All "which distro should I choose?" queries here.

[iamharish15]

I have only operated on windows platform till date, but now I also want to try Linux OS, but there are many Linux OS available such as RedHat Linux, Ubuntu, Linux Mint and so many... I am a beginner, so I want to know which Linus OS I should opt for and why? And what are the differences between them?

[abhijangda]

For an absolute beginner, try Linux Mint. You can also try Ubuntu after getting little exprience. Fedora, openSUSE are meant for advanced/experienced user. Although, a beginner can also use them but he will face problems.

[MatchBoxx]

Ubuntu is best for learning Linux!

[iamharish15]

if they all are Linux, then why they have different names? what is the difference among them?

[doomgiver]

just visual style and a little bit of difference in high level working. deep down in the core, all linuxes(or lini) are equal.

[iamharish15]

ok! thanks all. I am now thinking of using Linux Mint as I have a copy of it available. Let's see what I figure out about it.

[doomgiver]

good choice.
mint and ubuntu are quite similar, the major difference is cosmetic

[iamharish15]

Nobody suggested RedHat Linux? Is it not in use or is it for advance user or what?

[doomgiver]

dunno, its quite old (as in long running) and oriented towards paid business users

[sygeek]

Go for Gentoo, LOL!
I recommend you go for Pinguy OS instead of Ubuntu.

[ssk_the_gr8]

Nobody suggested RedHat Linux? Is it not in use or is it for advance user or what?

you can say it's advanced... go with ubuntu... if there are any issues , there's a big community which will help you out....

[iamharish15]

thanks all, well I have my exams this month, so I will use either ubuntu or mint after my exams.

[iamharish15]

I've been using Linux Mint 9 for 3 days. Its a nice experience, it is simple , user friendly and preloaded with most of the useful softwares, but I need to find drivers for my graphics card, bluetooth, wireless LAN,etc.
And Does Linux not run the .exe format?

[krishnandu.sarkar]

^^Nope, .exe is executable file for Windows.

Though you can run it under Linux through Wine. But not all applications are supported.

[nims11]

there are alternatives for most windows applications in LINUX.

[iamharish15]

ok. does that mean that I can't play games on Linux Mint? or there are other alternatives available?

[nims11]

there are games for LINUX but good ones are really few. for the windows games,
search for the game in the wine comatibility list
WineHQ - Browse Applications

[ico]

can you run PS3 games on Xbox 360? can you run your Windows ".EXE" games on your Xbox 360? Nope.

So, Linux won't run Windows executable files. Find native games for Linux like "Urban Terror" or stick to Windows for gaming. Use Linux for everything else. You can try using WINE for running Windows softwares/games.

I've been using Linux Mint 9 for 3 days. Its a nice experience, it is simple , user friendly and preloaded with most of the useful softwares, but I need to find drivers for my graphics card, bluetooth, wireless LAN,etc.

1) Bluetooth and Wireless LAN should work out-of-the-box.
2) Which graphic card do you have?
3) You won't be installing your Windows "drivers" in Linux. This is a completely different Operating System ffs.

[mitraark]

Definately Ubuntu , the most common Linux distro i think.

[Liverpool_fan]

For restricted drivers for hardware which doesn't work out of the box -

[iamharish15]

1) Bluetooth and Wireless LAN should work out-of-the-box.
2) Which graphic card do you have?
3) You won't be installing your Windows "drivers" in Linux. This is a completely different Operating System ffs.

Thanks for your advice, I found an option there to find the drivers for my bluetooth and wireless LAN.
And It automatically detected my graphics card when I tried to adjust the visual setting to higher visuals and it provided me with an option to avtivate the drivers for my graphics card.
I have nVIDIA GeForce 310M 512 MB graphic card.

[krishnandu.sarkar]

Merging it with http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/open...-i-choose.html

The generalized Sticky Thread.

[babatu]

My rig has the following config

AMD Sempron 1.8GHz
Ram 512mb
HDD 160+20GB
Moreover I have an nVIDIA 128mb graphics card.

I want to install a linux in my computer. Please suggest which to use?

Which one is better fedora or ubuntu?

[Rahim]

^Ubuntu anyday

[uniquerockrz]

seems not many are fedora fans here :-B

[krishnandu.sarkar]

^^I use F14 at Office

[Liverpool_fan]

seems not many are fedora fans here :-B

Can I say one thing - FONTS.
Yes FONTS. Fedora 15 has totally messed up fonts. No matter how I try it, it's nowhere near Ubuntu's levels. And don't think I've not tried enough.
Fedora 14's fonts were okay, not Ubuntu's levels but still pretty good. I wonder what did they do with the fonts in this newest release.

[Garbage]

seems not many are fedora fans here :-B

I would love to try Fedora, but no matter which hardware I use, it always screws up the installation. And I don't get the drivers as easy as Ubuntu.

[sygeek]

I strongly Recommend people who are just new to linux should try PinGuy. Some may feel it bloated but it is a great alternative if you didn't like Ubuntu's Unity UI (or Ubuntu at all)..

[hellknight]

According to my personal experience, there are three types of GNU/Linux distributions or levels :-

Beginner :- Linux Mint (this due to all codecs & drivers), Ubuntu
Intermediate :- Fedora, OpenSuse, Mandriva (after 6-12 months of experience with Beginner distros)
Advanced :- Arch Linux & then the ultimate, Gentoo Linux (they are rolling releases i.e you don't have to wait every 6-8 months for new releases. They update whenever they want and whatever they want. You can customize them to extreme level) Try these, once you master the command line & you don't need a graphical package management tool to install/remove packages. Moreover they're BSD init based not System V based but that is completely different topic.

Lastly, when you are quite familiar with GNU/Linux i.e. mastered most of the commands, will boot Windows only for gaming , don't see any valid reason to boot Windows or Mac , then you can move on to

Debian :- The true FOSS distro
CentOS :- Best damn distro available for servers. Pure Red Hat packages except the artwork. It is 99.99% RHEL.

You can use the above mentioned distros (Debian & CentOS) for deploying any kind of server. They're very good desktop distros too. Moreover, Debian has legendary stability.

Offtopic :-

If you really like trying out operating systems, then please look at :-

FreeBSD :- The unknown giant. Is used by Yahoo servers. Once powered Hotmail servers. Currently FreeBSD 6 or 7 is used to power SBI site & online banking site. Supports GNOME & KDE. Has both 32-bit & 64-bit packages. Is available for variety of platforms. Try this once you get familiar with UNIX environment.

PC-BSD :- Almost the same, but has very easy installer. Currently supports only KDE but ver. 9.0 will add GNOME support as well.

They can only be installed on primary partition though.

For users who want to try Fedora 15, please keep in mind the following facts :-

1. It WILL ruin your installation if you install propreitary ATI drivers on the system. ATI has the poorest support for not only Fedora but everything else. It is only stable on Ubuntu based distros. The open source drivers work fine but don't provide good hardware acceleration.
2. Never, ever choose use free space while installing Fedora. There's nothing wrong with it, but it makes LVM partitions which users aren't familiar with.
3. Make sure you read the articles posted at FedoraForum.org for your queries before installing it.

The thing that you'll love about Fedora, its update system. Yum has a plugin called Yum-presto which reduces the update size upto 90% in some cases.