course have to download all the software you need separately (using apt-get; eg. "apt-get install mozilla-firefox"). http://www.debian.org

 

of course there are such less known distros as arch linux or the one entropy mentioned earlier, but if this is your first linux install.. i would recommend sticking to a mainstream distro until you're familiar with the system, the more users the better support and forums are your friends

[kdpadua]

Well, resumin all the discution: picking one distro is like picking your favorite soccer team... it is a matter of taste. I think debian is a great distro, but fit for hard work, like a server, not for common desktop work. SuSE is my choice, it may be somewhat slow, too big to download (5 CDs) and space consuming when compared to other distros, but it has a great advantage: it is complete. It is easy to install, easy to manage, and come with almos every software you may need. You dont have to waste time looking for packages, compiling, managing dependencies. But as i said, it is a matter of taste.

[Tornado]

Well, resumin all the discution: picking one distro is like picking your favorite soccer team... it is a matter of taste. I think debian is a great distro, but fit for hard work, like a server, not for common desktop work. SuSE is my choice, it may be somewhat slow, too big to download (5 CDs) and space consuming when compared to other distros, but it has a great advantage: it is complete. It is easy to install, easy to manage, and come with almos every software you may need. You dont have to waste time looking for packages, compiling, managing dependencies. But as i said, it is a matter of taste.

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I'm using Debian GNU/Linux testing version for desktop use and it's perfect for me. Relative new and stable packages (15.000!! in official testing release).

 

"Apt-get into it"

[Galarandel]

Uh, hmm, I got Mepis, burnt the .iso to a CD, went into BIOS and changed primary boot drive to CD, pushed F10 to save and exit BIOS, computers started up, and windows booted. Restarted computer, and windows booted. I'm trying to install so that windows will boot automatically(so that my parents won't bitch at me) but there is some kind of button I can push during startup to make it boot in Mepis(probably not possible, I could live with a screen were I used arrow keys to choose windows/linux and pushed enter) I don't actually expect anyone to know how to do any of that, but could someone help me to make this boot CD boot?

[ttlanhil]

personally, i use slackware. it quickly gets up to date (KDE is huge, yet last version was available as official slackware packages only a couple of days after the final source version was released), has official packages that cover most of what you need, not a large list, so sticking to this you can steer well clear of most problem. There's also a large number of user contributed packages available on the net if you're happy with that.

the text configuration is an advantage, for me.. i wanted to learn how it all works.

 

but i wouldn't suggest it for someone new to linux.

one of the ones focused on new linuxers would be best, like Mandriva (previously mandrake) or Suse

note that i haven't tried either of these, but they're well recommended in many places.

 

for a big list of distros, check here

 

but if you want to learn how to use many of the command-line tools available, get used to the directoy system, etc, a good place to start is CygWin, a linux terminal and commands within windows. you can even get some of the graphical programs working, though this starts to get into larger downloads

[chatterbug89]

There is no reason why a begginer can't start off with Slackware...oh no it dosen' thave pretty graphics for the set up...it's so difficult! ...not realy <_<

 

Ok, so it's not super easy...but atleast you will learn something..and it isen't as hard as some people say. Also, compiling from scratch is the better way to go..not using packages...packages only cause misery...sometimes...