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

I wouldn't recomend Debian for a first time user. Apt-Get is awsome but Slackware's setup is much easier and you can be sure to get just about everything you need upon install.

If you choose a debian distro then I'd recomend mepis, it's basicly standard debian with a near idiot proof installer.

First and foremost you should burn yourself a knoppix cd. It is easy to do and is 100% reversable ;). After trying knoppix out to make sure that you LIKE linux, try doing a debian install. If you get stuck trying to find the drivers that you need (eg. your modem drivers) then fire up knoppix and see what it has loaded. Knoppix does two things very well. One, it runs completely from CD and Two, it autoconfigures 99% of all hardware. Just take these words of advice and at least burn a copy before you start doing another linux install.
-Greg

CyberSlag5k: Does the Slackware 9.1 ISO distribution (2 discs) come with all the development tools I would need?

As well as a decent text/code editor and compiler tools, I'd also prefer to have Apache, Perl, PHP and MySQL so that I don't need to install NT4 to test scripts locally.


flukus: What's "mepis"? I only saw releases named woody, potato, slink and hamm at the Debian site, and there's no mention of a separate mepis distribution/project at LinuxISO.org.


Greg K: Whether I end up liking Linux or not is a little beside the point, as I would still need it on my system at some point so that I can compile and test a Linux version of the game I will be working on.

Just out of curiosity, why does no one ever recommend Slack to beginners???

That was the first distro I ever used, and I learned a lot more from using it first than I ever could have had I used Mandrake or Red Hat from the getgo. Not to mention that Slackware's installation is NICE. Yeah, it's got no graphics, but it's by far the best one that I have seen, since it walks you through everything and displays it all in very easy to understand menu fashion.

Basically, that means that I highly recommend Slack for a beginner, because it's easy to get up and running, and yet it leaves enough room for you to really learn the ins and outs of a linux system because it doesn't autoconfigure EVERYTHING for you.

Of course, if you want it to autoconfigure everything for you, then you'd better look into Mandrake, Fedora, or (my favorite of these), SuSE.

The mepis website. It's based on debian testing. For me it struck a nice balance between ease of use (because of the installer) and versatility (because it's standard debian). This one is also a live CD, you've booted into a fully functional desktop environment befor you get the chance to install it.

Quote: Original post by Strife
Just out of curiosity, why does no one ever recommend Slack to beginners???

That was the first distro I ever used, and I learned a lot more from using it first than I ever could have had I used Mandrake or Red Hat from the getgo. Not to mention that Slackware's installation is NICE. Yeah, it's got no graphics, but it's by far the best one that I have seen, since it walks you through everything and displays it all in very easy to understand menu fashion.

Basically, that means that I highly recommend Slack for a beginner, because it's easy to get up and running, and yet it leaves enough room for you to really learn the ins and outs of a linux system because it doesn't autoconfigure EVERYTHING for you.

Of course, if you want it to autoconfigure everything for you, then you'd better look into Mandrake, Fedora, or (my favorite of these), SuSE.

I think it's better to get started with an easier distro (Mandrake,Suse,Fedora) before jumping into slackware. It's like learning to swim, they don't throw you in the deep part of the swimming pool on your first lesson.

Quote: Original post by George2

Quote: Original post by Strife
Just out of curiosity, why does no one ever recommend Slack to beginners???

That was the first distro I ever used, and I learned a lot more from using it first than I ever could have had I used Mandrake or Red Hat from the getgo. Not to mention that Slackware's installation is NICE. Yeah, it's got no graphics, but it's by far the best one that I have seen, since it walks you through everything and displays it all in very easy to understand menu fashion.

Basically, that means that I highly recommend Slack for a beginner, because it's easy to get up and running, and yet it leaves enough room for you to really learn the ins and outs of a linux system because it doesn't autoconfigure EVERYTHING for you.

Of course, if you want it to autoconfigure everything for you, then you'd better look into Mandrake, Fedora, or (my favorite of these), SuSE.

I think it's better to get started with an easier distro (Mandrake,Suse,Fedora) before jumping into slackware. It's like learning to swim, they don't throw you in the deep part of the swimming pool on your first lesson.

But that's exactly my point. Slackware isn't hard to learn! The only "hard" thing about it is that there's less autoconfiguration going on and a little bit more of editing files by hand... And even that is relatively minimal, provided you don't make major changes to your system after installation.

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But that's exactly my point. Slackware isn't hard to learn! The only "hard" thing about it is that there's less autoconfiguration going on and a little bit more of editing files by hand... And even that is relatively minimal, provided you don't make major changes to your system after installation.

That varies from hardware to hardware. For example, I have a mobility m6 graphics card in my laptop, took me 2 days to figure out which driver to use for xfree in gentoo, and it's taking me over 2 months to figure out how to get 3d acceleration and page flipping working; whereas mandrake configured it all for me in a matter of minutes. I'm still trying to figure out what drivers my mandrake system is using. Anyways, like I said, it varies alot depending on what hardware you have. If you have really common hardware, it'll probably be pretty easy, but if you have hardware that is less common, you'll probably have a harder time.

Quote: Original post by Strife
But that's exactly my point. Slackware isn't hard to learn! The only "hard" thing about it is that there's less autoconfiguration going on and a little bit more of editing files by hand... And even that is relatively minimal, provided you don't make major changes to your system after installation.

I've not used Slackware, but why would you not want autoconfiguration and why would you want to edit files by hand? I've used distros like RedHat and Linux for the last few years and I've rarely had to do any manual work to set everything up. I can understand wanting to learn Linux, but I don't see why you'd want to waste time tackling problems manually when automatic solutions have been available for ages.