# Hmm, which distro?



## Tycho (Jun 8, 2008)

I posed the question "What's the best choice of distro for a Linux n00b?" I received a response, but never one to be content with just ONE answer, I decided to smear another poll onto the face of Bits and Bytes in the hopes of gleaning information relevant to my interests.


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## Magica (Jun 8, 2008)

My brother has those really old custom built computers were all it can run smoothly is 2000, and barely XP. He wanted to try Linux that still had the Windows style and people on some message forum reccomended him Ubuntu.


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## Keowolf (Jun 9, 2008)

Yeah, I'd definitely recommend trying out Ubuntu before other distros.

I can't say that I'm very Linux-inclined yet, but my Hardy Heron installation went very well. I thought I'd have problems with getting sound and wireless networking to function, but when the computer booted the OS for the first time, they both operated fine with no further tweaking. I was very impressed.


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## WarMocK (Jun 9, 2008)

I think that the answer is not that easy at all. The most important questions are: what hardware do you have, and how much do you want to learn about your system?
If you have older hardware you need a distri that is able to run on it, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE etc require quite a lot of ressources when compared to smaller distris. The best thing that I saw for older PCs yet is Wolvix or Vector. They both require little hardware ressources, and they have good wizard tools to help you configure your system. If you don't have to care about your hardware specs, get Ubuntu.
The second question is probably the most important one. Ubuntu works much different from other distris, i.e. you don't know a lot about Linux if you always stick to Ubuntu. If you want to learn a little more about how your System works you should get Mandriva because they have a very good hardware support.
And btw: don't call yourself a n00b, no need to offend yourself. You are a newbie to Linux, a n00b wouldn't get the hang of using Linux even if he got three admins sitting next to him and do all the things that he is supposed to do. ;-)


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## TheGreatCrusader (Jun 9, 2008)

Ubuntu is the most user friendly distro there is. It doesn't compare to the ease of use that Windows or OS X has, but it is the best of Linux.


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## net-cat (Jun 9, 2008)

Ubuntu.

(Or Xubuntu if you're worried about resources.)


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## nrr (Jun 9, 2008)

Seriously, why?  Why even consider trying to get into Linux?


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## WarMocK (Jun 9, 2008)

nrr said:


> Seriously, why?  Why even consider trying to get into Linux?


Because you could help yourself instead asking someone when your system crashes? Oo


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## nrr (Jun 9, 2008)

WarMocK said:


> Because you could help yourself instead asking someone when your system crashes? Oo


I do not see the connection here at all.  Please elaborate.


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## Pi (Jun 9, 2008)

Xubuntu.


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## Eevee (Jun 9, 2008)

nrr said:


> Seriously, why?  Why even consider trying to get into Linux?


because some people care about ui or freedom zero or whatever, but do not give a crap how badly you think the kernel is designed


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## An Sionnach Rua (Jun 9, 2008)

I'd never even heard of FreeSpire.


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## Aurali (Jun 9, 2008)

Linux has a horribly designed kernel.. >..> that said.. I hate this poll... I want my KDE baby!


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## Pi (Jun 9, 2008)

Eli said:


> Linux has a horribly designed kernel.. >..> that said.. I hate this poll... I want my KDE baby!



Yes, and now for entertainment value, point out _why_ Linux has a badly-designed kernel.

($5 says you can't do it)


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## nrr (Jun 9, 2008)

Pi said:


> ($5 says you can't do it)


$5 says that this twit will regurgitate the reasons I've been giving here.


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## WarMocK (Jun 10, 2008)

nrr said:


> I do not see the connection here at all.  Please elaborate.


Do you want to call an admin each time your X server crashes and all it would take is to get the old xorg.conf reinstalled to make it run again? Oo


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## Pi (Jun 10, 2008)

WarMocK said:


> Do you want to call an admin each time your X server crashes and all it would take is to get the old xorg.conf reinstalled to make it run again? Oo



Does the average user know what an xorg is?


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## WarMocK (Jun 10, 2008)

Pi said:


> Does the average user know what an xorg is?


