Re: advice please...................

[Jose L Gomez Dans <nospam [at] sheffield.ac.uk>]

On Mon, Dec 06, 1999 at 07:08:09PM -0000, Ross wrote:
> to take the plunge and spend some time and money on a quality 'LINUX' distro
> and a bit of hardware so i can get rid of windows forever.

Happened over here already :)

> 1)modems - am i correct in assuming that it 'should' be an ISA modem. i am
> aware of the 'winmodem' limitation (yes! i ment to say 'limitation' guys). i

For the sake of argument, and to avoid entangling on lengthy
discussions about winmodems :) --yes. There's a hardware compatibility
database somewhere (www.google.com is your friend...) that should be able to
tell you whether a particular modem is fine. So get the list out of the shop
and take your pick. You can always go for external modems, but if you choose
an internal one, make sure you know what you're doing. As for particular
brand/model, I can't really help.

> 2)distro - i know quite a few of you are 'suse' fans but, is this the best
> option for detecting all my hardware. (I've had everything working under rh6
> but the configuration process leaves a lot to be desired.e.g. sound!)

There's a number of distributions which are simplifying the
installation process further and further. To start with, and to get you a
full picture, there's Caldera. Appareently, it's all very nice but I've
never used it. Also, you have to pay for it, which is a bit of a pain :).
Then there's suse, which IMHO has a number of quirks, even though I haven't
played around with it to slag it off with enough enthusiasm :) RH is the
most popular distro, and it's free. Mandrake (free with PC Answers this
month, I believe) is based on RH, but could be more aptly described as a
properly done RH. The configuration of the latter is quite good (i.e., it
does most things for you). Very new gfx and sound cards are sometimes a bit
tricky to use with Linux as drivers tend to take time to materialize. I have
installed Mandrake in a number of newbie oriented boxes succesfully in the
past. Then there's Corel, which has just gone out. This is based on debian
(more on that later), and the installation is quite nice. All sorts of fancy
graphics and stuff like that. So far, around these parts it is being praised
by a number of Windoze users. It's in its first release, so it might have
some additional problems). However, you can get tech support with most of
the above if you actually buy them (note that RH, Mandrake and Corel can be
downloaded off the net.

On a more specialist side, it's useful to consider slackware and
debian. Slackware looks a bit of a stone age thing when you first consider
installing it. However, you do have a lot of control on what you're
installing. I have used it for a number of old bags with sucess. Debian is a
very good distro (I use it everyday :D), very stable and reliable. It's not
the easiest to install, but at least, you get asked and eventually learn how
to do things. If you're willing to spend some time tinkering about, it's
definitely the one to go for. Of course, and given that corel is based on
debian, you can upgrade your corel installation to debian.

On the other hand, and just to give a complete picture, you can go
and try one of the BSDs, such as FreeBSD, NetBSD or OpenBSD. I think these
are more oriented to the server user more than to the desktop, but some
might want to differ.

I hope this summarizes a bit what distro's have to offer. Sorry that
I haven't gone in techie mode, but I think that defeats purpose. I guess
it'd be nice to have a sheflug's distro rantings on the webpage. Of maybe
some knows of a nice URL for this?

Hth, anyway :)
Jose
--
Jose L Gomez Dans PhD student
Radar Communications Group
Department of Electronic Engineering
University of Sheffield UK

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