Distro for MrKnight
Elon G. ("Matt") Matthews
not that smart. However, if you are in the Syracuse area, please join
us at Syrlug, where I always learn something, some of which is
useful, and have the opportunity to associate with other linux lovers,
all of whom are interesting.
.
As to distros, I came from the IBM System/370 mainframe world enough
years ago that I can claim to be knowledgeable about almost nothing.
I came from Windows to linux about 2-3 years ago and tried Fedora,
which I still have running on one machine. It happens to be my wife's
machine so I don't change anything on a whim. It's working and she's
happy. Don't mess with success. I did have issues with sound and
video and adding application which did not always have the required
libraries available. It was not an impossible task, and with help
from the above mentioned linux lovers, it works for what I need.
However, it's ease of use was not as good as my friend's Ubuntu
system, so I installed that on my machine, which is what I use on a
daily basis. I find that it is nearly as user friendly as Windows,
easily installs most applications without undo stress, and updates
without difficulty. Ubuntu, in whatever flavor (Ubuntu, Xubuntu,
Kubuntu etc. ) tickles your fancy, is an ideal distro if you just want
it to run, and not turn into a career.
However, if you do want it to turn into a career, that's OK too. Then
I would consider trying other distros. My solution to that was to
take an old machine from the basement (could be a $50.00 box that you
find in the classified) and add it to the local network, using a 2-way
KVM switch which set me back about $30. Now I can install whatever
distro I happen to be interested in on the sandbox machine. I can
play with it, configure it, break it, fix it, and when I am done, I
can throw it away and start over. It's my learning machine where I
can do things that I might hesitate to do on the machine that I use on
a daily basis. I have installed Debian, DamnSmallLinux, Kubuntu,
Fedora, and probably others that I can't remember, just to look at
them, and have not destroyed my working machine nearly as often and I
did without the sandbox..
I am a rank novice and don't claim that my method or my distro should
be yours as well. This works for me. It depends on what you want to
do. For daily ease of use and reliability I use Ubuntu. For
learning, I use whatever seems useful and then toss it. It's all free.
Matt
MrKnight
I have preference to the open source community over a corporation like
Redhat or Novell. I seems like a fairly solid package. I have been
playing with it for a few days and have not managed to break anything
major yet. However, it is strange to me that the process of
configuring your new Linux O.S. or even learning how to use the system
is taken for granted. For instance, I installed Firefox from the
Package manager. It told me that it was installed, but it did not
create a shortcut in the menu nor tell me where to find this
executable. I looked in /home, /opt, and /root to no avail, then
downloaded the .tar file and dropped firefox in /opt. As I
understand, /opt is accessible be all users. I can now run the
executable and manually add a shortcut, but I have no idea what the
Debian package installed or where.
I find many answers online, and find that would-be-helpful users each
have a different way to accomplish the same task. I needed to close
xwindows to install video card drivers, and found 4-5 different ways
to do that on the forums. So much trial and error goes into learning
linux that I will likely have to reinstall my O.S. 20 times in the
next few months. I plan to give Ubuntu a try at some point.
I found additional help files in the Debian package manager after
scrolling through unheard of packages for hours. I find it odd that
help files, as small as the are, would not be install for the default
user.
Anyway, I intend to breath some life into this forum as I learn and
ask stupid questions. I will attend some meeting when I am a local.
I plan to move to Syracuse in the next month or two.
Stan