Well, hewill when suddenly the nice and colorfull pics are gone and all they see is a black monitor with some white text on it. ;-)
btw: this was just an example. I could have used an issue with a shared lib as well, but the xorg is what came to my mind first because I had to fix a problem with it a few days ago. ^^


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## Pi (Jun 10, 2008)

WarMocK said:


> Well, hewill when suddenly the nice and colorfull pics are gone and all they see is a black monitor with some white text on it. ;-)
> btw: this was just an example. I could have used an issue with a shared lib as well, but the xorg is what came to my mind first because I had to fix a problem with it a few days ago. ^^



You've obviously never done user support. Ever.

Begone.


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## WarMocK (Jun 10, 2008)

Pi said:


> You've obviously never done user support. Ever.


LOL, that's what you think. ;-)


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## Pi (Jun 10, 2008)

WarMocK said:


> LOL, that's what you think. ;-)



Okay then. How many years of user support and UNIX administration do you have under your belt?


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## WarMocK (Jun 10, 2008)

Pi said:


> Okay then. How many years of user support and UNIX administration do you have under your belt?


I had to lie if I say that I do user support where I could get money for, if that's what you want to hear. ^^
I'm using Linux for six years now, but still I think I only scratched the surface. Nevertheless people ask me if they have probs rather than a friend of mine who is a real Linux pro. The thing is, the probs i had to fix were rather simple ones (broken symlinks to a needed .so, crewed up confs etc). That usually isn't that much of a problem, but if you ask a geek you will likely lose any motivation to use Linux because that $insetoffendingwordhere tries to make youfeel like you don't belong to the chosen circle of Linux users (iow: the guys that keep the prejudices about Linux alive -.-).
When I was using gentoo, I once had a prob with a SCSI controller, so I went to the gentoo channel. The way I was treated there made me throw out my gentoo installation on my desktop the same day and used Ubuntufor a short time (I've never seen so much arrogance in one place in my entire life!). Later we discovered that the 2.6 kernel had a bug that needed a workaround to make the controller run, but at that point I was done with Gentoo once and for all.


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## Pi (Jun 10, 2008)

WarMocK said:


> I had to lie if I say that I do user support where I could get money for, if that's what you want to hear.



Thought so. This conversation is over.


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## WarMocK (Jun 10, 2008)

Pi said:


> Thought so. This conversation is over.


that's fine with me.
Well, back to work, GIMP's calling.


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## nrr (Jun 10, 2008)

WarMocK said:


> Do you want to call an admin each time your X server crashes and all it would take is to get the old xorg.conf reinstalled to make it run again? Oo


OK, but who's going to be dumb enough to run Linux on their desktop box at work?

... and this thing about xorg.conf has me perplexed.  I've never had something totally destroy /etc/X11/xorg.conf by itself, so I'm trying to understand how you got there.


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## WarMocK (Jun 10, 2008)

nrr said:


> OK, but who's going to be dumb enough to run Linux on their desktop box at work?
> 
> ... and this thing about xorg.conf has me perplexed.  I've never had something totally destroy /etc/X11/xorg.conf by itself, so I'm trying to understand how you got there.


Well, almost every PC in our institute runs on either Linux or BSD. And it's a productive environment, not for software development. ^^
And as for the xorg: Dapper Drake + NVIDIA 7600GS.
I wanted to replace the open NV driver with the official NVIDIA driver to install Compiz. After using nvidia-xconfig the screen kept being black, and I manually had to edit xorg.conf (ie: delete the new generated conf and put the backup file in again, I know i just could have replaced nvidia with nv in the dricer section, but I wanted to make sure the system runs again) to get X back. The prob was the official nvidia driver btw, the later version fixed it.


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## nrr (Jun 10, 2008)

WarMocK said:


> I wanted to replace the open NV driver with the official NVIDIA driver to install Compiz.


Yeah, see, no.

You deliberately fucked with it, and it broke.  You get to keep both pieces.


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## WarMocK (Jun 10, 2008)

nrr said:


> Yeah, see, no.
> 
> You deliberately fucked with it, and it broke.  You get to keep both pieces.


hehe, I backed up the necessary libs and configs anyways, I was warned about installing Compiz. ;-)


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## nrr (Jun 10, 2008)

WarMocK said:


> hehe, I backed up the necessary libs and configs anyways, I was warned about installing Compiz. ;-)


Again, you deliberately fucked with it, and it broke.

Did you not learn anything from your time in Zivildienst?  Whenever something isn't broken, don't mess with it.


