Linux distro recs?

[blnchflr]

I've been using Ubuntu as my primary OS since May last year, and while I'm extremely happy with it, I would like to become more Linux-savvy.

I'm looking for another newbie-friendly/newbie-semi-friendly distro to dual-boot with Ubuntu, to see what the differences are, etc. - any recs?

(P.S. I've been giving OpenSolaris - I know it's not Linux - a couple of goes over the last weeks, but in the end, I just could not get it to play nice with Ubuntu, so I gave it up. Very shiny OS, though!)

Comments

[kerravonsen]

In my experience, Ubuntu is the most newbie-friendly; though I've heard good things about Suse, I've never tried it.
If you just want to try out a different distro to see how distros differ, RedHat (or CentOS or Fedora) would be a good one to try, since it's a major distro that isn't Debian-based.

On the other hand, if you feel brave enough to venture out of newbie territory, I would highly recommend GenToo; you learn heaps using it. But I think it's probably a bit too newbie-unfriendly for you at this point. GenToo is good for people who have been using Linux long enough to know exactly what they want from a distro; because GenToo is very configurable. The downside of that is that because it's a source-based distro, you spend a lot of time compiling things. So, much as I liked GenToo, I got sick of that after a while, and changed to another distro. But I still have fond feelings towards it.

[blnchflr]

I think GenToo is out of my league at this, point, too - I don't want it to be a battle to get to know a new distro and get everything working (like it was when I first installed Ubuntu). I'm thinking baby-steps is right for me - OpenSolaris is very similar to Ubuntu, because both use Gnome, and that was very comforting :oD

I will give CentOS a look, thanks!

[ex_crywolf268]

Agreed that Ubuntu is probably the most newbie-friendly. If you want to be familiar with *nixes in general, first off, spend as much time on the command line as possible. To get a feel for the Redhat side of the world, try CentOS. I'd avoid Fedora - it's known as "bleeding edge" and you never know what will break.

Also consider FreeBSD (just don't call it Linux). It does take getting used to, but one of the things I really like about it is that it has a stable core (that is now much easier to update), and source-based add-on software (ports), so you generally are pretty up-to-date in that area. The downside is that Flash can be tricky to get working.

And if learning all about Linux is your goal, set up a machine using Linux From Scratch. It's just a learning exercise, though. Don't expect to keep such a machine for day-to-day use.

[blnchflr]

Oh, my goal isn't to learn all about Linux - just more than I currently know (and unlike what Microsoft preaches, I believe knowing how to use more than one OS teaches you more about each individual OS). I will give CentOS a look, thanks!

[catness]

If you'd like to become more Linux-savvy, why look for yet another newbie-friendly distro? ;)

I also vote for Gentoo, it's my favourite (though the previous commenter is right, it requires some learning and understanding what you're doing).

A lot of our users are quite happy with SuSE, it's rather similar to Ubuntu from the user-friendliness point of view.

[blnchflr]

Because I still know very little, and getting to know Ubuntu and getting everything to work was a battle, and I don't want to have to go through that battle with every new OS.

I will give SuSE (=openSUSE, I assume?) a look, thank you!

[catness]

Actually, being an educational organization, we are able to use the commercial version (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop). I hope that OpenSUSE is not much different!

[cimorene]

I'm a big fan of Linux Mint, which is Ubuntu-based. The default version runs Gnome, but there's also a KDE flavour. It's less configurable, but on the other hand, it's fast and has great visual effects, and it works right out of the box, which was never true for Kubuntu.

[blnchflr]

I'm wondering if that's too similar, though, being Ubuntu-based? But thanks for the suggestion!

[cimorene]

Yeah, it won't really broaden your horizons much. It is a nice distro, though, you should check it out some time!

[baggyeyes]

Another one you can take a look at is Mandriva. It has pretty good hardware detection, and an excellent installer.

Mandriva Community
Mandriva.com

[blnchflr]

Thanks!

