[Techtalk] New to the list

[Caitlyn Martin]

--- Carla Schroder <carla at bratgrrl.com> wrote:
> 
> One thing I always suggest to Linux noobs is pick
> one and stick with it. Pick one that comes with nice

> printed manuals, and start with those. The Linux 
> world is richly varied, so you can go nuts
> distro-hopping and learning eleventy-nine ways to 
> do the same thing. Better to stick with one and 
> become productive, I think, than to drive yourself 
> crazy with different distributions.

I agree with Carla completely.  I started playing with
Linux in 1995, using it seriously in 1998, and
nowadays I work with it for a living doing sys admin
and security things, including some coding.  I *STILL*
don't like distro hopping simply because I get used to
one or two ways to do things and then have to learn
another set of tools usually because that is what the
people I work with are used to doing or else because a
customer is.  It's especially annoying when someone
who is supposed to be technical can only explain what
they did in terms on a distro-specific GUI tool.

I have used RedHat/Fedora, Slackware, Mandrake,
Novell/SuSe, Vector, TurboLinux, Caldera once upon a
time, and now Gentoo because a couple of UNIX geeks at
work thought it would be cool if all our
infrastructure servers (i.e.: DNS, DHCP) ran Gentoo. 
Grrr!  Supporting multiple distros (as in three at
work) is downright annoying.

For the newcomers out there I personally believe
Mandrake is easiest coming from the Windows world.  I
personally like Fedora/RedHat better because it's
almost ubiquitous in the U.S. corporate world and
because everybody and their grandmothers package stuff
for it.  I'd rate it second easiest for newcomers as
well.  Novell/SuSe is the up-and-comer in the U.S.
corporate world and is pretty well ubiquitous in the
European corporate world so it's not a bad choice
either.

Starting with Debian and it's offspring or Slackware
and it's offspring or Gentoo is a HUGE mistake unless
you already have some UNIX background.  Linux geeks,
of course, love them.

Anyway, that's my two shekalim...

All the best,
Cait


		
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