As I've got a spare machine sat at home, I've been thinking about downloading Linux and having a play using linux as my OS.

Can anyone recommend a distribution that would be suitable for a linux newbie??

Whats the specs of your PC?

If its relatively new I'd personally go for opensuse, especially 10.3 when its out later this year.

Others to try, (k)ubuntu, mepis, freespire... so many good choices - he says using windows

Have a look at DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD.

I have installed Ubuntu onto an old P3 laptop of mine, easy to install and add packages to using the builtin application. I am a Linux newbie, and managed to install mythtv to play around with as a media application.

Mandriva is always a good choice thats often over looked

I've just taken Ubuntu off my spare laptop and gone back to Win2k. At least the ACPI stuff works again now

Having to upgrade every few months, and half a dozen software updates a day got a bit tedious too.

Much better than things used to be, though. At least there's lots of little utilities etc. out there, although of course they're all open source, so support is limited to geek bbs's (says he, posting on a car forum in a thread about Linux :P )

It's an old Athlon 2Ghz machine with 1GB of RAM.

I've heard of Ubuntu so might have a look at that, as I say I'm going to have a play so it doesn't matter if it isn't perfect. I've always used windows in the past and I want to know what whether Linux is a reasonable alternative as an OS or if it is still something for the geeks!:P

Only problem with ubuntu (plus other 'commercial' ones) is you have to install all the medic codecs yourself (but I think there might be script around to do it for you). Freespire is based on ubuntu and includes codec, so may be better for a beginner.

Have fun, but don't let it take over your life

It's an old Athlon 2Ghz machine with 1GB of RAM.

I've heard of Ubuntu so might have a look at that, as I say I'm going to have a play so it doesn't matter if it isn't perfect. I've always used windows in the past and I want to know what whether Linux is a reasonable alternative as an OS or if it is still something for the geeks!:P

Hi tdirob

I am not into linux, but a friend has sent me this link

Puppy Linux

Have a look !

Radiotwo

It's an old Athlon 2Ghz machine with 1GB of RAM.

LOL! My _best_ machine is a 1.7GHz laptop. The one I was testing Ubuntu on is a PIII 650MHz.

Not sure where people get these "old" 2.0GHz machines from

I like fedora, and CentOS but the latter is more server orientated

I think it really depends what you want to do with it. If you're looking at a viable alternative to Windows for writing spreadsheets, documents, etc then it's a lot of hassle for something that MS already does easier and better. If you're looking at getting your hands dirty and learning about Linux/Unix from an admin/programmer point of view, how it works (source code is all available), etc then pretty much any distribution will give you what you want. Ubuntu seems to be the current flavour, but SUSE and RedHat both have pretty painless installs. If you're running any non-standard or slightly rare/cutting edge hardware be prepared to either write the driver yourself or wait until someone else has and then hack the kernel to include it.

As Nick says, much better than it was though, but I still think it's currently a long way off Windows for an end-user desktop PC

Chris

I agree pretty much with Chris.

I wouldn't say its a long way for beginners for a desktop PC, in fact I reckon a novice could install a linux distro easier than windons, once you've included all the additional software you need to install with windows.

Software updates are easier with linux too.

Software updates are easier with linux too.

Assuming your network card is supported Otherwise it's a right PITA!

Chris

Assuming your network card is supported Otherwise it's a right PITA!

Chris

lol, I remember a year or so ago trying to get my wireless card to work, but couldn't so gave up and bought a new one

Ubuntu or Debian.

lol, I remember a year or so ago trying to get my wireless card to work, but couldn't so gave up and bought a new one

From experience very few wireless cards are supported. The intel based ones tend to be supported fine. Its possible to get other non supported ones working using ndiswrapper and windows xp drivers but its complicated to setup. On my older laptop I am using the onboard SIS wired lan connection fine with ubuntu.

From experience very few wireless cards are supported. The intel based ones tend to be supported fine. Its possible to get other non supported ones working using ndiswrapper and windows xp drivers but its complicated to setup. On my older laptop I am using the onboard SIS wired lan connection fine with ubuntu.

I think quite a few are natively supported now, certainly whilst using WEP, but not too sure when you try using WPA.

Never had any luck using ndiswrapper, its a right pain in the **** to get working :(

Another recommendation is SLAX index page live CD, only 180mb as a compressed image and installed is less than 500mb (if you want to do that). Amazing what you fit on mini cd and you'll wonder why Vista needs 6gigs, okay is not as pretty and is missing some 'features' of windows, but good nevertheless!

Intel and Orinoco wireless cards are ok, try using HostAP as that has a good driver set too.

Ubuntu is fine to play with, or if you are a sadist you could have had a play with Gentoo if the packages were not offline.

I think quite a few are natively supported now, certainly whilst using WEP, but not too sure when you try using WPA.

Never had any luck using ndiswrapper, its a right pain in the **** to get working :(

Another recommendation is SLAX index page live CD, only 180mb as a compressed image and installed is less than 500mb (if you want to do that). Amazing what you fit on mini cd and you'll wonder why Vista needs 6gigs, okay is not as pretty and is missing some 'features' of windows, but good nevertheless!

Yep I agree, mine works with WEP but cant get the WPA setup? I have tried using ndiswrapper and dont seem to work. I have dual booted the ubuntu with XP, use cable for linux and wireless for XP.