Re: New to Linux

On Apr 16, 2011 11:18 AM, <foldingstock@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Like I said, "A Lot has changed in 12 years". Debian is more friendly
today than yesterday as are most distros, but there are others that are
friendlier, a lot friendlier.

So, I stand by my initial statement that Debian is not suitable for the
Linux firsttimer. I would never recommend it to a noobie. With Debian,
you need to know, at least somewhat, what you're doing.

B


I think if someone is capable of reading and comprehending the excellent
documentation available, there should be no problem using Debian. This is
how many people have learned.


The debian documentation is among the best (along with gentoo and FreeBSD).
That said, when I want to get something done this isn't the first place I
look - I google and what I find there. I don't suppose I could consider
myself 'new' anymore and it did take me a year to figure out how to find
things on the net.

I think that any distro that doesn't do quirky things is good for beginners
(ie, sles having aliases and definitions for everything is just stupid). If
a distro keeps its etc pretty standard, puts things in the right place in
the directory tree, and has a good user base, it should be good to learn on.
(the first and second reason are why I hate mandrake)

There is also the issue of how you use linux. If you want a free OS that
just works, you can install debian or ubuntu (or maybe fedora - idk) and
most things should pretty much work. You can use this environment and that's
great. However I don't think you really learn linux like this.

Otoh, you can run mac or windows and just access linux through putty or
terminal.app and get tons of experience.

In the end, I suppose it just depends what you want to get out of it.

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