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## WarMocK (Jun 10, 2008)

nrr said:


> Again, you deliberately fucked with it, and it broke.
> 
> Did you not learn anything from your time in Zivildienst?  Whenever something isn't broken, don't mess with it.


No risk, no fun. ;-)


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## Xenofur (Jun 10, 2008)

WarMocK said:


> our institute


Max Planck?


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## WarMocK (Jun 10, 2008)

Xenofur said:


> Max Planck?


RWTH Aachen


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## Pi (Jun 10, 2008)

WarMocK said:


> No risk, no fun. ;-)



If I may come back to point out the immense stupidity of your words, you state that the average user will think it's a great idea to replace the nv driver (which works) with the closed one (which has a chance of breakage) and then suddenly figure out what xorg is, and then be GLAD their computer is fucked because it's linux and they can fix it?

I weep for our future generations.


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## WarMocK (Jun 10, 2008)

Pi ....

You made my day!


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## Eevee (Jun 10, 2008)

Eli said:


> Linux has a horribly designed kernel.. >..> that said.. I hate this poll... I want my KDE baby!


KDE is a window manager and fuckload of other things, not a distribution.



WarMocK said:


> I wanted to replace the open NV driver with the official NVIDIA driver to install Compiz. After using nvidia-xconfig the screen kept being black, and I manually had to edit xorg.conf (ie: delete the new generated conf and put the backup file in again, I know i just could have replaced nvidia with nv in the dricer section, but I wanted to make sure the system runs again) to get X back.


Ubuntu now has a "safe" default xorg.conf when the existing one doesn't work, and dpkg can rewrite a simple one for you.  Eventually this should no longer be a problem.


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## WarMocK (Jun 10, 2008)

Eevee said:


> Ubuntu now has a "safe" default xorg.conf when the existing one doesn't work, and dpkg can rewrite a simple one for you.  Eventually this should no longer be a problem.


That's good to hear. thanks for the info! ^^
Might be a good reason to have a look at Xubuntu again.


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## Aurali (Jun 10, 2008)

nrr said:


> $5 says that this twit will regurgitate the reasons I've been giving here.



did you just call me a twit??



Eevee said:


> KDE is a window manager and fuckload of other things, not a distribution.


 Yeah. I know that... but none of the higher KDE distros (IE: Debian, Kubuntu) are up there :3 just one I've never heard of..

Well, besides blue screening more on linux (which is a problem in what part of the OS?) than on the other OSes put together...
Oh.. on the kernel issues.. should I start naming DoS vulnerabilities? :3 or would you like me to share reasons that'll make a normal linux user cringe.


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## Pi (Jun 10, 2008)

Eli said:


> did you just call me a twit??


You know, I think he just did.


> Oh.. on the kernel issues.. should I start naming DoS vulnerabilities? :3 or would you like me to share reasons that'll make a normal linux user cringe.


What I'd actually like to know is if you're capable of completing a sentence without :3 or >.>

But yeah, start explaining why Linux has a badly designed kernel. You know, like I insinuated that you couldn't do.


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## Aurali (Jun 10, 2008)

Nope! I can't speak without emoticons... they are too fun to use.. seriously? I do it to not sound spiteful (which you currently do). And since I don't take well to insults... I won't give what's his name the opportunity to continue this debate. Besides, I would just say things that would be backed up with a simple google search. Sorry 3.14159


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## Pi (Jun 10, 2008)

Eli said:


> Nope! I can't speak without emoticons... they are too fun to use.. seriously? I do it to not sound spiteful (which you currently do). And since I don't take well to insults... I won't give what's his name the opportunity to continue this debate. Besides, I would just say things that would be backed up with a simple google search. Sorry 3.14159



that's twice you've backed down from an opportunity to present your data in a useful fashion. Do you actually know what you're talking about?


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## Aurali (Jun 10, 2008)

When was the first time? (I'm assuming a different thread). and like I said earlier. I won't say anything you can't find on google. As that is where I do pull most information from. If you want to talk about /MY/ "data", I'd give you personal experience, which is not replicable to anyone else. And like I previously spoke, if your going to insult me. I refuse to answer. As is my right.


