Index

Subject : Re: LUG: Linux Flavors and help for a novice

From : Ed Anderson <nilbus@nilbus.[redacted]>

Date : Sat, 24 Sep 2005 00:34:51 -0400

Parent

I wouldn't really recommend Slackware or Redhat. One distro that a lot
of people have had a lot of success with recently is Ubuntu. From what
I hear, it has great hardware support. It's based on debian and uses
apt for a package manager. Honestly, I've never used it, but I only
hear good things about it. ;-)

The distro I use at home is Gentoo Linux. Gentoo is probably a bit
different than what you're used to, but it's very good. The biggest
difference is that every package you install is compiled from scratch
when you install it by the package manager Portage. This gets rid of
virtually all the dependancy problems that other distros have (like how
you were saying stuff needed GTK but thought it was not there or the
wrong version). Also, there is no installer for Gentoo (well, except a
testing version that may or may not work). Instead, you follow a guide
called the Gentoo Handbook, which walks you through the entire
installation process. It guides you through doing things such as
setting up your partitions, the kernel, grub, etc by hand. In other
words, it takes a lot of time, and you learn a whole lot by doing it.
In the end, (in my opinion) it's one of the best distros out there.
Getting your hardware working will probably just require configuring
your kernel correctly and installing the right packages.

Both of these distros are very well documented and have a large user
community. I recommend one of these, depending on what you feel
comfortable with. I hope this helps. :-)

Ed Anderson

Brolly Ferret wrote:
> Hello all
>
> Well this semester I'm torn between showing up to lug meetings and Taas,
> well not really, anime wins for me.
>
> Anyhoo, My IBM laptop recently lost its systemboard so to replace it I
> got a 300 buck linspire desktop. Hated Linspire and dumped it for
> Slackware 10.1.
>
> Well my problem is configuring my hardware for slackware as well as
> getting JRE, python, bittorrent, and several other software packages to
> install right. Running into a lot of points where the rpms or makes are
> giving me that they want gtk or other softs that I know are installed.
>
> The hardware that I'm having trouble configuring is my logitech MX 700
> wireless mouse, my printer/scanner a HP PSC 1610, and a Pioneer USB DVD
> Burner. I also have a keyboard with extra multimedia keys but that I
> think I can get configured on my own.
>
> I do have a cd burner/dvd combo drive that is internal as well, but
> haven't figured out how to get the software to burn anything on it
> configured (and bittorrent would be useful in getting the isos anyway).
>
> I'd like to upgrade to the current version of Slackware, or to a current
> Redhat version as well.
>
> Just wondering if anyone has any help/advice/mojo they could share with
> me. I don't have any major data on this machine yet that I can't
> replace or stand losing so I'm open to trying other flavors of linux as
> well.
>
> Thanks
>
> Gerald Sears

Replies :