[zvi]

My suggestion (as someone who has only and always ever run Ubuntu) is that you might want to try running one of the tiny distros. The two I am thinking of, PuppyLinux and DSLinux, both have pretty passionate user communities, so you can ask questions when things go wrong, and they have relatively decent starts at documentation. As importantly, the problems you are going to run into with DSL or Puppy are likely to be different than the ones you run into with Ubuntu, especially if, instead of installing them on a partition, you run them off 1G memory sticks.

Even if that's not the direction you go in, I think you may want to look for a distro that will help you solve a problem that Ubuntu's not helping with or that does something besides run your desktop like Ubuntu. That will give you a reason to not just boot into it, but concentrate on fixing bits of it that you may not run into with Ubuntu.

[blnchflr]

I've run Knoppix and Puppy as livecds, but never tried installing. Puppy had a really great installation guide, as I remember; how to partition and everything. It might be fun to install and see how fast it is from the harddisc, which should at least decrease boot-time, even if running it isn't faster, since I have enough RAM (2GB).

(ETA: I think my main problem with getting OpenSolaris to play nice was using the ext4 filesystem - OpenSolaris obviously couldn't detect Ubuntu - and I'm wondering if I'll have the same trouble with Puppy. Guess I'll find out.)

I think you may want to look for a distro that will help you solve a problem that Ubuntu's not helping with or that does something besides run your desktop like Ubuntu
That makes good sense!

[seekingferret]

I've run OpenSuse since Intrepid broke KDE. I'm told it's gotten better in Jaunty, but I think OpenSuse is still the gold standard if you want to play with KDE 4. And KDE 4 is really cool, with Plasma offering a completely modular desktop that is insanely customizable and lots of other neat ideas.

[blnchflr]

I should try something with KDE eventually, shouldn't I - thank you for the rec!

[seekingferret]

Even 6 months ago, I wouldn't have recommended KDE to anyone. It's been a bit of a wander in the wilderness, having to switch distros to keep using it and enduring a good deal of initial bugginess in the move from KDE 3.5 to KDE 4. But with KDE 4.2 they've finally got something usable, and KDE 4.3, due out fairly soon, promises to be something which is actually fairly amazing.

I like the KDE ideology of "Put the ability in the hands of the users to customize their desktop easily however they want." Nobody's KDE desktop looks the same.

[aphenine]

My suggestion to become more Linux savvy conflicts with your specified requirements, but I thought I'd suggest it anyway, because it was the way I became Linux savvy and it wasn't too arduous.

My advice would be to stick with Ubuntu (or go to Debian) and try installing the system from base without an installer or using only the Debian network installer as a good first step.

My reasons for suggesting it is that you are already familiar with Ubuntu, so it builds on something you know. Installing the system from scratch, with a little care, makes you aware what is actually important to run a Linux system, what's window dressing and which packages you install give you what (like graphical interfaces and gnome). It's educational in the extreme to do it once and it was how I learned about the Linux system. Also, the Debian netinst system can guide you through the process once in a way that a not-quite-newbie should be able to cope with. Using the Debian netinst takes away part of the educational quotient, but severely lessens the learning curve, so I'd recommend it. The final, proper way to understand that you understand what is going on is to use a debian-based boot CD and use debootstrap to create a new system from scratch.

I wouldn't recommend Free-BSD as someone has done. A friend of mine installed it after using Debian and informed me that the installation required some advanced command line knowledge, which he acquired (among other ways) by getting comfortable with the command line on Linux over a year (and, among other things, fixing broken Debian installs...).

I would think that Gentoo would be a good choice if you are looking for something very different to Debian based (like Ubuntu) distros. I can't actually think of anything which is fundamentally different enough to be interesting to try to use.

[blnchflr]

Installing from scratch sounds scary, but I get how it would teach me things I'd actually like to know, like what is needed to run a system. It just seems so daunting, since at this point I don't know what is needed. But the Debian netinst sounds like the place to start, then.

(It also may be better than trying a completely distro in that after trying a couple of distros, I'm wondering if I aren't actually completely and utterly happy with Ubuntu and how it works.)

Thanks muchly for the advice!

[asenathwaite]

I'd suggest distro-hopping until you find one you especially like. Distrowatch has basic descriptions and links to reviews for a lot of different distros, so you can get an idea of which ones have the features you're looking for.

[blnchflr]

Thanks :o)