Linux Newbie - Which Distribution?

[High_Jumbllama]

I have hold of some old machines. P3 level with 256 or 512MB of ram. I want to begin to learn Linux. I downloaded Ubuntu Server and desktop. Saw it mentioned in a few articles. I know Windows backwards and forwards so I consider myself very capable though I do acknowledge that Linux is different. Would distribution matter to get started?

[VJ]

I believe KUbuntu is easy to install...
(and has a lot of packages available)

Maybe also check out the alternative lifestyle forum?


Jörg

[TransformX]

Kubuntu is KDE based, might be a bit heavy. It depends very much on the cpu and graphic card from there. I'd suggest Ubuntu desktop, which you already have. Been using it as my primary OS both at work and home, quite happy with it, more than with windows.

[cjolley]

Plain Ubuntu will seem familiar.
I like Xubuntu.
The Ubuntu family of Linuxes are all pretty "turn the key and go" nowadays.
You can play 1337 if you want to, but generally you don't have to know much to get the usual things done.

[VJ]

TransformX: good thought... I keep forgetting KDE has become quite heavy. Would a gnome based X be a better option?

[TransformX]

gnome is more lightweight (not as xfce, but it also looks far better), especially if you don't enable compiz fusion.

[Nowhere]

When it comes to weight they're about the same tbh...but Kubuntu is badly broken for some time/it doesn't seem to get much love.

If you want to try KDE, OpenSUSE implementation is great, both old KDE3 & new KDE4 (it has become usable in the last OpenSUSE release 2 months ago, I guess it will be all good in the next release)

[UtwigMU]

There is server Linux and there is desktop Linux and it involves learing different stuff and with both there are different priorities.

With server you want as long term availability of updates and packages as possible. Besides RHEL and SLES there is Debian (best choice if you don't need commercial support IMO), CentOS (RedHat clone), Ubuntu server and maybe also Slackware. With servers you typically do minimum text install and then only install stuff you need (Samba, Apache, MySQL, PHP...) and you administer them through CLI via SSH from a Windows or Linux box.

For desktop you want cutting edge packages and drivers. Good choices are OpenSuse, Ubuntu. Not familiar with Mandriva and other distros.

I'd recommend you do a desktop first so that you get familiar with basics. You will then have to learn the CLI, where config files are and how to edit them, where the logs are...