Hey all

Well, Im pretty new to linux, but after reading up on some of the superiorities over windows, im willing to give it a shot

Anyway, there are so many types out there, I have not a clue where to start, so I thought I might ask around, see what is best for me.

Basically, i am a web designer and programmer, and I would like to be able to test certain web applications locally. I also want to be able to do the usual office stuff as well (word docs, spreadsheets, etc.) Lets see, email, music, etc. So what should I look to first? Thanks a bunch.

I would recommend Red Hat 9. It should detect and configure most of your hardware without any problems. You can use it as a workstation or server or both.

ok thanks

i checked the redhat website (www.redhat.com) and saw that they are going to discontinue support on redhat 9 in a matter of months, I also saw something called Fedora, how is that?

I've been a fan of redhat for many years now. I have Red Hat 9 on my server (that runs this site) and on my desktop. You can consider Fedora to be Red Hat Linux 10 if you like, however I don't feel that it's really ready for prime time yet. If you're looking to get your feet wet with Linux, I still suggest Red Hat 9. If after a few months you are comfortable with it, you can try Fedora or any other distribution out there but I personally wouldn't jump ship to fedora right now. I had it installed on my system for a few weeks and didn't care for it too much. The installer wasn't as user friendly as RH9's is and I kept on having various problems with the desktop.

Alright, ill take a look at red hat 9, thanks for you help

Hey Joel,


He is a question for you which RED HAT IS BEST IN THE YEARS THE RED HAT 8 OR 9 WHAT DO YOU THINK

I didn't really like fedora much either ... and since redhat is discontining support, I shifted to debian ... but it isn't nearly as easy to install. And adding devices that aren't detected is a pain.

Another option might be WhiteBox Enterprise Linux ... it is a distro based on RedHat Enterprise Linux 3. It will get all the updates/errata that RedHat puts out for thier RHEL 3 AS, ES, WS products.

Right now it is fairly up to date (Mozilla 1.4, Gnome 2.2, KDE 3.1.3, Xfree 4.3.0, OpenOffice 1.02) ... but it will become outdated as time passes because RH will probably only put out security patches and bug fixes to maintain it's stablity. It will make a very good server ... maybe not so good a workstation if you want the latest and greatest packages.

chrisw is installing WBEL soon ... and I have it on 5 machines ... it seems very stable.

Mandrake 9.2 is also a free and very up to date option.