On Mon, Jan 07, 2008 at 06:36:17PM -0500, Andre Abelian wrote:
> BAJ,
> 
>> What is it that you want to do with Linux?
> I do not have any specific application
> 
>> Do you have any Unix OS experience?
> No
> 
>> What kind of machine are you planning on running Linux on?
>new pc with duo intel 3.0 gig Hz 4 gig RAM etc.
> 
>> What types of applications do you need?
> I do not know I have to see that
> 
>> This may help narrow down the list.
> it looks like I have to use UBUNTU

No it doesn't. I think a lot of folks simply like Ubuntu, which is quite
fine. But there are certainly others out there.

Since you have a new machine and no specific application, you'll find that
most modern Linux distributions are about the same. I call them 'ice cream
flavors' i.e. there are many different flavors of ice cream, but in the end
it's all still ice cream.

In general the differentiators in Linux distrubutions are desktop manager,
package manager and respositories, and communities. As you probably know be
now the big two when it comes to desktops are Gnome and KDE. They have very
different philosophies in terms of presentation. I suggest that maybe you
take a live CD distrubtion of each and play with them for a couple of days
each. I find that it's really a preference thing between folks. Some love
the simplicity of Gnome. Others like KDE's feel. Both are good, it's just
ice cream flavors. Package distribution is Debian's APT and derviatives,
Yum and deriviatives, and nothing at all, which isn't good. And each
distribution has its community of followers that you can communicate with.

So Ubuntu comes with the Gnome desktop, APT package management with Ubuntu
respositories, and the Ubuntu community. That's one of a myriad of possible
combinations. It's not a requirement that you choose it.

My general game plan is choose a starting point and use it until something
about it fundamentally breaks. I was a Slackware guy for nearly 10 years.
But the lack of package management finally caused me to break from it. I
have been using Knoppix (KDE, APT, Live CD) for several years. But the
slowness of distribution updates and flaws in the Knoppix package
management scheme has caused me to question its use. I'm current evaluating
Kubuntu (KDE, APT, Ubuntu community, Live CD available) as a possible
replacement. Xiaofan stated that the KDE support is weak. I hope he'll come
back and take a few minutes to explain. After several years I'm a KDE guy,
so I'm not prone to switch. I believe that Knoppix's package management
problem is in the sets of repositories that it uses, not APT in general. I
have a problem with the fact that I ask to install one package and
Knoppix's apt wants to update dozens of packages. The time on my Knoppix
5.1.1 desktop, it upgraded the C compiler and the C libraries and left me
with a broken compiler. I'm hoping that Kubuntu will not do the same.

The bottom line is that you don't have to stick with any choice that you
make. Truthfully if you only want to play with it (and with the fact that
you have 4G of RAM), I'd suggest running a Live CD loaded onto a ramdisk
and try out different distributions until you find one that suits you.

Hope this helps,

> 
> thanks for your time

No problem. Always glad to help out with Linux stuff.

BAJ
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