For a home PC. Never really figured out what the difference are between the many different distibutions.

the main difference is what they decide to include and then the installation/maintenance programs

Mandrake is probably one of the easiest to install and use because its been designed to be very user friendly, whereas something like Debian is much more for people who are used to using linux...

to be honest its all personal preference, linux itself is just a command line interface OS, what your actually using GUI wise is generally either KDE or Gnome which are included in most distributions, I personally prefer KDE

If your a newish linux user then I would be inclined to go for Mandrake which has got an excellent graphical install. In all honesty unless you go for one of the distributions that has been specifically tailored for a specific purpose they are all pretty much of a muchness - take a look and see what's available at:

http://www.linuxiso.org/

I tend to run Mandrake or Suse.

Mandrake, SuSe or RedHat are the most popular ones for new users. You could always sit on the fence and use Solaris :D

Originally posted by J-Blaze
You could always sit on the fence and use Solaris :D


Or, for the masochist, BSD ;).

Originally posted by xafier
to be honest its all personal preference, linux itself is just a command line interface OS, what your actually using GUI wise is generally either KDE or Gnome which are included in most distributions, I personally prefer KDE <pedant hat on>Actually, linux is just the kernel. GNU/Linux is the operating system

But I agree, try Mandrake - been using it since about version 7.0 (now at 10.2) and it seems good to me.

Originally posted by squirrelz
<pedant hat on>Actually, linux is just the kernel.

yeah, the kernel is the command line... if you just run the kernel you get a nice little command line interface :P now on top of that you get an X server, and on top of that KDE or Gnome or similar! Don't go trying to make me look stupid, I know what I'm talking about :P

Another good system that hasn't been mentioned and definately deserves a mention, and that is Gentoo.

I use Gentoo myself and it is in my opinion, a great system to use, the only downside is the massive amount of hard word to get it installed in the first place, even a stage 3 install would take a while on a decent machine, but, the best part about Gentoo is the portage system, to update your whole system, only two commands are required, there is no problems with dependencies and it is always being kept up to date, well, that is my two penneth.

In addition, Suse 9.2 is also a good system, but, this is only because of the simplicity of installation and running it, my wife (who has learning problems) currently uses a Suse 9.2 system and she has worked out how to do a lot of things with it, and my wife usually kills anything to do with IT, so, it must be pretty good to take what the wife can dish out, lol.

Originally posted by xafier
yeah, the kernel is the command line... if you just run the kernel you get a nice little command line interface :P now on top of that you get an X server, and on top of that KDE or Gnome or similar! Don't go trying to make me look stupid, I know what I'm talking about :P Sorry about this old chap, but linux is just this bit - http://www.kernel.org

All the command line bits such as bash, grep, awk, ls, etc are the GNU bit. Linux isn't an operating system, its just the operating system kernel. The operating system is GNU/Linux, and yes you can get bits like KDE, Gnome, X, that sit on top of GNU/Linux, but you cannot run just linux.

See here for a history of GNU/Linux http://www.ajug.org/info/tech/java-linux/history.html

Is nobody even going to mention that freeBSD is not linux either?

Heh heh.... FreeBSD and OpenBSD hardly get a look in nowadays. To me they're a bit more server oriented rather than desktop.

Thanks all. I chose Fedora. Running it now :)

I Love Puppy Linux v4, or Mandriva 2009. First is Excellent for old hardware and boots in 37 seconds, Second is BIG 'Distro' for 'Dummies!!!!'. :) :banana::banana::banana::banana:

37 seconds, wow, you running that on a 486? ;)

Which of the GUIs is 'most like' M$Windows ?

Which of the GUIs is 'most like' M$Windows ?

Not used it myself, but Ubuntu has a good following of people who are after MS like ease of use.

Whichever Linux you go for, you will be choosing between Gnome and KDE. These are two different desktop environments. Install them both and choose which you want when you log in to try them out.

Then customise/skin the one you want to get it how you like it.

Other desktop environments are available, but Gnome/KDE are (AFAIK) the best developed and supported.

That last post kinda missed your question I think....

Whichever Linux distro you go for, all the big ones will run KDE and Gnome. So you could use Fedora with a Gnome desktop (that's how my machine runs), or Fedora with KDE, or Ubuntu with Gnome... etc etc

I have ubuntu on mine & it is fine.

