Mandrake, Suse, or Red Hat?`

[Jake Kantonen]

Hello,

I am looking for a different OS to put on my system that already has XP Pro. XP has 30 gb of a 40 gb drive, I want the other 10 for a linux OS. The local Best Buy has Suse, Mandrake, and RH, all of which are the latest versions. Which one is the best or easiest to learn and get used to Linux? I have never used Linux before, so I need one thats fairly simple to use at first but has options for becoming more advanced. Will any of these three OSes work? Thanks,

Jake

[DrZaius]

Hi Jake,

In my opinion Mandrake is the most user friendly distro and the easiest to start with, so I would recommend it.

[doctorgonzo]

I am just a new user as well, having installed Mandrake only last week, but I would recommend it. It was a very easy install, much easier and quicker than I anticipated, and it easily detected and set up most of my hardware. Heck, I was even able to get my crappy winmodem working, which is extremely difficult in Linux!

Good luck using whatever distro you choose. If you are like me, you will have a blast trying things out and learning something new.

[mikeL]

Any of the three choices are good distros to start with. You may also want to pick up a linux book also, to help lessen the learning curve.

Good Luck, sit back and enjoy a excellent OS.

[lil Jimmie]

I just installed Red Hat 8.0 on my test box and I'm really impressed with it. I have used Mandrake before and it was pretty easy to install and use, but at this point I'd have to say I prefer Red Hat.

[jackjones]

I would say that you ought to buy SUSE since you can not download iso´s for it. You can just donwload the others.

[Blakhart]

Redmond/Lycoris.

[jglen490]

I'm a Mandrake fan, so I would recommend Mandrake. But in reality any of the three you are looking at will serve you well.

For personal use, I would stay away from the Linux distros that have hung their hats on the M$ hat rack. These are distros that tout their compatibility with Windoze and Windoze products. Granted, a level of compatibilty with some Windoze product file formats CAN be a plus in a business environment, but there are a lot of Linux based products that have a high degree of file format compatibility without requiring that you run a Windoze program within Linux to get there.

When my friends, relatives, and neighbors get our Christmas note, they won't know that it was created entirely within a Linux word processor.

[Statica]

RedHat

[fatboyjim]

What's the best place to BUY from?

I'm on 56k dialup :)

Jim

[Zerooverdrive]

I'm Running Red hat 8.0!!! and its easy to install!!! i've also used SUSE and Mandrake. I'm running Red Hat on my AMD 500 test machine! and it runs fine.

[Computer Hobbyist]

Traditionally Suse focused on being exceptionally stable (conservative), Red Hat was aimed squarely at the server world, and Mandrake was a workstation focused derivative of Red Hat and was on the bleeding edge of technology. There has been a great blurring of those distinctions lately. Red Hat in particular has discovered there is a potential workstation market and 8.0 is aimed at that market. Any of the three will work great.

I use Mandrake, but am sort of toying with trying the latest Red Hat version.

As to the best place to buy from, I have purchased direct from Mandrake instead of downloading because I had a slow modem. It wasn't too expensive. I also wanted to support Mandrake instead of some middleman. If you don't want to wait a few days for the software to be delivered, you can hurry on down to your local computer software store. Most good ones will have copies of any of the three main distros. Unless you really like or need the bundled software (i.e. Star Office) featured in the delux versions, I would suggest saving a few bucks and sticking with a standard version.

I happen to agree that the guys selling Windows software compatible versions have a hard row to hoe because I am not convinced they provide that much benefit, and I know most of the windows compatibity software is still iffy and it all come with a significant performance cost.

CH

[doctorgonzo]

Originally posted by fatboyjim
What's the best place to BUY from?

I'm on 56k dialup :)

Jim

I got my CDs from CheapBytes.com (http://www.cheapbytes.com). For 3 Mandrake CDs it was $10 or $11 total.

[apappasmurf]

I have just read a review of SUSE 8.1 in a computing magazine.
The reviewer reckons that, and I quote, " My 87 year old Grandmother could use intuitvely. But was fully functional".

I agree it is easy to insall and use.