I'm was in a similar position a year or so back. I used Red Hat for a while and I must say the install for Red Hat 7.1 is lovely! Now I'm using Debian Woody and am unlikely to go back. I think the Debian "philosophy" (for want of a better word) suits me better. As a new user I feel that there is more of an emphasis on getting a good basic understanding the OS without having to go into really esoteric minutia with Debian. apt-get is outstanding and the help on the mailing list has been in my experience the fastest and most accurate of any I've used.
FWIW a friend of mine really likes Mandrake. Install and use, no sweat. If you've got the bucks or the bandwidth then you might want to get a few sets of CD's and have a little install party once a month or so. Use a distro for a while, talk to the people on each mailing list, then a month later blow it away and start over with a new one. See which one you really like. Good luck and have fun! John Purser -----Original Message----- From: Royce Bell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2001 08:53 To: [email protected] Subject: Takin' the plunge... Okay, this is it. I'm about to take the plunge into Linux, but my experience with dumb terminal-based Unix is over 20 years old. In the interim, I've been on Windows; a sometimes happy, but always frustrating and infuriating marriage of convenience and productivity-enslavement. Debian Linux was recommended to me by a friend, but (this is embarrassing to admit, as I feel like a newbie all over again) quite frankly, I'm confusingly overwhelmed at the different products now available. Debian, RedHat, etc. Everybody says theirs is the best, but they cannot all be correct. I don't particularly want to go back to the command line, but I do appreciate the minimalist approach of Unix, especially from a security standpoint. Any suggestions to ease the mind and grease the process? rb ================= R. P. Bell Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
