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Home > Archive > Linux/Unix > March 2001 > I'm a newbie.. Should I use
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I'm a newbie.. Should I use
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| beenframed 2001-02-26, 1:25 pm |
| Mandrake 7.0 or Corel Linux.
I've installed Mandrake already but keep hearing that Corel is easier to learn, Please leave me some feedback!!!
BF | |
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| Use what you have, both are great for newbies. Corel is sually considered to be the easiest, but Mandrake is just as good and I like it better. Actually if you stay away from Slackware or Debian, you should do OK. Mandrake, Caldera, Red Hat and Corel are all excellent for beginners. | |
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| I agree, stay with Mandrake. Corel is easier, but it's not as functional, or secure (hey, it's owned by M$ after all).
You may want to upgrade to version 7.2, there are a lot of improvements. | |
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| Hey are we see a trend here, Microsoft Windows 2000, CE,ME,NT and Corel(Mandrake), who will be next in line for the MS global domination, Novell?, SUN? Linux(all flavours)?
Yeti the Paranoid  | |
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| I think sooner or later M$ will get it's own version of Linux and try porting it's major applications to it. That way they may even be able to compete with the open-software market, at least a little. It is clear at least from the aggressive marketing and innacurate comparisons that MS still can't match Linux, to say nothing of full-blown UN*X. Some years ago, MS did have XENIX, a PC-version of UN*X, but it was ditched in favour of windows as they wanted to concentrate on the PC market and UN*X seemed mainly for minis at the time. | |
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| It really would be a good idea for M$ to swallow up Novell once its cash reserves are depleted. M$'s marketing and Novell's active directory would be a powerful combination (CrashWare?). I doubt that M$ will ever create its own Linux distro because of the open source aspect of it. MSBSD is a possibility though. | |
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| LOL good one ccieToBe, then M$ would have Windows 2000 CE,ME,NT CrashWare  | |
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| Well, I don't think they would ever get behind it 100%, but Linux has been the fastest growing market out there for some time now especially for servers, and if Microsloth gets too worried, I thought they may re-issue some version of UNIX so that they could compete in that area as well, or at least boast that they now have a very stable product. It wouldn't be an ideal solution, but it's clear that they'd be willing to try anything if theior current tactics don't wash. The complexity of Unix still scares a lot of people off, if one can get the extra hardware support that windows has with ease of use, installation ans performance, they will try to claim it . . . especially once someone else has done all the work! | |
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| I don't know about any of you guys but I've been using win2000 for 9 months and it is yet to crash on me. I find it to be a very stable and amazingly scalable operating system. The one thing I have witnessed with Unix/Linux OS is that they constantly need to be re-booted for maintenence. I plan on learning Linux/Unix so I can further cross-train my self, not because I am intrigued by it's complexity. I'd rather use something friendly and extremely functionable for my day-to-day needs. | |
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| You're right, 2000 is very stable as a workstation, or low to mid end server. Even in the beta days it only crashed on me a couple times, and not at all since the final came out. Perhaps I should have said HackedWare or SlothWare (it's very insecure and runs much slower on the same hardware then Unix). A *nix box that has to be rebooted for anything other then a hardware change either has bad/unsupported hardware, or has been misconfigured. Any OS that is misconfigured or has bad/unsupported hardware suffers this problem (except win9x which suffers from it either way ). I agree that Windows is very user-friendly. That and hardware support are, in my opinion, its greatest strengths.
You'd rather use Windows because it's more functional? How's that? I always thought of Linux as a more functional OS. | |
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| Once you get used to UNIX, it is no less functional than Windows, but it does take a while to get used to it. It is more complex, but not as bad as a lot of people make it out to be. It's only extremely complictaed if you don't bother reading the manuals and expect it to be Windows. Like ccieToBe said, a Linux box that needs to be rebooted suffers from poor administration and HW probs. Windows does support more hardware and that seems it's major asset to me. | |
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| You'd rather use Windows because it's more functional? How's that? I always thought of Linux as a more functional OS. -- ccietobe
What I meant by that was that for my every day needs W2k is more functionable, a lot of the software that I need is Windows software and either is not offered for Linux systems or the version that is does not have all the functionality of the WIndows version. | |
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| That's one of the problems with free software . . . if it ain't out there, you gotta write it yourself! There is tons of free software but a lot of it can be buggy at times. If you look hard enoughm you can usually find something in Unix that does the job, but it's not always as easy as going to a commerical distributor. | |
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| I agree with beenframed. You want functionality. I have gained a lot of respect for Linux/UNIX over the past few months, but it is a long, long way from having the easy-of-use and support that Windows does. Whether you like it or not, Windows is not going anywhere anytime in the seeable future.
As far as the original post goes, Corel is a much better and easier to use Linux distribution if you are just planning to run a workstation. I would not recommend it as a server. Also, if I am correct Corel sold their Linux division to another developer. So, if you want continued support stick with Mandrake.
