The setup: I am about to get a 3rd computer, which makes me want to put a flavor of linux on my 500mhz server. I would like to hear Gamedev'ers thoughts on the different distributions on linux. Are linux apps distribution specific ? (I know about RPMs a little bit).... I have been looking at Mandrak9.2, and it seems real nice. I don't want to 'judge a book by its cover' though... This computer that will get converted to linux, will mainly be used as a server , be it a media server for my intranet, or as a http/ftp/quake3(anygame) server....maybe I'll put a mail server on there too.... I used to be interested in the BSD OS's, but for no reason I have switched my interest to Linux specifically.... I have been using WinTel for quite some time, and I can't wait to learn all about linux Wily [edited by - wilycoder on February 23, 2004 9:25:12 PM]

As far as linux goes any decent app should run on all distro''s. The only big problem you will run into is if you try to run apps written for KDE on a red had system, if those apps weren''t written with red had in mind. Red Had changed the KDE install directory and that throws some programs off.

I have tried Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, and Gentoo. For a newbie I would use Mandrake. However don''t rely too much on the GUI configs, onyl use them at first. Make sure you learn how to change your system by hand with the config files in /etc. After learning how to do this I would switch to Gentoo.

I personally don''t like Mandrake. Fedora Core 1 is really nice though (and just as easy to install.)

---

[ DGDev -- The Delphi Games Development Community ] [ Help GameDev.net fight cancer ]

Try one of the other thousand threads about Linux in the lounge. Seriously, we don''t need another one.

Don''t get me wrong: Linux is great.

Oh hell. There''s no better way than DIY, but distributions at least make life simpler.

I would advise, however, to avoid RH based distros (such as Mandrake) because of wierd versioning and patching issues. When I ran Linux on my current computer, I couldn''t update Mozilla myself but rather had to find Mandrake released RPMs, so that the CPU and hard drive wouldn''t collapse into a quantum singularity.

So, either a) spend the time and effort to throw it together yourself (LFS has great details), or b) get a decent distro (easier said than done). I can''t lean either way because they''re both just as troublesome for me (and my sickeningly small HDD). Until I get my new computer, I''m just going to sit back and use Winblows.

---

Christopher S. ''coldacid'' Charabaruk <chrisc''at''meldstar''dot''com> [personal site]
Meldstar Entertainment -- Creation, cubed.

Every time I think I''ve heard it all from SCO, they come up with a new howler." Steven Vaughan-Nichols, eWeek

Don''t you think this would fit good in the *Nix forum?

lol....... I completely missed that there was a whole forum for linux stuff, my apologies

could a mod please move this to the correct forum ?

[edited by - wilycoder on February 23, 2004 9:24:47 PM]

SuSE is awesome; it''s hardware detection is top notch.

Resist everyone
I am your only friend. Click here for more information. (MOVED)

SuSE has some great features, however YaST2 is far too easy to break. Also, I don''t know if they still do it but the auto-updater used to require that you boot into a update-shell or something like that, I didn''t like it much.

I would stick with mandrake, or maybe Fedora (I haven''t tried it). SuSE and Red Hat both have strange ways of doing some things that will only mess you up when you switch to Gentoo (that is the end goal, it''s by far the best distro ever).

quote:

---

Original post by WilyCoder
could a mod please move this to the correct forum?

---

Okay.

quote:

---

Original post by Hitchhiker90
Don''t you think this would fit good in the *Nix forum?

---

As long as they post is somewhere that fits I''ve left such threads alone (and there have been a lot of them recently). Keep trying to get people to know about the Everything Unix forum if you''d like, though .