[Techtalk] New to the list

[Gebhard Dettmar]

techtalk-bounces at linuxchix.org scribbled on Monday, November 01, 2004
3:37 PM

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> Andrew imparted (2004-10-31 @ 23:14:43 -0500):
>> 	 Well now, did I hear the word *Mandrake*?  (-:
>> 	And May I kindly ask... of the person who suggested Gentoo to
a
>> nubie... Are you kidding???  (-: ( And I think you were.(-: )
> 
> I'm not the one who suggested it, but I think Gentoo _can_ be a
> wonderful distro for a newbie.  It all depends of course, on what
> that person wants to get out of Linux.  If they are honestly
> interested in the way things work, and a bit of a control freak,
> then a more 'hands-on' distro may be a better choice than something
> that holds your hand every step of the way.  It may be harder for
> them to wrap their heads around at first, but they will definitely
> get more out of it. 
> 
> Of course, I personally think that Slackware is an even better
> distribution for this than Gentoo  :)
> 
> For the less adventurous, Debian is probably a good choice of a
> distribution for newbies and oldies alike (though not for me
> personally). 
Yes, that's what I wanted to suggest. I installed debian woody last
year when I was a complete newbie. Had no problems except graphic
card, and that was solved with some googling quite easy as well (Ok, I
have an old computer. If you use the newest hardware there may be some
kernel compiling neccessary. When I had to do this I got me a
description via Google and it was also no problem).

> [ ... ]
> 
> *phew* that was an uncalled for rant, I guess.  Anyway, the
> long and the
> short of it is that there is no "one best" distro for anyone or
> anything.  Each has it's merits (I'll take your word on it for some
> of them :)  ).  Trial and error is probably the best way to find
> what works
> for you, and starting at a nice 'middle of the road' distro (e.g.
> not trying to be overly simplistic, while not trying to be enitrely
> DIY either) may be the onlhy way to find one you are really happy
> with. 
Exactly. Pick up a 'middle of the road'- distro (which means to me:
stay away from Suse) and look how you like KDE/Gnome. You'll soon be
just annoyed if you open your Windows Explorer. Then make your NTFS
filesystem accessible in a file called /etc/fstab (by default you have
only read access to an NTFS-filesystem from linux. You can create a
fat-partition for writing or use drivers like captive / paragon. I
don't trust those but didn't check it out. IMHO read only is totally
sufficient). For ext2/ext3 (Linux Filesystems)-Access from your
Windrive you can get e.g. EXT2IFS (from
http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/ext2ifs.htm) Then you can
access everything, do what you want and really check out, what suits
you best
You will probably end up like me: still Win2k on my computer but
default in my boot.ini is debian :-)
good luck
gebhard
PS and for this matter: 'doesn't cost me an arm and a leg' - you'll be
beyond of that. I paid 20 Euros for seven debian CDs. Just had to add
OpenOffice. And here at work I have Photoshop and Fireworks. But I
liked Gimp better (more intuitive) so I downloaded it here on Win2k
and I don't recall the last time I had Photoshop open. Unless you need
CAD, don't worry about the software