Phoenix Network Forums

It depends on how interested in "how things work" the beginner is. As my original post said, if they just want to get something running without worrying about options, they shouldn't choose Slackware.

Assuming the person knows how to partition a hard drive or add a second one, they could also multi-boot...They could watch Ubuntu do something, then boot into Slackware and try to duplicate it and learn how it works. Of course not everyone has the time and resources to do that, but I figure most of the people here are geeky.

Just so you don't think I try to push Slack on normals offline.

What I said even holds for people, who actually are interested in understanding the system. A total beginner might need a few days or even weeks to get Slackware running; not because it's hard to setup, but just because they don't have proper experience. If you want to learn how things work, you need a running system in the first place. By copy&paste work you don't learn anything. But the Slackware installation actually is copy&paste work. For those users I'd rather recommend Gentoo.

Just wondering, what does fishpoo222 have to say about this? You guys have been arguing back and forth over slackware/gentoo/ubuntu/mandrake/etc, and each of you is basing stuff on what you believe him/her to be: a newb/not a newb/curious techie newb. If you really want to help him, why not find out what exactly he wants to do with the system? Then you really could make recommendations with a good grasp of what the system needs to be able to do.

If he does want to get to know the operating system, then yes, gentoo or slackware are good choices. They are bleeding-edge development and rock-solid respectively, but neither are particularly new user friendly, especially if that user is used to using the Windows non-command-line interfaces.

If he just want something that works, something more like suse, mandrake or ubuntu would be in order. They are all nicely integrated desktops, and Mandrake especially has an easy to use installer.

In any case, fishpoo222, what _do_ you want to do with the system?

What I said even holds for people, who actually are interested in understanding the system. A total beginner might need a few days or even weeks to get Slackware running; not because it's hard to setup, but just because they don't have proper experience. If you want to learn how things work, you need a running system in the first place. By copy&paste work you don't learn anything. But the Slackware installation actually is copy&paste work. For those users I'd rather recommend Gentoo.

throw the newbies into the cold water, let them learn [/quote]

reki, you are pretty right, but I was actually asking for that information. Unfortunately fishpoo222 didn't answer yet. =)

If your interested in being closely involved in linux and being able to make specific changes to meet you and your computers needs, Gentoo is the choice. I've used it for a long time... it's not "hard" to install if it is.... then you know nothing about linux and if you don't care to learn then really... windows is a better "Desktop" operating system... but if you have the right hardware Tiger all the way

Vyeperman, you still believe that Linux is just something for geeks, don't you? There are already lots of good desktop distributions out there. You can learn in them as well.

Not for geeks, but for normal consumption... it just doesn't have enough support. it _can_ be done I used it as my main desktop for years.

But having a company like apple selling an operating system with everything that BSD has ( in general ) and puting their own commercial twists in it is great. You get an operating system with an awesome gui and a wide range of great multimedia products, which linux has close to none. ex: FCS

But then you haft to way that with the cost of apple hardware + os.

You don't haft to be a geek to use linux, and I never thought that. In fact my sister knows nothing about linux and I just wanted to prove someone with little to no computer experience could install a linux os by following the manual. She's 15 and was able to install gentoo without my help, by simply following the manual and using google.

Vyeperman wrote:But having a company like apple selling an operating system with everything that BSD has ( in general ) and puting their own commercial twists in it is great. You get an operating system with an awesome gui and a wide range of great multimedia products, which linux has close to none. ex: FCS

As long as it is a free operating system, I agree with you. But your last statement is absolutely wrong. Whatever you can do with Windows, you can also do with Linux. There are lots of very good multimedia programs, which you can use. And what is even more interesting: most of them have much better performance than their commercial Windows counterparts.

Just to name a few examples:

• K3b - great burning program; even better than Nero/WinOnCD/... in my opinion.
• mplayer, VLC, xine - multimedia players for movies, music, radio/video streams, ... much better performance than Windows based programs.
• Gimp, Blender - image manipulation and 3D modelling. Though they don't beat Photoshop/3D Studio Max yet, but they are pretty good and even suitable for commercial use.
• XMMS, Beep Media Player - music players in the style of Winamp. Actually, they are clones of Winamp; you can even use Winamp skins with them.

It sounds like you forgot to get some of your video/audio libraries...A lot of formats like .wmv and .rm won't play if you don't install the libs, which don't always come with the distro.

Guys.... I'm not talking about burning CD's or playing music. I even use mplayer on my tiger desktop because I think it's better then quicktime, as far as performance goes. I also use gimp on my apple computer through the apple version of x11. Some of the things you do not have in linux merely because no company is producing it, not that linux could not do it. But you don't have video editing suits such as Final Cut Studio and all the many programs that comes with. I have tried every major one in linux, none of them compare. Also another lacking area think of MIDI, just about nothing out there in the linux market.

My point in saying all this isn't that linux sucks or flaming etc... I love linux I still use it just not as my main desktop. You don't need to be a geek to use linux but if you have the money why wouldn't you buy something that can do everything that linux does plus some!

Vyeperman, this may be biased because most of my experience with Macs has been with approx. 2ghz machines and lower only, but OSX has always felt a little bloated to me. Especially when you have a program or two open already, opening another is pretty slow. Yes apple has a lot of very (very) nice eye candy, but there are times when I just don't think it's worth the performance tradeoff. If it was themeable and you could just use a less resource-intensive theme, then that would probably solve the issue, but as it is, I fail to see any real reason to get Mac over Linux, except perhaps the software suites. Still though, the suites arguments only works if you have a specific application that you _have_ to have because it is crucial to your work.

As for windows, the main reason I'd still go with Linux is stability. Games are about the only thing that I keep windows around for.

Vyeperman wrote:Some of the things you do not have in linux merely because no company is producing it, not that linux could not do it. But you don't have video editing suits such as Final Cut Studio and all the many programs that comes with. I have tried every major one in linux, none of them compare.

That's true, but Linux is evolving fast. I think, this lacking will be fixed in the near future.

Vyeperman wrote:Also another lacking area think of MIDI, just about nothing out there in the linux market.

That's absolutely wrong. Linux has full software MIDI support via TiMiDiTy and the eawpatches sound even better than many Windows patchsets. Hardware MIDI is also fully supported by the kernel, if you own such a device. There are many programs for music authoring like Rosegarden or the Muse sequencer.

Vyeperman wrote:My point in saying all this isn't that linux sucks or flaming etc... I love linux I still use it just not as my main desktop. You don't need to be a geek to use linux but if you have the money why wouldn't you buy something that can do everything that linux does plus some!

If you don't need those extra features, then you could save a lot of money. Just look at the prices of such programs. Plus you need an instable and insecure operating system to run them.

Just wondering, what does fishpoo222 have to say about this?

sorry i havnt replied recently

looking at all your posts I think il probably start by using ubantu then move onto more advanced things.

thanks for your help

I personally like FreeBSD