WARNING - NEWBIE QUESTION!

[Brian Densmore]

John,

  Paraphrased from Linux round-up.

 Redhat - the Original distro. Has personal and professional versions, not
geared for the newbie 
	per say (sic?).

 Mandrake - Industrial strength business oriented distro

 Debian - GEEK oriented, definitely not for the newbie (masochists excluded)

 Suse - European version of the business oriented distro (personally my new
favorite - great for 
	newbies and that sucker is HUUUUGE!)

 TurboLinux - Asian version of business oriented distro.

  Slackware - newbie oriented.

I don't remember what all the others were about. Some are geared for art,
some are geared for newbies, some are geared for administrators, most are
just geared for general purpose use. There is really very little difference
between distro's, some have better tools, some are geared for text-based.
Any distro can be configured to any of the above special uses, but that
requires more knowledge. The trend is for default choices of desktop,
development or various server configs. Mandrake has a very good selection of
customization choices. I haven't seen RedHat lately so can't comment on it.
Suse is geared for desktop professional use; including graphics, internet,
and development. It can be daunting to install, if you go down to the
package level (not recommended).

there are literally hundreds of distros. But pick any of the above distros,
excluding Debian, and you can't go very far wrong. As long as you install on
respectable hardware. ;)>

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Thud-n-Blunder at excite.com [mailto:Thud-n-Blunder at excite.com]
> Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2001 10:42 AM
> To: kclug at kclug.org
> Subject: WARNING - NEWBIE QUESTION!
> 
> 
> I'm going to expose just how new to Linux I am with this 
> question. Please,
> be gentle - this is no troll, and is not intended as 
> flame-bait... after
> all, I'm only allowed so much disk space on my mail server! <smile>
> 
> I understand that there is a great number of distributions 
> for Linux. Now,
> if I were looking for a flame-fest, I'd ask something like, 
> "Why do we need
> so many?" However, I suspect that each different distribution tends to
> emphasize one or more particular areas.
> 
> Is this suspicion correct? If so, could someone help me 
> figure out what the
> areas of emphasis are for the different distros? That way, 
> when I try to
> convert friends and family over from Windows to Linux, I can 
> speak more
> intelligently as to which distribution may fit their needs 
> "out of the box,"
> as it were.
> 
> Or am I wrong, and there is an entirely different reason for the
> distributions? If so, please let me know your ideas...
> 
> John Gardner
> Thud-N-Blunder at excite.com
> 
> Sometimes an industrial-grade fire suppressant can make the difference
> between a good day and a bad day.
> 	-- Anonymous
> 
> 
> Thanks for your time, and 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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