:-) | |
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| Yeah, that's the major problem with Linux now. The learning curve is still higher than with MS and it is not as widely supported with all sorts of hardware (particularly soundcards) and the applications are not always what one is used to even though you can usually find them in some form or another. Most people who use Linux dual-boot with some version of Windows anyway, so that this isn't usually a problem. The power and stability and flexibility of Linux still makes it a better server, but as a desktop it still has it's faults, at least for many people. | |
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| Yeah, until someone can come out with a Unix variant that's as easy use as Windows, or the FCC gets their way, Windows will remain the dominant workstation OS. I seriously doubt either of these will happen anytime soon. The server market share is much more vulnerable though. NT/2K/Whistler seem destined for the low end market. It would be nuts to use Win2k DataCenter Server (did that ever come out?), when you compare it to Solaris, and the other heavy duty variants. | |
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| I agree. I have switrched to Linux almost exclusviely for desktop use (except for certain software and Multimedia apps made specifically for Windows), but as a server (which is what UNIX has always excelled at anyway) thery are very difficult to beat. And of course for techies who just like to fart around with computers like me. You learn more about your machine when running UNIX and this can't be a bad thing. When you are literally FORCED to read the documentation and to do a substantial amount of troubleshooting yourself, you end up being a more capable administrator. | |
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| Being an NT admin, I've noticed a trend in the environment where we are not as respected as our Unix counterparts. Which by the way pisses me off!! It's not from the Unix admins themselves that this vibe comes from but everyone else out of IT. They think Unix is this mystical science or something. I've noticed that although there a hundreds of commands in Unix, that Unix admins tend to only have to use a handful of commands on a regular basis. They try to make it seem like theres a science to it..Please..give it up..No science just another program to learn. I have'nt started learning it yet but I will and then I can play the game just like the rest of them. Computers are computers and just that computers. Read enough books and spend enough time playing with something and you can be a wizard at it. | |
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| Haha, I just realized that in my post above I said FCC instead of DOJ. I guess playing around with those wireless NICs got to me (3COMs don't like SMCs).
I agree Beenframed. Unix may be more sophisticated then NT, but the concepts, which are what's most important to know are the same. I think this view of NT admins is partly the result of a few bad apples. You know how every once in a while you run into someone who has no clue what they're doing? From my experience, these people typically do tech support, or administer NT. It's a shame because I know some NT admins who really know their stuff. | |
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| People told me SESU is easy to learn and very User friendly...
However, I still believe that Linux is not for beginner even .... because there are too many think that need to know and explore... | |
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| I know it's silly. There are oodles of commands in Unix, but most are rarely, if ever used. The basic skills are not that difficult. I think a lot of people get afraid of it becasue maybe they had a bad experience at college (i.e., my first experience at writing a program was done with the 'vi' editor -- quite traumatic, I must say!) or were given the responibility of using or managing a Unix system without really knowing much about it, but it's all in what you are used to. It's not magic -- Spend some time learning it and you will get it. It does generally make more demands than a typical Windows workstation, and thus the learning curve is higher, but from what I hear, the new MCSE is no walk in the park either. I also think a lot of people who are afraid of command lines have forgotten what it is like to use old-fashioned DOS . . . if you started out looking at a blank screen with nothing more than a command prompt, it can be unnerving to a lot of people who don't already know what to do. But there is little "wizardry" to it . . . it's all a matter of getting used to it and applying your knowledge. And as far as incompetent Unix/NT admins . . . well, you can easily find incompetence anywhere I am afraid. | |
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| In the great OS debate, everything boils down to what you are looking to get out of your network and the political climate in which you operate.
I personally like netware conceptually and for a large distributed organization (10,000+), netware and NDS, in particular make it easier to manage this type of structure. However, reality is that Novell is in serious financial trouble and new installations of netware are almost non-existent in this country. I give Novell another 6 months to get turned around with their "services" strategy before they must make some severe choices (ie, selling off pieces).
win2k. The AD is a half-step in the direction of NDS. Domains are still flat structures and administration is still heavily group oriented. The forest and tree concept is a good start towards building enterprise-level networks, but it requires a heavy commitment to win2k. This usually includes AD, win2k DNS, etc. As far as reliability is concerned, I have managed to crash pro on several occasions, but I do admit that is much more stable than nt 40 and I especially like the product support (consistently finds all of my devices on install). Parallel ports are still a problem, but this is more of a change in attitude on MS's part with respect to direct IO devices. This will probably be a good thing in the future. MS has always blamed errant drivers and poor coding on its blue screens and with win2k certified software, we will get to see if this is truly the case.
Insofar as DataCenter is concerned, this is a concerted attempt to build a product the same way Compaq, Sun, and the big iron vendors have done for years: sell a solution, not just an OS. Sun knows very well that if you build the hardware and produce an OS, you control most of the action. Your OS should run very well in this setup. Apple are you listening? DataCenter isn't about Microsoft becoming a hardware vendor, but it is about certification of hardware configurations and driver compatability. The just is out until this has a chance to be judged in the field.
*nix. Ah, I always try to save the best for last  The biggest difference between MS and *nix (IMO) is the fact that *nix is pretty much a deterministic system. I can tell what is happening and why such an event is occurring. With MS, these things are hidden from the admin and you must assume that things are working properly under the surface. Add in the 20 years of bug fixes and tweaking and you have a very stable system (once it's configured properly).
One of my jobs is to respond to vulnerabilities in our Sun, HP, and MS products. Aside from Red Hat, which seems to produce a lot of required fixes, the Sun and HP patches combined about are about a tenth of the patches required for MS. IIS alone accounts for half of my problems.
Yes, *nix is cryptic sometimes, but only because you are exposed to the guts of the OS. Behind the User Manager for Domains in MS, is a useradd command
In sum, each OS has its advantages and competition has provided all of us with better products in shorter time frames. Even if you never use Linux, I would like to think that your windows box has benefited in at least a small way from the competitive environment. | |
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| Well said cruss575. I've noticed the same thing about RedHat being one of the more buggy *nixs.
I've never had had a chance to play around with HP Unix. Could you share some insight on this OS (ie comparison to other Unix variants). |
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