I do love the idea of linux and have had a play about with it a bit (but not much)
What i would ask is why do you want linux on your system?
I have modded versions of both xp and vista and they work really well.

by modded do you mean cut down so to run on older machines
ive got a little dell latitude (750 cpu + 192 mem,just waiting for delivery of a 256 stick to up it to 382) and have thought about trying linux on it as im only using it as web browser but everytime i get problems with the wi-fi
no probs with xp but could do with something a bit less greedy
ta ken

Before going Linux, check out the WiFi chipset you are using. Some are tricky to sort and need use of extra software (ndiswrapper) to make them work.

If you're after XP ease of use that might not be something you want to do, so see if your WiFi card is supported by which distros. That will help you decide.

i have had ubuntu running on a home comp and had a quick play with it and seemed faster and i was using wired network and have read a little bit about using the wrapper for some wi-fi cards what i mainly want to know is will i get a vast improvement using linux or would it be just as well running xp with just basic needed software on it
thanks for any help ken

Certainly my Linux setup seems slightly more responsive than windows. Not the same as being quicker, just it feels like each application is less likely to go into slow mode.

Probably something to do with the different memory management systems.

If you were planning to run it on the (low spec) machine you mentioned earlier then I would suggest it's certainly worth a try. You can always go back to windows.

Just remember to backup your files to another disc before wiping windows.
Give it a few weeks to get used to the new layout before deciding whether to stick to a Linux based PC or return to windows.

thats what i was thinking
not bothered about backing up as will reinstall if needed
the thing is my main comp is xp and was wondering if i should just plod on with xp on this just for ease as it works OK for net as im using it now with just the 192 memory and as said have a 256 coming to replace a 64 stick which should improve it a bit more
or will the difference be enougth for browsing to make it worth the hassle of setting it up and learning how to use it
thanks again ken

When you install Linux (doing a format in the process) you will lose any stored documents you have in 'My Documents' on C: etc.

You will lose any email on the machine.

You will lose your favourites.

Just making sure absolutely clear so no-one comes back to shout at me later!

In answer to 'which is faster', I couldn't tell you. It will depend a lot of versions of software, hardware support etc etc.

Perceived speed will probably vary between Linux distros as well as Linux vs Windows.

Try it for a couple of weeks, see how it feels to you.

When you install Linux (doing a format in the process) you will lose any stored documents you have in 'My Documents' on C: etc.

Unless you stick it on a seperate HD & create a dual boot box:thumbsup:

IT creates it`s own dual boot.Well mine did with Wubi.You can un-install it if you do not like it.

I believe modern kernels need a minimum ram of 256.
I use gnome because its less fancy than kde, however xfce is much smaller in memory usage than either.
Because i'm feeling masochistic, i'm going to recommend LFS (http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/), but you'll get to learn how to cut it down and what it all does...

To a comment earlier, BSD, isn't that unix and not linux, all *nix though...

I've found pclinuxos to be the most similar to XP. I have it on two laptops, one of which has only 128M of ram.

On this one which already had XP on it, I have it dual booting. I only boot into boot into windows to watch stuff on ITV, CH4 & CH5 catch up as they won't work under Linux.

On both laptops it picked up the wireless cards without any problems. This is a built in card, the old one has a Belkin F5D7010 ver.3000uk PCMIA card in it. When I tried a newer card in it, it doesn't detect it (Belkin F5D7010 ver.7000uk)

I also have a desktop running Ubuntu Linux (Gnome desktop), but I have to say I prefer the KDE desktop rather than Gnome. Thinking about it, I may try a live CD of Kubuntu (KDE desktop) on the other laptop & see if that picks up the newer card.

If you want to try other distros, go to www.distrowatch.com (http://www.distrowatch.com) & browse whats available.

Simple answer:

Mandriva if you want the least hassle.
Slackware if you want the most stability and security.

I've used redhat / fedora since about 2003 for my main machines and played with others for tests and development. When redhat split and the opensource turned into fedora, there became REH (RedHat Enterprise) which is commercial and turning quite mainstream with numerous books about it. There is also CentOS which is basically the same as RHE, and RHE is essentiall Fedora but 3 generations behind and very stable...

P.S. The first release of Mandriva was based on Red Hat Linux (version 5.1)

P.S. The first release of Mandriva was based on Red Hat Linux (version 5.1)

Thankfully, a LONG time has passed since then and Mandrake has become Mandriva and is actually usable.

It's a long time since I used Mandrake, because so many here sing it's praises, i'm tempted to download a copy and get it installed on a machine. I've never had any problems with RH (maybe on fist 64 bit machine, concerning dev libs), but if Mandriva is more intuitive then i'm good to give it a go...