Which Linux?

Although all forms of Linux are going to be similar, I think it would be better if you go the same version of Linux as you would be using at work, that why you'll be able to find things easily.

GCC works on linux and I'm using Kdevelop which comes with Red Hat 9.0 for the development of my game..

EDIT: If you installing Red Hat it will automatically setup the dual boot when you go through the installation process

Please visit Turt99 Productions

[edited by - Turt99 on September 4, 2003 11:26:00 AM]

Thank you very much Turt. I''ll download Red Hat 9 today. I don''t know what version they use, but they all should have some similarity?

(Good thing I have cable, I think it''s over a GIG )

-UltimaX-

"You wished for a white christmas... Now go shovel your wishes!"

I haven''t really used anything but a few versions of RedHat, but Redhat or any of the frontends are just that a layer that sorta sits on the basic linux structure and lets you view things, so yeah the ideas will all be the same they might just be laid out the same..

Yeah Redhat is 3CD''s so you''ll probably be downloading for a while..

Please visit Turt99 Productions

I started downloading the shrike-i386-disc1.iso, and it''s not going to take as long as I thought. It has 2 hours and 43 minutes left. So maybe around 7-8 hours for all 3 disks. Not to bad I guess?

-UltimaX-

"You wished for a white christmas... Now go shovel your wishes!"

This might be the wrong forum, you might get more info on the "Everything Unix" forum.

Honestly, distributions don''t make a huge difference in the big picture. However, if you''re just trying to get a system up quickly and want to have a pretty good on CD repository of apps, Red Hat 9 or Red Hat Severn (the 10 beta) are probably good choices. (If you started 9, don''t worry about Severn, they''re almost the same from my first glance).

You might want to stick with what your company uses, especially if you have support contracts or share machines with co-workers.

Intel has a compiler for Linux that has been known to produce some faster code than GCC. I don''t think they have it at a state where it can compile the kernel (doesn''t support all GCC flags yet, but its their final goal). I think they have compiled the kernel with patches to their compiler....word is the next release might be able to replace gcc for your default installer, but have to wait and see if that materializes. The eval version is free, I don''t know what the licensing is however, you should check it if you intend to use it to compile something you wish to sell or profit from.

You might also need to get the SRPMs for Red Hat if you ever need to do a custom compile or modify your Kernel. It''s another 3 CDs if you have the bandwidth. I usually just place all the RPMs and SRPMs on a network share for everyone to make use of for each current RHat version we got running.

Red Hat has the best vendor support IMHO, though I find they are annoying to tweak. They have a lot of nested scripts and non-standard file locations, but I think they''re one of the best to get a working, easy to use desktop with a normal install (very little tweaking often needed for a solid desktop).

I prefer BSD for servers (Open or Free), but their desktops are much harder to get to a "this is a cool desktop look" point (little more raw X than RHat or Mandrake). Rhat does an excellent job detecting video card and monitor settings.

I think it''s funny they want to customize you =) Usually they need someone to customize the systems, but that''s cool.

Like the other poster said, you might want to get the same distro they use at your work place, but you''ll find most of the software is the same, just version and configuration file location differences across distributions. Only other difference in distribution is the system configuration files and startup scripts, but a quick google or homepage search will clear up the differences once you know what to look for.

Int.

Wow, thanks for all of the useful information. I''ll look into everything you suggested. Do you have any useful web sites for anything you mentioned? I think I''m going to go buy Partition Magic, I hate doing partitions. (Especially the first one I ever did, what a mess )

quote:

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I think it''s funny they want to customize you =) Usually they need someone to customize the systems, but that''s cool.

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Tee hee. I laughed to when my sister told me they said that. It''s all good to me though, they paying me triple of what I make now. For that, I''ll let anyone customize me

BTW: Sorry about the wrong forum

Thanks for the help Interim,


-UltimaX-

"You wished for a white christmas... Now go shovel your wishes!"

