[CyberGenX]

Fed up with Windows as a main OS. Become too busy to play games. Should I go Mandrake or Redhat? Or is there and even better flavor? Which runs the most Windows/MS Progs? Look at stats for compat. info. Will still run 2000 as a second OS in a dual boot situation. I am now also running dual display, 2 17" mons, 1 GeForce and 1 crappy PCI card for the second 17" mon.

[Admiral LSD]

Mandrake is probably the easiest distro to use if you have no prior experience with Linux. Once your comfortable consider a move to a distro such as Slackware.

[CyberGenX]

Does Mandrake support dual mons? I have a VIA chipset, will there be patches for Mandrake Linux as well. I have installed RedHat 6 and ran it for a week or so about 1 year and a half ago. What are the advans of Slackware? I use FrontPage 2002 alot, do you think Winex will run that? Last but not least, my server runs Windows 2000 Server, how hard is it to connect to its shares with Linux?

[jdulmage]

I hope you know a lot of programming, because you won't get past the first 6 hours of hell without it. The next 6 are easier, and then the next 6 after that, where you go hunting for all of your old programs is a pain, then the final 6 hours is when you'll be formatting the ye ol' ext2 partition and going back to Windows. So I hope you are prepared.

Last time I used Linux, it caused me to have to go and buy a new CD-ROM drive, because when I remotely opened my CD drive from a different computer, it totalled it...brand new and everything.

Anyways, I'm done *****ing, it's your decision where you go. I would do RedHat, but please, use something like Winex, lol.

Finally, good luck to you...you'll need it.

[sapiens74]

CyberGenX

R.I.P

[Admiral LSD]

Quote:

I hope you know a lot of programming, because you won't get past the first 6 hours of hell without it. The next 6 are easier, and then the next 6 after that, where you go hunting for all of your old programs is a pain, then the final 6 hours is when you'll be formatting the ye ol' ext2 partition and going back to Windows. So I hope you are prepared.

Last time I used Linux, it caused me to have to go and buy a new CD-ROM drive, because when I remotely opened my CD drive from a different computer, it totalled it...brand new and everything.

Anyways, I'm done *****ing, it's your decision where you go. I would do RedHat, but please, use something like Winex, lol.

Finally, good luck to you...you'll need it.

Did you pull that out of your ***? I know jack **** about programming (unless you count my experience with BASIC on my old Amstrad CPC 464) and I was able to get the hang of Linux without any trouble, even before desktop environments became the norm.

I can't explain what happened with your CD-ROM but I know I can remotely eject and retract the tray without any serious damage (using the eject command through a Telnet/SSH session) occuring to the drives.

Getting back to CyberGenX, I know dual monitor support is supported with the Dual Head Matrox cards (at least the G400) but I have no clue about your two card, two monitor setup although a solution probably does exist, you're probably not the only person with the same setup. I also wouldn't know about Winex and FrontPage 2002 since I haven't really used Wine in recent times, last time I used it I could barely get it to run MS Paint but I'm sure it's improved since then. Connecting to Windows shares is ridiculously simple (in Linux terms of course) if you install Samba, the Linux SMB server. It is supplied with Mandrake and several other distros (but is relatively simple to download and compile if it isn't).

Slackwares biggest advantage is that, unlike distros like Mandrake and Red Hat which are aimed at newcomers and intermediate users, it's aimed at more advanced users. It doesn't hold your hand as much and puts you in much greater control than other distros. This flexibility comes at the cost of overall user-friendliness but then, thats kind of the point.

[JP-]

Id go mandrake if your just starting out as its a good 1 to start with if your new to linux in general, and that how i started

I currently dual boot Mandrake 8.2 with windows XP and both are great

Ill have to agree bout that programming thing though, you dont need to know anything to run mandrake...i dunno where you got that idea from

[CrazyKillerMan]

Quote:

Ill have to agree bout that programming thing though, you dont need to know anything to run mandrake...i dunno where you got that idea from

Well - you need to know where/how to update *.conf files and knowing bash is a huge plus.

With mandrake you have the most/best documentation IMO. Redhat 7.3 was just released and it works with dual radeon 8500.

[manifest]

Personally i use debian as my choice of a distro (apt-get is the wave of the future!!). Anyway I first started out with red hat a long time ago then I lost that pc do to a fried mb. Didn't have a second pc to install linux on for a while, but I finally got a second pc and now that runs debian with kde as gui for all my non gaming needs. I wouldn't suggest starting out your main box as a linux box. Get a p2 400 or something like that and test away!

[clutch]

My friend suggested Gentoo to me, but that takes a bit more configuration awareness although not as much as Slackware.

[CyberGenX]

Thanks to all for help, downloaded 3 Mandrake 8.2 CDs last night, going to use my main box, but, with a different hard disk. I will dual boot with the BIOS not the boot record so my 2000 install is untouched.

Why the R.I.P. sapiens?

[Xelerated]

Go with Redhat if you are TOTALLY new, its really not much different than mandrake, mandrake is based off of redhat. Redhat keeps their security patches much more up todate, and you get a nifty icon on your task bar that lets you know (if you are online) that there are new updates for the system. mainly security updates.
Once you get really comfortable with linux, then id say slackware is the best. But debian is usually known for being the most secure.