Guest driggins Posted October 6, 2004 Report Share Posted October 6, 2004 Hi all. I'm a newbie, evaluating Mandrake and other distributions for potential implementation at my small non-profit's network. I have Mandrake 10.0 installed, but would like to add other distributions for evaluation. Physically, these are being installed to an 80 GB drive, attached as master on my secondary IDE channel. My question: what is a good, uncomplicated way of installing another distribution for me to evaluate? In my mind, I can simply proceed with my next distribtion installation...it would find the "linux" hard drive...make whatever necessary partitions it requires...install...and add itself to my boot menu. Am I dreaming? Secondary question - any suggestions on good distributions to evaluate? My needs are to create a small/scalable LAN server (which I think they all will do), have a very user friendly client environment, easy installation, stable, and provide support for Gnome. I realize Mandrake should do all of this...but is there another? I'm currently eyeing Slackware. Lycoris looks nice from the "easy to use" end, but I'm not sensing much broad, community support (specifically Evolution). Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted October 6, 2004 Report Share Posted October 6, 2004 Secondary question - any suggestions on good distributions to evaluate? My needs are to create a small/scalable LAN server (which I think they all will do), have a very user friendly client environment, easy installation, stable, and provide support for Gnome. I realize Mandrake should do all of this...but is there another? I'm currently eyeing Slackware. Lycoris looks nice from the "easy to use" end, but I'm not sensing much broad, community support (specifically Evolution). this is a very difficult question, because the answer is "what do you want to do, what do you expect, what do you like and hate and waht can you actually do with a system? make your mind clear on that and choose your distro". There are as many answers as there are linux-distros available. i have given a lot of distros a deep look and found out that only a dozen distros gets continually checked by me (looking at piles of cds ). as you might see on my signature, currently i have my usual mandrake and two distros for testing (fedora and ubuntu). these change continually. so it will on your box i guess. if you want to choose something like slackware, you should look at their website, read a bit on the "howtos", some test-results (lots of them on distrowatch.com) and then you should decide, which one to pick. many newbies get frustrated because they go with a lot of enthusiasm at a distro like gentoo, slackware, debian or arch, only to find out that they still have to learn a lot before they can fix all the problems they might encounter (e.g. installation problems, if there is only a command line ;)). personally, i am testing ubuntu, because it is a promising debian-based gnome-distro. fedora is interesting because it sets some standarts in dektop-linux imho. vidalinux is an interesting alternative to gentoo. yoper is a promising, young kde-box with exceptional speed. vector is another speedy thing for geeks, based on slack. as i said: it is your personal choice that counts. but don't give up if something doesn't work right out of the box. linux is a continuous learning experience. have fun with it. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted October 6, 2004 Report Share Posted October 6, 2004 lilo or grub are quite capable of booting as many os's as you want to install. As with anything, setting it up takes a little effort. It does not "autimatically" happen most of the time, so you should familiarize yourself with editing /etc/lilo.conf or /boot/grub. I have been running at least three os's, sometimes 4, practically from the time I first started using linux. rpm based distros are fairly easy to setup: Mandrake, Fedora, PCLinux OS, and a host of others. Look at http://www.distrowatch.org for a selection. Debian distros range from easy to hard. Libranet is easy, Pure Debian is a little harder. Bootstrapping Gentoo is rather technical, but it's really easy to do. Just follow the instructions! Choice, choice, choices!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest driggins Posted October 6, 2004 Report Share Posted October 6, 2004 Thanks, arctic. Sounds like some sage advice. Let's see if any of this clarifies my desires for a Linux dist. I'm seeking a replacement for Windows users that are accustomed to using MS Outlook and sharing a calendar via MS Exchange. It would appear that Evolution makes a lot of sense as it is very similar to the look and feel of Outlook and might be able to make use of my current Exchange installation. My end-users need to be comfortable. The party is over if they have to use the command line. Other than first-time installation problems, my taste of Mandrake suggests that it would very well (and that it include Gnome/Evolution is a big bonus for me, a new sys admin). I'd like to find a dist that is widely supported and established. Something that is updated on a somewhat regular basis. Lots of experts (like you) working on it and supporting me makes me feel very comfortable. In my mind, I won't be able to esacpe the need for dual-boot Windows/Linux for some time as we have a few important applications that may or may not function in Linux. That being said, the functionality of the apps in Mandrake appear to do almost everything we need. So, we could be using Linux 75% of the time. Ultimately, it would be nice to have no Windows need...that's all application dependent, though. How would SuSE rate, in your opinion? I can't seem to find an ISO for their server products. Would the available ISO (the personal edition) allow me to create a network server? Given the above info, should Slackware still be a contender? Am I wearing you out yet? :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted October 6, 2004 Report Share Posted October 6, 2004 in your case, i would skip slackware and put my eyes on either mandrake, fedora or suse. you can install suse via ftp or use the isos and add the other relevant stuff via ftp later. all three of them get updated on a regular basis, all three have the famous gnome-desktop but only fedora has gnome as default. take a deep look at all three distros. :) with regard to suse: suse is a fine distro, but just like mandrake, suse tweaks some stuff in its very own way. it makes some things easier for newbies but when you change to another distro, you are confronted with some things that are quite different from suse. fedora is the most "basic" distro in this case and it looks great imho. not much to change for an enterprise-desktop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest driggins Posted October 6, 2004 Report Share Posted October 6, 2004 Great. Thanks for the input. I have not taken a look at Fedora because the brief description of it sounded as if it's more of an experimental distro. Would you say Fedora is long-term and aimed at me (friendly to a simple, small network and an easy to use client environment)? How about industry support for Fedora? Also good? As for SuSE, do you know if the available ISO (Personal edition) is able to create a network server? It appears to be only a client package. Installing via FTP sounds daunting at this point. If I go with a CD install, what's the simplest method (see my original post). Would Fedora recognize my Mandrake installation, make the necessary partitions, and update the boot menu? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted October 6, 2004 Report Share Posted October 6, 2004 The suse PE is crippled but like anything in linux its up to you how it ends up... I would agree with arctic... if you are doing this at work then you might want to change distro's later... Suse doesnt make this easy and Mandrake is a bit better but still does a few weird things... Suse is way more professional btw BUT you need to buy it to get the Prof edition... (its pretty cheap though compared to windows SW) I havent used Fedora but from what arctic says that is a good reason to use it.... I would also recommend Debian -- for exactly the same reasons If you can use the same clients and servers then its going to be easier at first and it makes updates and things simpler. I echo Ixthusdan's comments Debian distros range from easy to hard. Libranet is easy, Pure Debian is a little harder. Bootstrapping Gentoo is rather technical, but it's really easy to do. Just follow the instructions! I wouldnt say I find either hard but I have lots of practice and really you are just followeing instructions...the practice is in the language and prior knowledge... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamw Posted October 6, 2004 Report Share Posted October 6, 2004 driggins: exactly what tasks are your end users likely to be performing (in the most ideal case) in Linux, apart from email use? Try and think of *everything*. This will make it easier to evaluate the choice - as the above indicates, pretty much any distro would fit the scenario you've given so far, once it had been correctly configured by a good admin. Every distro has Evolution, and to be honest it doesn't matter so much whether you choose KDE or GNOME to run underneath it, it probably comes down to your own personal choice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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