need distro for newbie
in [General Linux]
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From: Robert Heller on 31 May 2010 16:29 At Mon, 31 May 2010 11:40:49 -0700 "Nasser M. Abbasi" <nma(a)12000.org> wrote: > > On 05/31/2010 07:17 AM, BenT wrote: > > Hi all, > > > > I've been running Kubuntu for several years and had very good luck with > > it. I built my sweetie a new box with premium components (3.2 ghz quad core > > AMD) and installed Kubuntu 10.04. Big mistake. > > > > There seems to be another main difference between the different > distributions to consider: some uses .rpm (with yum as the package > manager) and some uses .deb like debian, and the package manager is > called apt. > > I am not sure which is considered 'better' or 'easier' than the other, > and do not want to get into this packaging war here, but I assume both > will do pretty much the same thing? one just uses different packaging > format and protocol than the other? So, for an end user, should one > worry about this difference? 6 of one, 1/2 dozzen of the other. Yes, they are interchangable from a usage POV (install/update packages from one or more repositorities, taking care of dependencies automagically). > > --Nasser > > > -- Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 Deepwoods Software -- Download the Model Railroad System http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Binaries for Linux and MS-Windows heller(a)deepsoft.com -- http://www.deepsoft.com/ModelRailroadSystem/
From: Robert Heller on 31 May 2010 16:29 At Mon, 31 May 2010 19:33:01 GMT notbob <notbob(a)nothome.com> wrote: > > On 2010-05-31, BenT <noreply(a)address.com> wrote: > > > Thanks for the fast response. It's been quite a few years since I ran > > Debian. > > > > I'm downloading Debian 5 stable as I write...... > > Ubuntu IS Debian, at least Debian For Dummies. If you can't get > Ubuntu working, what makes you think you will have better luck with > Debian? OTOH, maybe you will. I can't get Ubuntu to work, either. > Maybe I'm not dumb enough. ;) Ubuntu is actually an unstable version of Debian -- it is more 'bleeding edge', which implies more possible problems, but better support for bleeding edge hardware. Something like FC vs CentOS/RHEL. > > nb > -- Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 Deepwoods Software -- Download the Model Railroad System http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Binaries for Linux and MS-Windows heller(a)deepsoft.com -- http://www.deepsoft.com/ModelRailroadSystem/
From: Nasser M. Abbasi on 31 May 2010 17:50 On 05/31/2010 09:08 AM, General Schvantzkoph wrote: > On Mon, 31 May 2010 09:17:14 -0500, BenT wrote: > > Try Fedora 13, even though F13 just came out it seems to be really solid. > Fedora does an excellent job of recognizing and configuring hardware. > Even though it's target audience is developers not newbies the fact of > the matter is that it's no harder to use then Ubuntu, it's only downside > is it's 13 month support period and the fact that you have to configure a > couple of extra repositories to get non-free drivers and codecs. However > it's really easy to do that and once you have everything will work as > easily as Ubuntu. > > > This is how you set up the extra repos > > http://rpmfusion.org/Configuration/ > I just did ! I downloaded live CD, tried it, and I liked it. So I installed it on the harddrive, and now running it. Installed the 64 bit version. It detected all my devices. The desktop is much polished. Running Gnome desktop. It comes with firefox allready installed and ready to run. Only thing is that I had to install adobe flash plugin, but instructions on how to do that are on fedora website. It is very fast, and tried the package manager for gnome, looks good also, and just as easy to use as debian. (I am bit confused with yum, does yum have a GUI interface? I am now using this gnome package manager gui, called packageKit. I assume this is Yum interface) So far, very happy with fedora 13. Might be easier for new user than debian I would say. --Nasser
From: General Schvantzkoph on 31 May 2010 19:17 On Mon, 31 May 2010 14:50:25 -0700, Nasser M. Abbasi wrote: > On 05/31/2010 09:08 AM, General Schvantzkoph wrote: >> On Mon, 31 May 2010 09:17:14 -0500, BenT wrote: > > > >> Try Fedora 13, even though F13 just came out it seems to be really >> solid. Fedora does an excellent job of recognizing and configuring >> hardware. Even though it's target audience is developers not newbies >> the fact of the matter is that it's no harder to use then Ubuntu, it's >> only downside is it's 13 month support period and the fact that you >> have to configure a couple of extra repositories to get non-free >> drivers and codecs. However it's really easy to do that and once you >> have everything will work as easily as Ubuntu. >> >> >> This is how you set up the extra repos >> >> http://rpmfusion.org/Configuration/ >> >> > I just did ! > > I downloaded live CD, tried it, and I liked it. So I installed it on the > harddrive, and now running it. > > Installed the 64 bit version. It detected all my devices. The desktop is > much polished. Running Gnome desktop. It comes with firefox allready > installed and ready to run. Only thing is that I had to install adobe > flash plugin, but instructions on how to do that are on fedora website. > > It is very fast, and tried the package manager for gnome, looks good > also, and just as easy to use as debian. (I am bit confused with yum, > does yum have a GUI interface? I am now using this gnome package manager > gui, called