Moved to Everything Unix.

Thank you

Sorry agian for that.

-UltimaX-

"You wished for a white christmas... Now go shovel your wishes!"

Best site to start with learning Linux:

Linux Doc Project http://www.tldp.org/.

Most of it is pretty distro agnostic, but you''ll find notes when they do it one way or another by distribution from time to time.

Int.

Thank you

-UltimaX-

"You wished for a white christmas... Now go shovel your wishes!"

Personally, I prefer SuSE, and you don''t have to download the entire thing in order to install it (in fact, I don''t think that even can be done), it downloads as it installs (though that method can be a pain if something goes wrong). I have had experience with RedHat, SuSE, OpenLinux, and Debian and SuSE outstripped them by far and after that my favourite was OpenLinux, though they don''t come out with new versions too often.

You can download the entire Suse FTP package, then install on your local network with FTP or HTTP I believe. Or you can just do it off the internet. But I find it nice to have the distribution on CD or a network share for grabbing files and such.

I'm downloading RedHat 9.0 right now.

Let me tell you a little story about my experience

Yesterday I was looking through some things from school and found RedHat 7.1. So I was like cool, this will work for now!.... Needless to say, no. I created my swap partition, a 54mb FAT32 partition (For BootMagic 8.0, I run WinXP and BootMagic can't be installed on a NTFS partition), and a partition for Linux. (I created them with Partition Magic 8, I hate FDISK) So now it's setup for Linux and WinXP. Then I reboot and start to install the RedHat. Everything was fine until I got to the part where you setup XWindows. It recognized my moniter, but not my video card (Radeon 9500 Pro). So I let it choose, and it picked "Generic AGP" with 1 mb memory. I tried it anyway Everything installed fine, and I was happy. So I was excited to try it. I log in (Using text mode) and the type, "startx". It went to start and then said something like, "16 bit mode not valid for this video card" or something like that. Now I can't get into the GUI, just text mode.

So I hope RedHat 9 will work? I want to get it working because I love the look over Windows. (And I heard it's faster for graphics) Does this SuSE allow you to install from a CD and boot diskette? I want to have Windows and Linux. I'll take a look at it, thanks for letting me know about it.

-UltimaX-

"You wished for a white christmas... Now go shovel your wishes!"

[edited by - UltimaX on September 5, 2003 12:06:30 PM]

Hey, Clum. I''ve had very simillar experiences as you. I have to completely agree, SuSe is teh roxorz.

I was very impressed by the very slick interface. It''s not only easy to use, I can do plenty with it. The instalation method is very nice. I burned the boot disk onto a cd, had the modules on another machine and was up and running in NO time. It was brilliant. I''m doing some Java work on it and so far it''s turned out rather well. It''s working out wonderfully and I recommend it to all those that wish to get good exposure to linux rather than a hostile greeting. One thing I miss is Gnome''s zippy loading. They need KDE diet or something, because it''s a bit much. Not to mention, metacity needs to suck less. Oh well, the other managers suck.

Doesn''t SuSE run from the CD?

.lick

BhUtSecKs Linux

James Simmons
MindEngine Development
http://medev.sourceforge.net

Here''s the cat, which of these ways do you want to use to skin it?

quote:

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Original post by downgraded
Here's the cat, which of these ways do you want to use to skin it?

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Which ever way fixes it for dinner
Being serious though, I'm still looking at all the options. Mandrake, Red Hat, SuSE, or OpenLinux.... hmmm I might try Red Hat for now.

-UltimaX-

"You wished for a white christmas... Now go shovel your wishes!"

[edited by - UltimaX on September 5, 2003 2:19:47 PM]

Suse has a LiveCD for demo purposes, but sells their CDs installations now. You can download the entire FTP directory for free and make your own CDs, technically, or just download the FTP directory and then create your own FTP or HTTP or NFS share point and install from that with their boot floppies as well.

Int.