Linux for a beginner - Which distro

scorpius

scorpius

Messages
346
Name
Alistair
Edit My Images
Yes
I'm hoping the experienced Linux users here might be able to give me some guidance and help with a requirement I have.

In the next few months I'm likely to be starting on a project at work that will involve me working heavily with Unix/Linux and Shellscripts. Now having worked for years on IBM mainframes and Teradata Data Warehouses Unix/Linux & Shellscripts are almost completely new to me.

So to give me a bit of a headstart I was planning on putting Linux on an old laptop I have and learning and playing around with Shellscripts there.

What I don't know is which Linux distro(s) should I look at ? They should hopefully be beginner friendly and not require huge power from the laptop if that combination is possible.

The laptop may not be suitable it's an old Toshiba with a Pentium 4 and only 0.5GB of memory.

Would I be better looking at one of the distro's I can run from DVD on my PC without having to install it ? Or even trying to dual boot a distro on my netbook.

Thanks for any advice
 
I asked the same question elsewhere recently, for complete novice Ubuntu seems to be the favourite, I used to enjoy red hat but the flavour which appears closest to a commercially used system is centos.

An old laptop would be ideal as could throw a few challenges up with getting all drivers to work. I was going to do the same but at the first hurdle as the laptop I wanted to use won't bring up a boot or bios menu lol...
 
I would give Mint a go, more straightforward interface and doesn't send your local searches off to Amazon by default like Ubuntu. Built on the same platform so is equally compatible, was pleasantly surprised to find things like the function keys on my old netbook even worked!

http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

Go for the Mate option.
 
If all you are using it is for shell scripts, it doesn't matter really.

I use Fedora, Ubuntu and PC-BSD (a FreeBSD based solution). All will probably just work out of the box. My favourite is PC-BSD as it supports ZFS natively, but that's probably of little interest to you.

If you are running on an old laptop, I'd probably go for a lightweight window manager such as xfce. Some of the more "modern" window managers can be quite heavy on resources (Gnome/KDE for example).
 
Gr8Shot said:
Ubuntu
Click to expand...

probably that. ubuntu / debian / mint all use DPKG/APT package management and are practically inter-convertible.

There are a few weird decisions in the default installation, so you may want to address them quickly.

Install synaptic for package management.
You will need to install some additional configuration apps unless you just prefer CLI. The default set is strangely limited :shrug:
You may wish to set a proper different root password yourself
You may wish to change desktop to cinamon (add external repository for that - google it)

all problems can be solved by simply googleing it

btw 512mb ram will be probably quite limiting. A 1GB should be really min. And there might be issues with old video card not supporting the full deskop environments.
Why can't you use your normal PC for this?
 
daugirdas said:
Why can't you use your normal PC for this?
Click to expand...
To be honest, I'd just install VirtualBox and run a VM.

I've recently built myself a hypervisor based server running ESXi and currently have half a dozen machines hosted on that - including my PBX and firewall. I'm just about to build a server for Ms arad85 who is opening a shop. That will either run ESXi or Proxmox and host machines there....
 
As a longtime user of Ubuntu I'd recommend you avoid it like the plague - since the advent of the atrocious "Unity" interface a while back, it is to my mind impenetrable and virtually unusable - as others have said, go for Linux Mint with the cinnamon desktop - it's built on the firm foundations of Ubuntu, but without the awful desktop...:cool:
 
Organnyx said:
As a longtime user of Ubuntu I'd recommend you avoid it like the plague - since the advent of the atrocious "Unity" interface a while back, it is to my mind impenetrable and virtually unusable - as others have said, go for Linux Mint with the cinnamon desktop - it's built on the firm foundations of Ubuntu, but without the awful desktop...:cool:
Click to expand...

I would tone that down slightly (it is not as bad as windows!!!). Unity might not be the first choice of desktop for us, but for someone that only opens web browser and email client (a majority btw) it is clearly enough and good.
Ubuntu does have a good base minus a few interesting "customisations", and it can take cinamon desktop on top.
My dad recently installed mint, and to be fair, it is not behaving as well out of the box :shrug:. Nothing that can't be fixed, but just not as clean.
 
Most distros can be run from the CD/DVD - so it can be fun to sample a few without installing (as long as you've got a few spare blank discs). Ubuntu Unity is a nightmare interface (personally, I don't see why there is a current trend to move away from linear menus) - but there is a nice little desk-top interface called 'Cairo Dock' that can help bring sanity back to your gui.

Another distro to consider is 'Trysquel' - it strips out any non-free or propriety software out, is based on Ubuntu and has the Gnome desktop.
 
My experience with it on an old 512 ram laptop was not happy, you certainly want one of the less flashy versions.
 
Thanks everybody for suggestions and advice it's very much appreciated and has given me plenty to consider.

I was looking at using the old laptop rather than my main PC as it was available, it wouldn't matter if I 'broke' it and I'd have my PC available at the same time.

It hadn't occurred to me to look at running a VM on my PC and running a Linux OS there. That sounds like a more sensible alternative so I'll do some investigation on that.

No doubt I'll be back with more questions in the near future.
 
Far better to go for a straight install of one of the distros - Mint is probably favourite- you will probably be gobsmacked at the way it'll go like a dingbat in comparison to Windoze - try it on your old laptop first (it's how I started, an ancient ex-corporate laptop that was due for the bin it was so slow, it was completely transformed by some well-written software for a change!) - then if not completely sure the install disk can walk you through making your machine a dual boot one (boot into Windows or linux at startup);)
 
I really just want to have a home setup I can play around with Linux a bit and do some Shellscript training/familiarisation on, so a VM install sounds the way to go. In fact I've just downloaded Virtual Box and Mint with Cinnamon is about 25% downloaded as I type.