packageKit. I assume this is Yum interface) > > So far, very happy with fedora 13. Might be easier for new user than > debian I would say. > > > --Nasser There are two GUIs for yum, the Add/Remove Software tool on the System/ Administration menu and yumex. Add/Remove Software is their by default, yumex has to be installed, do it with yum -y install yumex I like yumex a lot better than the default software installer. You will want to set up both the Free and Non-Free fusion repos if you haven't done it already. The Non-Free repo is where the Nvidia binary drivers are and the media codecs. You will want to install the gstreamer- plugins-ugly package, that's the one that has all of the non-free codecs. If you want to use Google Chrome and Picassa you will want to set up the Google repositories also. http://www.google.com/linuxrepositories/yum.html Make sure you include the 64 bit repos and if you install Chrome or Chromium that you install the 64 bit version, the 32 bit version works but it sucks on 64 bit Fedora (the fonts look like hell and the plugins don't work). 64 bit Chrome/Chromium finds all of the Firefox plugins so you don't have to install them in to places. I'm using Chromium which is the development branch (it's version 6 of Chrome, version 5 is the "stable" branch"). 64 bit FLASH isn't in an RPM, you should just download it from Adobe and put it into your .mozilla/plugins directory, http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10_64bit.html One more thing. I'm using Thunderbird for my e-mail, Evolution is a horrible mess and has been for a couple of years now. Don't try to remove Evolution, it will cause the entirety of Gnome to get removed, just don't use it. Evolution is broken in the upstream, this isn't a Fedora issue. They started a major migration to SQLite and then the developer who was responsible got laid off (from Novell I think), the result was that it's been unusable for a couple of years. Thunderbird does everything that Evolution does and more except that it works and it's fast. *********************************************************************** IMPORTANT INFORMATION on NVIDIA drivers!!!! Nvidia drivers don't play well with Nouveau which is what Fedora installs by default. If you want to use the NVidia binary drivers on Fedora you need to do two things, install the kmod-nvidia package which will install the binary drivers and keep them in step with the kernels and you must edit the /etc/grub.conf file to blacklist the nouveau driver (rdblacklist=nouveau). This became necessary in Fedora 12 when NV was replaced with Nouveau. Put rdblacklist=nouveau at the end of the kernel line in /etc/grub.conf. Once you've done this all future kernel upgrades will inherit the blacklist command so you won't have to do it again. title Fedora (2.6.33.5-112.fc13.x86_64) root (hd0,4) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.33.5-112.fc13.x86_64 ro root=/dev/sda5 rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet rdblacklist=nouveau initrd /boot/initramfs-2.6.33.5-112.fc13.x86_64.img
From: Nasser M. Abbasi on 31 May 2010 19:36
On 05/31/2010 04:17 PM, General Schvantzkoph wrote: > > There are two GUIs for yum, the Add/Remove Software tool on the System/ > Administration menu and yumex. Add/Remove Software is their by default, > yumex has to be installed, do it with > > yum -y install yumex > > I like yumex a lot better than the default software installer. > Ok, will try yumex, thanks for the pointer. > You will want to set up both the Free and Non-Free fusion repos if you > haven't done it already. The Non-Free repo is where the Nvidia binary > drivers are and the media codecs. You will want to install the gstreamer- > plugins-ugly package, that's the one that has all of the non-free codecs. > > If you want to use Google Chrome and Picassa you will want to set up the > Google repositories also. > > http://www.google.com/linuxrepositories/yum.html > Tried chrome under debian. Never liked chrome. I like firefox more. > > 64 bit FLASH isn't in an RPM, you should just download it from Adobe and > put it into your .mozilla/plugins directory, > > http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10_64bit.html > I did not do the above, I followed instructions on 64 bit flash on fedora web site here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Flash > > One more thing. I'm using Thunderbird for my e-mail, Evolution is a > horrible mess and has been for a couple of years now. Don't try to > remove Evolution, I do not! I also use thunderbird also. I imported all my livemail messages to thunderbird ok. Had no problems with monitor drivers with fedora 13, all up just fine. Display looks good, fonts look good. Next project for me to install Vbox on fedora, and windows7 64 bit in it, so I can use couple of windows applications which do not exist on linux, and I'll be set. speaking of thunderbird, I noticed that when I installed ESET antivirus for linux, that thunderbird stopped working (will not come up). This was on debian 5. When I removed ESET, thunderbird will come up again. I will try to see if it happens also on fedora now. It might be an ESET issue. I am not sure if I need ESET antivirus on Linux, but I did buy it allready when I was on windows, and so have a licence to use it for few more months. Also, I just tried to spell check this on thunderbird, the spell checker comes up, but does not work. it seems to feeze and do not do anything! strange. So if I have spelling erros here, blame thunderbird ;) This is verion 3.0.4. --Nasser |