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## Pi (Jun 11, 2008)

Eli said:


> When was the first time? (I'm assuming a different thread). and like I said earlier. I won't say anything you can't find on google. As that is where I do pull most information from. If you want to talk about /MY/ "data", I'd give you personal experience, which is not replicable to anyone else. And like I previously spoke, if your going to insult me. I refuse to answer. As is my right.



So, you don't actually have an opinion or any hard data? Your knowledge entirely comes from google? You don't have data?

Wasn't I saying that in the first place?


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## nrr (Jun 11, 2008)

Eevee said:


> Ubuntu now has a "safe" default xorg.conf when the existing one doesn't work, and dpkg can rewrite a simple one for you.  Eventually this should no longer be a problem.


It's called mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf ~/xorg.conf.`date +%Y-%m-%d`&& X -configure.  Follow the on-screen instructions, and all should be right with the world.


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## nrr (Jun 11, 2008)

Eli said:


> did you just call me a twit??


Yes.


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## nrr (Jun 11, 2008)

Eli said:


> I won't give what's his name the opportunity to continue this debate.


*[size=+2]You just lost the game.[/size]*


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## Eevee (Jun 11, 2008)

Eli said:


> Yeah. I know that... but none of the higher KDE distros (IE: Debian, Kubuntu) are up there :3 just one I've never heard of..


:3

An Ubuntu installation is trivially transformed into Kubuntu.


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## WarMocK (Jun 11, 2008)

nrr said:


> It's called mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf ~/xorg.conf.`date +%Y-%m-%d`&& X -configure.


mc
go to the folder with the backups and to /etc/x11
select the old xorg.conf
press F5 to copy (and confirm that you want to overwrite the screwed up config)
done
(maybe i missed a spot, but I usually don't need mc to repair my X server, since the error never occured again. ^^)

And yes, I COULD have used mv (or cp) for the job, but I hate using plain commands that don't give me any visual feedback, and I'd rather take my time to verify it's the correct file I replace than make things worse by a typo in the command. No need to break a record in fixing  a little error.


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## nrr (Jun 11, 2008)

WarMocK said:


> mc
> go to the folder with the backups and to /etc/x11
> select the old xorg.conf
> press F5 to copy (and confirm that you want to overwrite the screwed up config)
> ...


See, I grew up on IRIX, so I never had this "mc" garbage.  I did have a nice GUI, yes, but I didn't have a GUI as root.

... and even then, IRIX actually shipped with utilities that would configure your X server for you.  Think kdmconfig (x86) and m64config (sun4u + Rage 64 graphics) under Solaris, just a lot less retarded.



			
				WarMocK said:
			
		

> And yes, I COULD have used mv (or cp) for the job, but I hate using plain commands that don't give me any visual feedback, and I'd rather take my time to verify it's the correct file I replace than make things worse by a typo in the command. No need to break a record in fixing  a little error.


mv -v $XORG_CONF ~/xorg.conf.`date +%Y-%m-%d`


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## Eevee (Jun 11, 2008)

Eli said:


> When was the first time? (I'm assuming a different thread). and like I said earlier. I won't say anything you can't find on google. As that is where I do pull most information from. If you want to talk about /MY/ "data", I'd give you personal experience, which is not replicable to anyone else. And like I previously spoke, if your going to insult me. I refuse to answer. As is my right.


do you have _anything_ useful to say at all, or are you only full of passive-aggressive banter and just barely enough buzzwords to pretend you've even heard of anything we're talking about?



nrr said:


> It's called mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf ~/xorg.conf.`date +%Y-%m-%d`&& X -configure.  Follow the on-screen instructions, and all should be right with the world.


how intuitive


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## Aurali (Jun 11, 2008)

Eevee said:


> :3
> 
> An Ubuntu installation is trivially transformed into Kubuntu.



Yes. I know^^ My version of kubuntu was originally ubuntu. 


Eevee said:


> do you have _anything_ useful to say at all, or are you only full of passive-aggressive banter and just barely enough buzzwords to pretend you've even heard of anything we're talking about?



actually.. no. I'm self taught. and still learning.. I don't know everything. and I don't expect to be able to know everything you are talking about... but I'm learning. and if you prove me wrong. I'll back down.


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## WarMocK (Jun 11, 2008)

Eli said:


> actually.. no. I'm self taught. and still learning.. I don't know everything. and I don't expect to be able to know everything you are talking about... but I'm learning. and if you prove me wrong. I'll back down.


