Which Linux for Noobs?

[genie47]

KNN, if I buy printer and it is not supported then how?

When it comes to Linux, HP printers are safest bet.

 

[Xaviervax]

Hi Guys, I recently installed Ubuntu 11.10

Running on dual monitor . 21 inch & HDTV
Nvidia 9600GT

I want to hook it on to my HDTV . Can Detect can see background but unable to see anything but background / Can detect but no display.

Sorry I am noob to this. I want to learn more. any advice?

 

[noobalissima]

are you doing a dual display set up or just a single display directly to your HDTV?

 

[kfwong]

KNN, if I buy printer and it is not supported then how?

You can check the list of supported printers here.

openprinting.org/printers

 

[Rock-kun]

You can check the list of supported printers here.

openprinting.org/printers

That list is terribly out of date.

Anyway, best bet for Linux is still HP and Samsung.

 

[ykgoh]

read that linux kernel 3 include some updates with new drivers.. maybe can try updating the kernel.. me now on ubuntu 11.04 with kernel 3.1.2..

Announced by Linus Torvalds on July 21st, Linux kernel 3.0 brings nice features, such as Btrfs data scrubbing and automatic defragmentation, Berkeley Packet Filter JIT filtering, unprivileged ICMP_ECHO, XEN Dom0 support, wake on WLAN, lots of new drivers and support for many hardware components, support for Microsoft Kinect, support for Apple iSight webcam, support for AMD Llano Fusion APUs, and much more.

AMD Llano was out like since 2011. So for the past 3 years, Linux cannot be installed on systems using an AMD APU?

What about support for Trinity, Richland and the Kaveri APUs? Wait for another 3 years each?

 

[wtfh4x]

And you somehow didn't notice that post was made in 2011? Anyway, pretty sure support means real support through drivers and stuff, not the plug and pray approach that comes when you're trying to use random hardware with Linux.

 

[ykgoh]

sorry sorry. missed the post date.

wow, this thread is really old.

 

[Shion]

Ubuntu the most easiest to use

 

[jelloj]

i agreed. everything works, wireless, sound, Xfree (i.e GUI). it works out of the box.

 

[grynove]

not to mention many distro also based on ubuntu. example mint.

 

[ykgoh]

Which Linux distro to pick up and familiarize for both personal and enterprise usage? Coming from a Windows desktop and server user point-of-view.

Redhat/Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, SUSE? They all seem to have different administrative tools, package management tools, and possibly file system layout (perhaps LSB has addressed this?), on top of different desktop (Gnome, KDE, XFCE).

No time to learn them all.

 

[davidktw]

Which Linux distro to pick up and familiarize for both personal and enterprise usage? Coming from a Windows desktop and server user point-of-view.

Redhat/Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, SUSE? They all seem to have different administrative tools, package management tools, and possibly file system layout (perhaps LSB has addressed this?), on top of different desktop (Gnome, KDE, XFCE).

No time to learn them all.

If you are talking about Enterprises, Linux is not even a complete picture.

RHEL will be the norm. Other Unices you will encounter will be HP-UX, Solaris and AIX depending on who your customer is.

SUSE is another enterprising selection but not too common. Ubuntu while very popular, isn't what I have came across as the Enterprising norm yet in this part of the world.

If you are referring to Enterprise level usage of Linux, you wouldn't even need to consider the GUI because mostly will be operation at console level.

What I can only say is it takes time to know them well.

 

[jelloj]

i agreed. ubuntu is the easiest.

 

[ykgoh]

I have been torn between Redhat/Fedora/CentOS and Debian/Ubuntu/Mint.

For a standalone personal desktop, Ubuntu and Mint wins hands-down for Windows users testing water. They come with good hardware detection and many things work out-of-the-box.

There's no clear-cut leader distro at the moment. RHEL is popular in Singapore's data centres and enterprises. However, Google is said to be using Debian (Source) and I have heard it's apt is pretty good, and better than Redhat's yum. System updates and software package installation is said to be easier on Debian. Redhat is more tricky. (Source). Maybe seasoned users of both distros can help vouch how true this is.

The Linux Standard Base (LSB) provides a standardized API and ABI for software developers (kind of like having a stable Win32 API to program to), and file system for users. However, it is not exactly that universal as Debian is notably a non-member. It seems to me that several RPM-using distributions banded together in the LSB and quickly decided on RPM as the de facto package format for LSB, thus Debian does not care about being LSB-compliant anymore after being excluded from this political process.

 

[innosia]

i also plan to own a linux laptop, and my option is ubuntu
i own a server with centos before, got lots of problems installing software using yum, most guide in internet uses apt-get and more widely use

can anyone suggest me netbook that can install ubuntu with all driver detected? i plan on buying acer c7 and uses crouton to install ubuntu, don't know whether got other cheaper netbook out there and available in SG.

 

[davidktw]

I have been torn between Redhat/Fedora/CentOS and Debian/Ubuntu/Mint.

