# First time user with linux



## Ehstii (Mar 21, 2008)

alright, so as it says this will be my first time using linux. and i just wanted to post this thread to get some good ideas as to which version i should run and how it is also installed.

im guessing its installed just as any other OS would be installed but if you could, please give me some ideas on which version linux.

and what are some benifits and/or disadvantages to using linux?


thanks in advance =]


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## panchoman (Mar 21, 2008)

i'd recommend ubuntu 7.10 x86 because its friendly and windows like.


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## Solaris17 (Mar 21, 2008)

suse/ubuntu/fedora


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## zatblast (Mar 22, 2008)

not going to claim to be an expert, still a noob myself... ubuntu is nice however on my laptop it worked once and was never able to get it bootable again ((litterally 30 tries)) gave up and switched to fedora core 8 which has been great... just havent gotten around to getting mywireless card working on it yet

but main problems you might run into is the occasional problem with getting hardware to function properly, but to be honest there are many tutorials out there on how to get most hardware working, and many many people that are willing to help get it to work..


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## jbunch07 (Mar 22, 2008)

My dad uses fedora redhat he like it and it looks pretty nice!


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## Wile E (Mar 22, 2008)

Add another vote for Fedora. It's both noob friendly, and it's also geek friendly when you reach that level.


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## Frick (Mar 22, 2008)

+1 for Ubuntu , for that's what I'm using now. There are massive help to get on the Internet to. Awesome community, but I guess that's what the distros have in common. 

DSL (Damn Small Linux) was extremely impressive though. If you have a very old system I'd vote that one.


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## A Cheese Danish (Mar 22, 2008)

DSL or Fedora. Although I found Fedora to be easier to use


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## jonmcc33 (Mar 30, 2008)

Wile E said:


> Add another vote for Fedora. It's both noob friendly, and it's also geek friendly when you reach that level.



The 2200BG Intel wireless didn't work with WPA2 right out of the box. Not that noob friendly.

OpenSUSE 10.3 however? Worked flawlessly.


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## strick94u (Mar 30, 2008)

Gos is a great build runs super fast and clean and is friendly to newer hardware. It's the fastest os I have seen booting from cd also. I want to say its what comes on asus ee laptops. simple to setup its dual boot also at least so far let you know soon as its done decide to try that tonight  so far smooth sailing.


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## strick94u (Mar 30, 2008)

Ok install was flawless runs lightning fast Xp is undisturbed except for 30 gigs missing from the 250 hdd. took  30 minutes to setup


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## SirKeldon (Mar 30, 2008)

I'll say completely Ubuntu, at least, for this moment, since they started they're improving their distro and actually it's going flawless, specially on auto-detection of hardware, distro installation and then of course, installation and administration of the packages, simply works and sometimes works a lot better than Windows. The "deb" packages they use slightly better than "rpm" based arch as Fedora or OpenSUSE (though Yast2 it's a great app), also the dependance system it's better as well as some administration features. 

Since Ubuntu is winning popularity from 2 years ago they improved a lot on developing a super-easy distro for the begginers and more geek-friendly than anyone since it's based on the old-kickass Debian, as a 9 years GNU/Linux user, i tried several distros and never found anyone more easy, solid and reliable than Debian for the mid and the high user ... so when Ubuntu came out, i gave them a chance, it's a "Debian" that has grown well, without their philosophy of course, but it has been oriented to the newb, beginner, mid, mid-high, high and even some kind of geek. Also there are tons of tutorials, plugins and small scripts on the web for doing practically anything, for Debian and specially for Ubuntu, the community has done a good job.

So my choice will be clearly Ubuntu, fast, quick, reliable, solid, best documented ... clearly UBUNTU!

ps: download the amd64 version so you'll enjoy a full-64 bits operating system


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## Wile E (Mar 30, 2008)

jonmcc33 said:


> The 2200BG Intel wireless didn't work with WPA2 right out of the box. Not that noob friendly.
> 
> OpenSUSE 10.3 however? Worked flawlessly.


Not everyone has that wireless card. No distro is 100% friendly for 100% of the people straight out of the box. I stand by my assessment of Fedora as a noob friendly distro.


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## ex_reven (Mar 30, 2008)

Wile E said:


> Not everyone has that wireless card. No distro is 100% friendly for 100% of the people straight out of the box. I stand by my assessment of Fedora as a noob friendly distro.



XP64 still doesnt and never will support my dlink wireless card.
Bastards.


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## xfire (Mar 30, 2008)

Wile E said:


> Not everyone has that wireless card. No distro is 100% friendly for 100% of the people straight out of the box. I stand by my assessment of Fedora as a noob friendly distro.


Most of them are as long as your Hardware works out of the box. Otherwise its Linux s**ks


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## jonmcc33 (Mar 30, 2008)

Wile E said:


> Not everyone has that wireless card. No distro is 100% friendly for 100% of the people straight out of the box. I stand by my assessment of Fedora as a noob friendly distro.



That was pretty much the standard wireless card for Centrino enabled laptops for quite some time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrino So in fact, a lot of people have that wireless card.

Given that the 2200BG does support 802.11b and 802.11g and it's an Intel product I would see no reason why any distro wouldn't fully support it. Fedora Core 8 does support recognizing it but only WEP out of the box. My wireless network requirement is WPA2 and no less. That was what FC8 didn't work with at all. 

I consider myself to be a Linux noob so given the efforts that I have taken over several distros I wouldn't put FC8 at the top of any list for ease of use. 

http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

Even DistroWatch doesn't consider it to be one of the easiest to use. Instead they put it along with OpenSUSE for "middle-road" which means some configuration required. The only problem I'd really put with OpenSUSE 10.3 is that I needed to add other repositories. Of course most "noob" people can just use the DVD as a repository, which is enabled by default.


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## Wile E (Mar 31, 2008)

Well, I disagree with Distro watch and with you. I didn't start using Fedora after I already new how to use Linux, I used it as a beginner. I tried it after numerous failed attempts with Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Debian, Suse, and a bunch of others I can't even remember. Fedora was the easiest to configure and use. So, a "professional" opinion of a site like Distrowatch means little to me, due to my contradictory experiences.

 It's the little things that make Fedora noob friendly. Such as misconfiguring the Xorg.conf file. In most distros, if you screw it up, it fails to boot to a gui, Ubuntu included (used as an example due to it's popularity in being recommended to beginners). Whereas Fedora rebuilds it for you. Fedora also comes out of the box with Gnome, KDE, and XFCE as desktop options. Sure, you can download and configure alternate Desk environments for other distros, but that isn't exactly noob friendly either, and often times your install can break on upgrade when you do manage to get another environment running.

All that said, it's like I said before, not a single distro on this planet will be noob friendly 100% of the time. I've tried dozens, and I have the most success with Fedora. Somebody else's mileage may vary, but that doesn't mean it isn't noob friendly. If one distro doesn't work for you, you move on to the next, but don't try to discredit the one that didn't work for you, just because you didn't find it to your liking.

PS: For the purpose of this thread, you point is moot anyway. I somehow doubt the OP has an Intel 2200BG wireless adapter in his desktop.


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## Zedicus (Mar 31, 2008)

Mepis.  it blows all the other out of the water.   seriously, especially if you need easy to set up wireless.   give mepis a try, its my favorite beginer distro.

its on my fiance's laptop.


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