I´m seriously considering creating a multiple boot for my existing Win98 system so that I can also compile (games related) programs in Linux. I have not installed any Unix type O/S before, but I have installed DOS, Win95, Win98 and WinNT in the past. I have also used web servers running Linux/Unix. I would prefer to download the product (rather than purchase it on CD) and not have to go chasing around multiple sites to find all the necessary drivers etc. Which distribution would you recommend?

You're posting in the wrong forum. (Try the *nix special interst forum.)
That being said, I recommend SuSE for ease of installation and use for a beginner. Once you get real used to that, scrap it and install Gentoo.

Debian or Gentoo by far. They both have superb package managers.

http://www.gentoo.org -- http://www.debian.org

From what I've heard, Gentoo is a pain to install, and probably not the best idea if you're not familiar with linux already. Personally, I only have experience with Redhat 9 and Mandrake 10, both of which were remarkably easy to install in a dual boot with Win XP. Between those two, I'd definately recommend Mandrake. And as a rule: If you're running linux, make sure you have a good package manager, be it apt-get, urpmi / rpmdrake... Otherwise installing and updating software will be an absolute nightmare. If you haven't tried Linux at all, I recommend burning yourself a Knoppix disc to get a taste of what you're getting yourself into.

You can download ISOs for these free:
Mandrake 10
Knoppix
And for the life of me, it seems the Redhat 9 ISOs are no longer on Redhat's site... Might want to give Fedora a shot instead then. Redhat

As for the download managers, Mandrake will install with a respectable one, whereas with redhat you might want to stop by FreshRPMs to pick up apt. As I understand, Debian installs with this one as well, but my personal Debian experience is limited to Knoppix.

-Arek the Absolute

you could always give www.slackware.com a try.

Moved from Game Programming to Everything Unix...

I would seriously recommend Gentoo, though as a new user you might not immediately recognize the benefits that Gentoo provides. I have always used Slackware Linux and FreeBSD (entirely different operating system from Linux, but worth a look: www.freebsd.org), but installed Gentoo for the first time on a machine a couple weeks ago. Though I did not read most of the directions, I noticed that the directions are VERY complete and VERY new-user friendly. I would contend that if you stick to the directions STRICTLY, you should have no troubles installing Linux. Of course, you might need help when it comes to doing things like XFree86 and other important tools, which other distributions often install as part of their base.

That being said, I have been planning to switch to Debian Linux (moving away from Slackware Linux), but I will always have FreeBSD on my NAT router and my notebook machine. If you have enough hard drive space (assuming you like to dual/multi boot) or if you have another reasonably good machine, try FreeBSD. NVidia has released drivers for FreeBSD, so you won't have trouble using OpenGL. I've never had any trouble using the great things common on Linux on my FreeBSD machine... including music players, web browsers, libraries/toolkits (GTK, SDL), APIs (OpenGL, OpenAL), etc. For help getting started, grab a PDF of "Programming Linux Games" by Loki Software and John Hall.

Interesting bit of trivia too :) I have been playing UT2004's Linux version in FreeBSD's Linux Compatability with little more instability than I have seen from UT2004 on a Linux box!

Of course there are advantages and disadvantages of running either one. That is why I run both, because I like both, and when I release a game/demo for *nix, I will be sure that it runs on both Linux AND FreeBSD. I encourage others to do the same! (see page 383 of Programming Linux Games!)

PS. No religious BSD vs. GPL wars, please. I like both, that's why I run both. We all have common goals, and we will all be better off if we stand together.

Quote: Original post by clayasaurus
you could always give www.slackware.com a try.

Tough it is one of my more favourite distro's, I definitely don't recommend slacware to a beginner. You'll probably have all sorts of fustrating problems that you won't know how to solve without a good bit of linux experience. You'll probably also think (in ignorence, Slackware is, actually, very good), this isn't much better than Dos with Windows 1.0!

First of all, I'm sorry for posting in the wrong forum, but I didn't even realise there was one dedicated to Linux (it's a lot further down than I usually scroll).

Somebody mentioned LinuxISO.org to me, and I'm even more confused than before. There are just so many distributions to choose from, and the size varies a great deal too.

SuSe Personal seems to be available as a single ISO, Mandrake 10 is on 3 and Debian is split over 7.

I don't mind working from the command line, although I do find it easier to use a GUI for selecting multiple files, selecting text etc. I'm also not that bothered if I end up scratching my head, drinking lots of coffee or taking an aspirin during the installation process - as long as it doesn't assume I have the knowledge of a sysadmin.

Fairly obviously, it would make life much easier if the distribution contained everything necessary to create and run 3D games, such as GCC, SDL, OpenAL and nVidia graphics drivers.

I'll be using the Torque Game Engine for the most part, if that makes any difference.

It would be nice if Apache, Perl, PHP and MySQL were included so I can test scripts locally, but I already have those in NT4 on my laptop.

A utility to run Windows software would also be convenient (especially for older software that runs too fast), but again, not strictly necessary as I'll be dual booting.

I also considered FreeBSD, but the Torque documentation only mentions Linux, so I'd probably cause myself unnecessary headaches if I tried that first (I can always add it to another partition later).

Go for Gentoo right away.
I did this without any previous knowledge of Linux.
Yes it took a while but the hard way is often also the more rewarding way.

-CProgrammer