Linux distro recommendations

I'm going to take my old pc and convert it to linux in the next few months. I was researching it and discovered there were more distros than the ones I'd heard (ubuntu, red hat, suse, debian)~~puppy sounded interesting. The only thing this system will be used for is internet and email; just wondering what might be recommended for a linux newbie.

I'd stick with Ubuntu. It's easy to install, very stable, and has an excellent software repository. I've recommended to many as a first distro without any complaints and I also know quite a few advanced users who use it as well.

As strange as this might come out sounding, for simple things like email and internet, practically any of the common distros will be fine. They have large userbases that can help or provide instruction via forums and/or IRC chat, which can counteract unfamiliarity with the system or the sometimes user-unfriendly reputation Linux distros have. But most of the top-picked ones have enough years or intention under their belts to have little you'd necessarily have to tweak under the hood to get basic tasks like those running (unless you're using strange hardware or wireless internet, which can be tricky).

I'll admit I'm biased toward Ubuntu - it was the first I tried using that worked with my hardware and I've not seen any reason to switch. Others swear by Fedora or Linux Mint or PCLinuxOS or the aforementioned Puppy, and so on.

This whole 'which to choose?' dilemma is why LiveCDs are nice (before I found Ubuntu, I'd tried both Knoppix and Slax, but neither one liked my computer - I could run them on other comps in the house, though; I should note that I don't even have exotic hardware either - it's a standard eMachines T1110 from 2001). LiveCDs don't harm your computer, run completely from the CD drive and the system RAM, and you aren't tied to any particular one. Download several, burn them to CD-Rs with something like ImgBurn (for Windows) or OS X's Disk Utility, and then try them out. See which one you like the most and make your decision based on personal experience.

Agreed. There is certainly 'breathing room' - while I wouldn't necessarily say Ubuntu is a perfect fit for a power user (for them there's always Gentoo or Slackware), it can be simple if you want it to be or it can be more hands-on.

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Ubuntu (or depending on the specs, maybe Xubuntu) may be worth a try for you. If you want to learn the command line, I would recommend SUSE.

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Every word of God is flawless; He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him.
Do not add to His words, or He will rebuke you and prove you a liar.
- Proverbs 30:5-6

Sovereignty is not racism.

Sounds like ubuntu is the way to go~I looked up the LiveCD list and that is a neat way to try this out.

Question: Will linux run on both pc & mac boxes? And if I download/burn off disc off my mac will it work in my pc?

Yes, but you need to make sure the distro you get is compiled for your processor. If your Mac is an older one using the PowerPC architecture, you'll need to download a a matching version.

As for burning your disc, the program you use needs to create standard bootable ISO images. If you burn one properly, it should work.

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Every word of God is flawless; He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him.
Do not add to His words, or He will rebuke you and prove you a liar.
- Proverbs 30:5-6

Sovereignty is not racism.

It's an intel mac~if I burn the cd from the mac, and since it has an intel cpu like the pc, I'm hearing you say it should work in the pc.

With ISO images, as long as you let the burning program interpret it instead of treating it as just another data file, it'll be fine.

Basically, you get the ISO. Insert the CD-R into the drive slot. Now (as I'm assuming Mac here), select 'Disk Utility' from the drop-down that appears when it recognizes the disc. After it comes up, go to the File menu and select 'Open disk image' - give it the ISO file. It'll mount the ISO* and the Burn button should be able to be clicked. Click it, then select a burn speed half or less than half of the maximum speed it lists (this is largely paranoia on my part; I wouldn't burn CD-Rs at anything over 24x, and actually prefer a speed somewhere in the 12x-16x range), and then click Ok or Burn or whatever the button says. I use this often enough on my parents' iMac but can never remember the terminology.

*When it 'mounts' the ISO, this means that OS X sees the file as a read-only hard drive (yes, I'm being simplistic). A Finder window should come up and you'll see files and folders - these are what the ISO contains. After the burn is done and you have your disc, these files and folders are what should appear if you look at the disc in Windows Explorer or Finder. If you don't see them, and instead see just the .iso file that you had originally, the disc was burned wrong.

The only incompatibility between Windows and Mac nowadays that matters has to do with filesystems. This is a moot point if you use an ISO and follow the instructions I provided above, because ISOs are already set up with the right filesystem inside of them. Macs can use their HFS/HFS+ filesystems on CDs, and that is still incompatible with Windows, unless you're using Boot Camp or MacDrive or so on.


Also, and this should be obvious, but when you go to try out the LiveCD, the computer needs to be able to boot from CD. So if Windows is running, put the disc in and then restart the computer with the CD still in the drive. If it doesn't boot from the CD, then you have a situation where your BIOS is configured wrong and requires going in and adjusting the boot order.

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OK that makes sense~~I did burn the disc and mac said everything went ok so I'll be trying it out on the pc shortly~~thanks!!

How did things go? I tried fedora at first and I just got frustrated . I tried Ubuntu at a later date and found it to be really easy to use. It even recognized an old wifi card in my desktop which I had long ago lost the drives to use it in windows. I thought that that was funny, that I couldn't get it to work on windows but I could get it to work on linux. I actually have better audio with general programs under Ubuntu that Windows. I use an external hardware unit (Audio Kontrol) and it works great with the Alsa driver through pulseaudio. Also 9.10 has a lot better audio setup. I had problems with the previous version, but the update took care of everything.

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