I have no wish to move from W7 to Linux, I'm perfectly happy with Windows despite everything some people insist is wrong with it :D
 
weybourne said:
Most distros can be run from the CD/DVD - so it can be fun to sample a few without installing (as long as you've got a few spare blank discs).
Click to expand...

It's also possible to run Linux from a USB stick, which means you can just erase it and try another one on the same USB stick rather than needing several CD's. Google "pen drive linux" for some more info.
 
Just in passing for anyone with an older laptop or netbook I installed Puppy Linus. Really fun lightweight distro.

I think it will run on the Raspberry Pi too.

Fun intro to Linux for anyone just wanting to dabble.

Question to the experts - an Aussie friend is a proponent Kubuntu. Is this worth looking at?
 
Last edited:
scorpius said:
I really just want to have a home setup I can play around with Linux a bit and do some Shellscript training/familiarisation on, so a VM install sounds the way to go. In fact I've just downloaded Virtual Box and Mint with Cinnamon is about 25% downloaded as I type.
Click to expand...
Yup. VM is the way to go. If you just want to play with Linux and not worry about the UI (most of my *n*x machines are headless) just download a server version and ssh in with an ssh client.

scorpius said:
I have no wish to move from W7 to Linux, I'm perfectly happy with Windows despite everything some people insist is wrong with it :D
Click to expand...
There is nothing wrong with Win7 - it's actually a a fairly good and relatively bug free UI environment and has the widest software support of any OS. What's not to like about it?
 
Hugh Jarse said:
Question to the experts - an Aussie friend is a proponent Kubuntu. Is this worth looking at?
Click to expand...
Kubuntu is just the official KDE distribution of Ubuntu (which is GNOME). A different UI on top of the same core OS/software. I think most people become proponents of particular distributions because they work for them and they have a lot of time invested in it. Very few people actually use multiple Linux distributions at a deep level on a day-to-day basis to come up with a good feeling of pros and cons of the differences between them.

I personally think the Ubuntu based releases move too quickly and not enough testing is done so bugs get introduced at the UI level. Although this quick pace of development is good for features, half baked implementations of new features are definitely not good.

If you want to compare high level pros and cons of different Unix distros, take a look here: http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

I've got Ubuntu (my xbmcs run Ubuntu here), FreeBSD (fileserver and firewall run this), CentOS (pbx), Fedora (work development environment) and Debian (a machine I'm building for my partners business). All are near enough identical at the command lines (sometimes files are in a different place, but that's about it). All have appear to have similar stability - most are on 24/7 and generally only require reboots at s/w update times. Most are accessed via ssh command lines and/or web interfaces.

If I were choosing a desktop based system, I would not be installing any of the Ubuntus. My personal preference would probably be to try FreeBSD (as PC-BSD) - but that's because FreeBSD is my favourite Unix O/S due to it's integrated support of ZFS. If that didn't go too well, I'd be looking for a distribution that has a more conservative development strategy than Ubuntu.

One other thing I would say is I'd avoid ATI graphics if I were running Linux on a desktop. Whilst they are supported, they are not as open as NVidia who provide source you can compile against your kernel with.
 
"There is nothing wrong with Win7 ..... What's not to like about it?" - it's a product of the odious Gates empire, it costs a lot of money (linux is free), it's bloatware, it's slow, buggy, vulnerable to viruses and trojans, and doubtless like all of Windoze before, it will be be forever saying "this is a Windows machine, and don't you forget it", whereas linux just gets out of the way and lets you get on with computing
 
Organnyx said:
"There is nothing wrong with Win7 ..... What's not to like about it?" - it's a product of the odious Gates empire, it costs a lot of money (linux is free), it's bloatware, it's slow, buggy, vulnerable to viruses and trojans, and doubtless like all of Windoze before, it will be be forever saying "this is a Windows machine, and don't you forget it", whereas linux just gets out of the way and lets you get on with computing
Click to expand...
Ahahaha... OK - if you say so...

Gotta love reasoned arguments with a balanced view of both sides ;)
 
mrodgers said:
It's also possible to run Linux from a USB stick, which means you can just erase it and try another one on the same USB stick rather than needing several CD's. Google "pen drive linux" for some more info.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that suggestion, I've had a quick look and this might be handy for trying on my netbook
 
mrodgers said:
It's also possible to run Linux from a USB stick, which means you can just erase it and try another one on the same USB stick rather than needing several CD's. Google "pen drive linux" for some more info.
Click to expand...

It runs a lot faster from USB drive than a CD. (proper installation is obviously fastest)

Ubuntu standard installer can easily go to USB key. It was certainly a piece of cake from a mac
 
Well thanks to the advice and suggestions given above I've now managed to get 3 distros to run from USB on my netbook : Ubuntu, Mint and PepperMint.

I did have a false start with a couple before realising I'd made the idiot mistake of not erasing the USB drive before trying another distro and then wondering why I got kernel crashes :bonk:
Still got a couple of others to try to see which one I like most or dislike least :p

It gives me a good starting point of making myself a familiar with Linux before trying to run it under VM on my main PC.

So thanks once again for the help (y)
 
scorpius said:
It gives me a good starting point of making myself a familiar with Linux before trying to run it under VM on my main PC.
Click to expand...
You normally run an OS under a VM to see if you like it before you trash a complete machine.... ;)
 
arad85 said:
You normally run an OS under a VM to see if you like it before you trash a complete machine.... ;)
Click to expand...

I know that :p I'm just being ultra cautious here and I can try different OSes without having to install anything.

If I break and have to rebuild my netbook it's not a problem. My main PC would be, if for no other reason that the wife would beat me if she couldn't use it for what she wanted when she wants to :eek:

The other advantage is that I can take the netbook to work to play on, the PC is just a tad too big to fit in my bag :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top