For a standalone personal desktop, Ubuntu and Mint wins hands-down for Windows users testing water. They come with good hardware detection and many things work out-of-the-box.

There's no clear-cut leader distro at the moment. RHEL is popular in Singapore's data centres and enterprises. However, Google is said to be using Debian (Source) and I have heard it's apt is pretty good, and better than Redhat's yum. System updates and software package installation is said to be easier on Debian. Redhat is more tricky. (Source). Maybe seasoned users of both distros can help vouch how true this is.

The Linux Standard Base (LSB) provides a standardized API and ABI for software developers (kind of like having a stable Win32 API to program to), and file system for users. However, it is not exactly that universal as Debian is notably a non-member. It seems to me that several RPM-using distributions banded together in the LSB and quickly decided on RPM as the de facto package format for LSB, thus Debian does not care about being LSB-compliant anymore after being excluded from this political process.

From a long time enterprise user of Linux systems, I would like to remind that you don't get yourself too entrenched into which Linux distro is better or more popular and then decide on which to bet on. You will find yourself in deep troubles pretty soon. What Google uses really have little to do with rest of the world, namely to say that, unless you are working in Google, the environment that you will need to tackle in your career lifetime would probably be anything but debian.

I don't read too much into how fast a system gets updated namely because that is far from the Enterprise norm. Lets put it this way, once you deploy a system into a project, you wouldn't happy happy monthly go and patch it. Each new versions of every component are suppose to be well tested before deployed, that goes the same for security patches. Just because some other distro does it earlier and faster than RHEL doesn't necessarily means they are doing it better.

For security patches, it seems like it's a good thing to patch it once it's discovered to prevent zero-day vulnerability attack, but no one outside of your responsibility will bet by it that patching it will not result in your system failure because it break something in the process which is used in your project, as such, a prudent patching process is normally more involving that rushing for who did it first.

For non-security patches, the more that it will take even longer. Namely not all patches will have impact or performance gain or better in anyway for your enterprise projects. Even if it has a performance gain of 10%, the cost involved to undertake a patch may or may not justify for the gain. I would rather just add another server if it is a easy option and cheaper alternative on long run. As the quote goes "
If it ain't broke, don't fix it"

In short, if you are going to stick by a distro, you will lose out more than if you don't. Seriously between Redhat and Ubuntu, while they may have different layout, I seriously don't find much to complain about. Besides, why should a project stick with just 1 linux distro ? I have a previous project that uses 3 different distribution of Linux, namely RHEL, Ubuntu and SuSE because of some compatibility issues with the software that installed on each of them. It seems quite fun if you ask me

 

[Rock-kun]

Quite honestly, the differences between distributions are really nothing major. It's only developers and packagers that will have a headache dealing with them.

off the top of my head, the only significant differences are

- different package management systems
- different package naming conventions
- different file hierarchies:

- /usr-merged vs non /usr-merged
- /lib + lib64 (RPM-style) vs /lib/<arch> (Debian multiarch) vs /lib + /lib32 (Slackware, Gentoo, Arch and pre-multiarch Debian)​

- different package installation paths (OpenSuse used to install lots of stuff such as DEs into /opt)

None of which are even remotely difficult to understand and adapt to.

 

[davidktw]

I thought since there is an active discussion on Linux distro, I would like to give my 2 cents worth on how the industry is moving forward.

Naturally the need for automated deployment in recent projects is very real. No longer are we really limited by the hardware resources with the introduction to cloud computing.

I'm sure those keen in the industry would have realise the need for good deployment tools such as Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Vagrant, Docker and so forth. The choice of OS in some way is coupled with the choice of deployment tools.

Should I also mentioned there is a CoreOS that you guys might also be interested to look at. I'm kinda intrigue by it's massive deployment nature and clustered nature.

Remember that from the holistic perspective of system, OS is just one portion of the solution. To be really versatile and well informed, you will need to go beyond just choices of package mangers, utilities and startup scripts systems.

It would be hard to clear cut divide between system administrators and software developers on who is suppose to take charge of deployment standards and tools and the choice of software tools. As such no matter which track you would like to specialise in, you are encouraged and highly recommend to know these stuffs and have knowledge in managing them well.

Don't be silly and keep believing in which distro is better, which is more popular. These sensational opinions are useless to your career. When you need to handle a HP-UX, you just need to get your work done on it. HP-UX is especially used in Singapore government agencies, so you don't have much choice. However, having the opportunity to use it, you will realise how different it is from Linux and how it is more meant for Enterprising purpose than Linux.

Thus I always love to encourage my juniors to be agnostic to branding and technologies. No one can tell you if the industry would suddenly turn favour towards certain technologies, and meanwhile the turning point is so frequent and sudden. Now long ago were we talking about virtualisation, and now the level of abstraction has just went up where networking, storage, computing nodes are abstracted to controls found in web console.

 

[cyberninja]

Ubuntu

I personally love ubuntu for my personal use and my servers.