I started in a similar way, as nobody I knew would have been able to help me.
Nevertheless, learning-by-doing still is quite a lot of fun if you have a system you can experiment on. Of course, learning Linux on a productive system the trial-and-error way is not a good idea. ;-)


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## Pi (Jun 12, 2008)

Eli said:


> if you prove me wrong. I'll back down.



Says the girl who thinks cookies are unwanted software and can be accessed with "special parameters".

Oh, and refuses to prove herself when asked. Yeah, that's great.


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## Armaetus (Jun 12, 2008)

Ubuntu obviously, easy to use for everyday tasks like browsing, IMing or IRC chat. Lots of downloadable addons and other stuff.

A little tricky at first to set up folder permissions since you can't log in as root and have to do it some other way.


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## net-cat (Jun 12, 2008)

mrchris said:


> A little tricky at first to set up folder permissions since you can't log in as root and have to do it some other way.


... sudo?


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## WarMocK (Jun 12, 2008)

mrchris said:


> Ubuntu obviously, easy to use for everyday tasks like browsing, IMing or IRC chat. Lots of downloadable addons and other stuff.
> 
> A little tricky at first to set up folder permissions since you can't log in as root and have to do it some other way.



su ;-)


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## Pi (Jun 12, 2008)

WarMocK said:


> su ;-)



su doesn't work when root has * or x in the second field in /etc/shadow. Which you would know if you've used ubuntu for more than 5 minutes. Stop posting.


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## WarMocK (Jun 12, 2008)

Pi said:


> su doesn't work when root has * or x in the second field in /etc/shadow. Which you would know if you've used ubuntu for more than 5 minutes. Stop posting.



On Dapper Drake:
sudo passwd
type pw
retype pw

su

http://ubuntu.blog.de/2006/02/21/su_unter_ubuntu~581062


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## Pi (Jun 12, 2008)

WarMocK said:


> On Dapper Drake:
> sudo passwd
> type pw
> retype pw
> ...



That enables the root account (filling out the aforementioned /etc/shadow field), which isn't supported in Ubuntu. You're supposed to use sudo.

Stop posting.


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## WarMocK (Jun 12, 2008)

Pi said:


> That enables the root account (filling out the aforementioned /etc/shadow field).


Yes, and I did it just for fun (or should I say: to speed the system setup up a little after I installed Ubuntu for the first time and tried to experiment with it, as I do with all my distros the first time I get my hands on them. }:->)


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## Pi (Jun 12, 2008)

WarMocK said:


> Yes, and I did it just for fun (or should I say: to speed the system setup up a little after I installed Ubuntu for the first time and tried to experiment with it, as I do with all my distros the first time I get my hands on them. }:->)



Whatever. You break it, you keep both pieces. No sympathy.

also, sudo -s


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## verix (Jun 13, 2008)

WarMocK said:


> On Dapper Drake:
> sudo passwd
> type pw
> retype pw
> ...


This post reminds me of this video a lot.


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## Tomtenizze (Jun 21, 2008)

"What's the best choice of distro for a Linux n00b?"

The best choice would be Zenwalk in my opinion.


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## arcticsilver (Jun 21, 2008)

net-cat said:


> Ubuntu.
> 
> (Or Xubuntu if you're worried about resources.)



Beated me right to the punch about Xubuntu.


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## Foxie299 (Jun 21, 2008)

I made the switch from Windows to Ubuntu.  Best thing about Ubuntu is the support.  Not an easy switch, but well worth it.


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## WarMocK (Jun 23, 2008)

Foxie299 said:


> I made the switch from Windows to Ubuntu.  Best thing about Ubuntu is the support.  Not an easy switch, but well worth it.


Signed.
(K)Ubuntu is probably the best start for Linux newbies atm. I just wished they'd eventually join the Manbo project, even though they are DEB based and not RPM. But since Ubuntu now even supports PackageKit ... ^^


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## SFox (Jun 25, 2008)

Linux From Scratch

This is a good way to be introduced to Linux, at least for computer savvy people, because you learn a ton of stuff about how the os works and how to use the command line during the process of compiling/installing/configuring it.

It was actually my first experience with Linux and I find it a lot of fun to set up a lfs system.


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