On Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 03:34:17PM -0700, DON.RAIKES at ORACLE.COM wrote: > I realize I am probably starting a feud, but what are the pros and cons Fedora and Ubuntu are probably the easiest for getting started in Linux. Debian still doesn't support SpeakUP, and for the foreseeable next three years, probably still won't, and the others are more difficult to use and learn. Fedora is Redhat based as far as their package manager (the ability to add/remove programs) and is probably the more popular, while Ubuntu uses the Debian package manager, which in my opinion is the superior product (unless Fedora has improved their older practices, and I think they have). There's probably just a tad more support for Fedora, but don't quote me on it. I'm still sticking with Debian, myself, for the bug-tracking system, the package manager, and their ideals to never release crap, even if it means releasing nothing at all. download and try the Live-CD's, which allow you to try each distro before deciding on the one that suits. They run in memory and don't change your current operating system. Hang out in the irc.freenode.net chatrooms and see which impresses you the most. You can tell alot about a distro by the users running it and what help they generally provide. You'll probably be visiting them alot as you learn your way around the system. I would recommend trying the Fedora and Ubuntu Live-CD's, see how well written and helpful they are as far as documentation and ease of setup goes, and pick one or the other of the two. It is going to be an adventure as you learn, and you'll likely go back and make many changes to how you want things set up, especially where disk partitioning is concerned, and kept data. I like my home or user directories separate, so daya I've collected is still there if I need to reinstall from scratch or decide to ditch everything for another distro. YMMV, but Fedora and Ubuntu will give you the fullest of all possible setup options and software selections of the latest and greatest stuff. All the other distros are mainly offshoots of Redhat, Debian, BSD, SuSE, and Slackware, each being noted mainly for their method of package or software management. I don't recommend the last three, as their package management methods and software selection sucks by comparison to the first two. Redhat/Fedora will probably provide the most support, and while Debian/Ubuntu fixes the bugs quicker, Debian (not Ubuntu) takes forever to add support for newer software. HTH, Michael
