Switching To Linux 4

[jgilbert]

I am a born and raised Windows user with very little experience in Unix command-line and even less in Linux(GUI). I would like to make the jump to linux. My only concern is that some of my software won't migrate. I use a lot of open source software for my everyday work, but I also use a lot of Adobe (Illustrator, PShop, Audition, Acrobat, GoLive)and Macromedia Products (MX Studio).

I really don't want to lose my pricey software by switching. I could always dual boot and use XP for my development environment but I'd rather just ditch Windows altogether on my laptop.

Also, I have centrino (pre-sonoma) with the intel 2200 b/g wireless card. I had read before that some of the linux versions weren't supporting the centrino laptops.

I was considering Fedora Core 3, or Solaris 10, but I am completely open to suggestions. Of course, I would like something user-friendly because I am new, but I am not afraid to learn or to be challanged.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Joe

 

[ericbrunson]

It's odd that people talk about distros not supporting hardware. I don't know of a distro that adds device support that isn't from the base kernel.

The only thing I can think of that may not be included by default would be something like ndiswrapper, which allows you to load certain windows drivers under linux. Other than some external package like that, the drivers are part of the kernel release and should be identical across distributions running identical kernels.

Perhaps they were using old releases of the distros that didn't have the latest kernel releases.

In broad terms, if any distribution of linux supports your hardware, you should be able to get any other distribution to support it. The main differences I've seen between distros (I've installed gentoo, suse, rh, slackware, fedora, debian... blah, blah, blah) is a) the installer, b) the GUI environment intalled, c) administration utilities and d) package management and availability.

I really don't care about the installer since I've been using Unix professionally for almost 20 years and using linux at home, at work and on production servers since 1993. I understand that it would make a huge difference to a newbie, but I don't have any good input on the subject. It is about the *only* significant thing that the distribution provides that is going to be different from what's available in any other distro. But once you've installed your system, then it's gone and you never have to use it again.

The gui environment comes in 3 broad categories, Gnome, KDE, or something else. I personally like Gnome. I'm comfortable in it, I think it's pretty, I understand how it works and it's the default GUI in my preferred distro.

In the past when I tried KDE I thought it was cartoony and not as "slick", but I saw some recent screen shots of it and I think it has improved dramatically. I'm sure Gnome and KDE are equivalent in function and stability now. A developer may care that Gnome is based on GTK and KDE is based on QT. As a developer, I think QT is really, really cool, but I don't do a lot of native GUI development any more, so it's not a big deal to me.

The "something else" under GUI generally just boils down to a window manager, but few things preclude you from using gnome and kde utilities under XFCE, WindowMaker or TWM. I have a little experience with XFCE because I run it on a Solaris box that's a little underpowered and I didn't want to inflict the Gnome bloat on it. It's lean and mean and does exactly what I need it to do. I can also use Nautilus to manage the desktop under XFCE and run gnome-panel if I miss something in it.

It's important to realize that Gnome, KDE, et al are separate projects unto themselves and it's only what the distro decides to bundle that makes a difference.

System utilities are the other distribution add-on that is going to differ between bundlers. Generally speaking, I use so many different platforms that I prefer not to get involved with the GUI admin tools, I do my administration from the command line and a text editor. That approach a) allows me to more fully understand *how* each environment is configured so I have far fewer suprises than when a tool does something I didn't want it to and b) exposes just how *not* different the distributions are from each other. Figure out where a distro stores its boot time network config and you've just uncovered about 80% of what you need to know about configuring that system.

Package management can be divided into three broad categories: RPM, DEB and something else. I would say that RPM and DEB cover about 90% of the distributions with Debian derivatives using DEB and just about anything else using RPM.

I personally like RPM because I'm comfortable with it and I know how to use it. DEB used to be more flexible and powerful and had 'apt-get' which rocked. RPM is now very close to the flexibility and power of DEB and has 'apt-rpm' and 'yum' to handle dependencies and downloads, so I feel any discussion on that would be pointless and inconsequential. They are both capable and robust, use the one that makes sense to you.

"something else" is mostly Gentoo 'emerge' which is actually pretty cool, but I gave up compiling all my sources with I stopped using *BSD. I have gentoo running on several VIA Epia based appliances that I wanted a tiny system that was compiled directly for the esoteric processor, so gentoo was made to order.

So, finally, it all comes down to package availability. Remember, if it compiles on one distro, it can be made to compile on any distro. But I manage several dozen machines, so I want to get the most up to date security patches for all my production systems and I want to play with the latest toys and eye candy on my fun boxes.

I find fedora meets all my requirements.

