[Tfug] Thinking linux

[Jeremy D Rogers]

I may be wrong, but from the point of view of someone very familiar
with another free unix, I would say the main difference in distro's
will just come down to package management. Since you are the type who
will be comfortable under the hood, the variation in fluff won't
matter much, so you can pretty much just choose between:
*.rpm based (ughh!!.. trust me, just stay away.)
*.deb based (debian, ubuntu, etc, etc.)
source(ish) based (slack, gentoo, linux from scratch)

You would probably learn the most from LFS, but getting started might
take a while. Gentoo has pretty stellar documentation. The network
installers for debian or ubuntu are great (dowload 20-50MB iso, burn,
boot, and install everything you need from the net). I'm guessing
gentoo has something similar.

On 2/4/07, christopher floess <skeptikos at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ok, I have an extra computer at home, and would like to run linux on it. I
> know this could turn into a long thread, so let me narrow the scope of
> discourse by giving you some background. Noob-friendly isn't really an issue
> for me b/c I've been on FreeBSD for four years now. I basically want the
> best for getting to know the ins and outs of the linux environment. That
> having been said, I would think that the Ubuntu variants might not be the
> best way to go because I don't want to spend a bunch of time trying to
> dismantle the user friendly veneer, just to get at the guts. I don't know
> the distro that well, so maybe it's not such a big deal. Let me know. I had
> a friend who was fond of slackware, but that was some years ago, and
> considering how many cd's it takes for the install, I think that the
> slackware of old might have had a different intended audience. Again, this
> is simply speculation, so chime in. Is it worth it to pay for the slackware
> dvd set? I've pretty much avoided the freebsd package system, and prefer
> something that has a good porting system. Doesn't debian fall into this
> category? Any way, the only reason I'm even looking is b/c I've enjoyed my
> time w/ freebsd, and would like to expand my  horizons. That's it. fire away
> with your opinions, everyone.... oh, one more thing. I would like the two
> systems  to be networked, and after the install, the linux box will probably
> have to funtion as a headless system.
>
> --
> I worry about viruses like I worry about terrorists
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