Best Linux?

[The.InVisible.Guy]

What is the best linux? And Why?

I tried to use Red Hat 7.1 but i had problems with my mouse and keyboard because they're wireless! Do you know how to fix it?

Reggards,
Sergio Silva

[padron]

Sergio, Linux is Linux. However, before you attempt to install any Linux distro, you absolutely have to make sure ALL your hardware devices, including mouse and keyboad, are supported by the Linux distro.

I personally like Red Hat 7.1 because Red Hat is pretty much the most documented, supported and popular Linus distro out there. BTW, I use GNOME instead of KDE, and Red Hat has good support for GNOME. Red Hat tech support is also quite good.

However, if you are looking more for a workstation/multimedia/home Linux distro, you may like Mandrake 8. However, in my personal experience, Mandrake's tech support simply "sucks".

J. Padron

[JoeFrat]

I am looking at getting Linux for my home. Mostly what I do is gaming, and work for our company. Where do I find that hardware list and which linux would be good for a beginner to get? I've been kicking this around for a while now, and I think it's time to check it out.

One other question....Does linux support the netbeui protocol? We use it for work and windoze is dropping support for it in XP and that's not good for us.

[pointreyes]

Ya want Linux documentation I hear? Well try this link first:
http://www.linuxdoc.org/ Have fun guys.

[padron]

Originally posted by JoeFrat
I am looking at getting Linux for my home. Mostly what I do is gaming, and work for our company. Where do I find that hardware list and which linux would be good for a beginner to get? I've been kicking this around for a while now, and I think it's time to check it out.

One other question....Does linux support the netbeui protocol? We use it for work and windoze is dropping support for it in XP and that's not good for us.

JoeFrat, forget about netbeui under Linux.

Although not the most GUI-sexy distro, I find Red Hat 7.1 to be the best only because it is the most documented and supported distro out there. Just take a little trip to your local bookstore and browse though the Linux books: I bet 90% of them are "Red Hat" related.

If you want a sexy GUI, you may want to go with Mandrake 8.0. I don't use it because believe it or not it does not support my Plextor 12/10/32 IDE CD-RW. I actually purchased the full LM 8 Pack ($73 at CompUSA), I called 4 times their tech support phone line for the same CD-RW issue and the 4 times I got a different useless opinions -- the only thing "consistent" on those 4 tech support calls was (a) the tech support guys were all totally clueless and (b) they were all extremely rude and arrogant.

I shelved my Mandrake 8 box -- I don't need the aggravation and much less a rude and arrogant vendor when I legitimally pay %%% retail for a pruduct -- excuseme but is this attitude a french thing? I've never been to France but I consistenly hear of people who claim this to be the rule rather than the exception.

Finally, I have to tell you that Linux distros are still not perfect, specially in the GUI area. X fonts are kind of ugly and the 2 most popular GUI environments (gnome and kde) are still pretty parroquial, not even at the Win 3.0 level -- X applications are also kind of rough in the looks department.

Neglecting the GUI quality and treating it a not important is IMO the greatest mistake the Linux distro makers keep making. As long as Linux distos keep putting out an ugly GUI, many people are simply not going to use it -- Linux has the performance, it's a solid OS, IMH much more robust than an Microsoft OS, but to really take on the world they need a super polished GUI and tons of killer applications -- currently, they lack both.

Best regards,

J. Padron

[JoeFrat]

Hmmmm. After spending some time reading last night(thanks pointreyes ), Linux looks interesting. My problem with other os's is too many flavors for the average pc user to even bother looking into it. Getting hardware supported can be a nightmare no matter how you do it, or what os you use

My job is tech-support. I can't believe a team would be that rude and arrogant, but i suppose it's possible . One thing I have noticed is that the average pc user wants to just turn the thing on and go. While windows may not be the best choice, it does two things. 1. It brings standards to the pc industry, good or bad. 2. The gui is simple for most to use, and that's what is the biggest draw for windows is imo.

Oh well time to go to the bookstore

[pointreyes]

Glad the linked helped. There are three main types of Linux distros.

RPM-based (i.e. Red Hat Program Manager) which consists of distros like Red Hat, Mandrake, and SuSE (I prefer SuSE because Oracle supports using Linux SuSE for Oracle 9i). http://www.suse.com

Non-RPM - there is only one good one that comes to my mind - if you want to learn Linux (and I mean you will learn Linux with this baby) with true Unix structure then go for the best Linux distro - Slackware. http://www.linuxmafia.org is a good link for finding all the packages that can be installed on the distro.

Debian based is the hardcore Free Software Foundation based distros - Debian is the main one in this group. http://www.debian.org