I can install a minimal system from a single CD in 20 minutes or jumpstart a new server in 6. That's all I ever do, so that's the end of my interaction with the installer.

Yum then installs all the secondary software I need to turn the machine into a production LAMP server, a desktop workstation or a full blown "all the bells and whistles toy store".

Fedora uses RPM, which I mentioned that I like. Yum does everything I need it to, and does it reliably because I know which repositories don't mix well and understand the implications of package interaction. Security updates are very quickly incorporated into the standard updates. The new toys are available in the development, extras and 3rd party repos. I'm running Gnome 2.12 and firefox 1.5 from the development tree right now, with everything else being FC4, so I have my toys, but the stability and reliablility of an 8 month old release of the distro. Everything is installed from RPM.

One thing Fedora does not do for me out of the box is support my Motorola wireless G card, so I keep a separate CD with ndiswrapper and the XP drivers on it and that's the first thing I pop in after doing the base install on one of my laptops. However, unless a bundler distributed ndiswrapper in their base install and included a copy of every XP driver available, no distro would be able to support my wireless card. I blame Motorola, not the distros.

What I'm really trying to do here is point out that distro flame wars are silly and pointless. Linux is a kernel, and any given kernel version is the same across distributions. The environments are add on packages and available in varying degrees of installation complexity on any distro.

Hardware support is universal, I'm not aware of any distro that has added any support for any hardware that isn't available to any other dist. If you installed a distribution and it didn't support hardware that another one did, then I'll bet you either didn't get the latest version of the distro, you didn't know what you were doing, or you weren't really trying that hard.

Finally, with all that being said, Fedora is the best distro. Install it and be l33t, or else you are a pwn3d l00z3r. ;-)

 

[stefanwagner]

Well said, eric.
And important to be said from time to time.

I only like to mention, that it might be wise to choose for a specific need, if you like to have less work, while you could reach the same result with almost every distro.

i.e. debian is very stable, but they release packages very late.
Kubuntu is using debian-packages, but releasing them very early. (K)ubuntu doesn't ship ndiswrapper, ati- and nvidia-closed-source-drivers, but you get them easily from the net; do others do?

The ubuntu-style update-mechanism with synaptic is very comfortable, while I was used to build everything from tarballs for a long time (which worked too, and might be preferable if you don't have a flat rate).

seeking a job as java-programmer in Berlin:

http://home.arcor.de/hirnstrom/bewerbung

 

[stanhubble]

i have suse 10 working well on a dell lattitude D600. They also have a "live" distribution but i haven't tried it.

 

[danomac]

I just thought I'd clarify why I said what I said: not all livecd/install cds are equal. eric pointed this out as well, and for myself it isn't a big deal to get what I need to work working. However, from a new user perspective (especially one who has never used linux before) not having things needed to use devices on an install cd is a serious setback. If all of a sudden the install goes from a 10 minute binary install to 2 hours of hunting down rpms, compiling if needed, configuring if needed, don't you think you would be turned off by the experience?

I sure would be.

 

[spizotfl]

i would like to suggest a look at mepis. it seemed pretty easy to install and detected my hardware pretty well. i have heard good things about the ease of ubuntu/kubuntu for newbies, as well.

 

[OldTechGuy]

I agree with everything said above. My only comment is find a distro that works for you and you like and stick with it till you are comfortable with Linux. I got into the trap of trying a lot of different distros and versions and never got any to work well. I finally settled on Fedora Core. I had to use NDIS Wrappers for my wireless on a Dell with a pcmcia card. I now have a Dell Insprion 9300 and FC4 does not see the internal wireless out of the box but does see the network card. I also installed SUSE 10.0 on the same machine. The internal ethernet card does not work (I think it is a configuration issue), but does see the wireless card and it works out of the box. I haven't played with either to get the inoperative cards working. I'm favoring SUSE 10 today, but that may change when FC5 comes out. Another thing is I have an old Hauppage sp? tv card in one of my desktop systems. FC4 doesn't see it, but SUSE 10 does, and it works great. My sugguestion is try a distro, see if it does the majority of what you want, and stick with it. After you are more comfortable with it, then try other distros. (I dual, tri, and quad boot my systems) Win 98, Win XP, FC4 and SUSE 10.

Good Luck

 

[clonny2]

There are 2 really good choices you can make. Crossover Office will work with several of the bigger Windows Apps fairly well, especially Photoshop. Or you can use native linux apps like Gimp and Open Office.

Another strategy is to use virtualization software, ie Vmware from Vmware. You can install linux as your main os or windows as your main (host) os then install most any x86 OS. (Mac OS not included).

Using Vmware Workstation you have the flexability of using both together at the same time.