I'm switching over to Linux, got some q's

[Onno Kreuzinger]

*lol*
i will acctually come back to that debian offer, but be aware i will only ask hard questions (i'm aware of google *g*)
in return i can help on redhat, mandrake, and most network appliances (incl. smaler cisco's).

[botmeister]

Originally Posted by Terran

@memed:
Knoppix is very cool and I'm using it for some of our desktop systems. For servers I go with plain Debian.
Debian has three main trees: stable testing and unstable.

Use "stable" for production systems. Some of the packages seam to be outdated by newer releases but all known bugs get fixed first in this release. For instance the backported all kernelfixes (do_req bug) to the 2.4.18 kernel. The only drawback is that no new features will be added to "stable".

If you need more current releases (or new features) try the "testing" tree.

And if you want have your hands on the latest developments "unstable" is you choice.

The best feature of Debian (and Knoppix) ist the "apt-get" utility (don't use dselect or tastselect to install new packages as they install a lot of unneccessary stuff). "apt-get update" updates the list of available packages and "apt-get dist-upgrade" upgrades your system to the most current version of the selected tree. And installing new programs is also simple: "apt-get install apache"! Well, sometimes it's hard to guess the right package name (libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2 provides libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3) but that is the same for other distributions .

Feel free to ask me if you get stuck with debian/knoppix at some point

I found Knoppix boot CD great way to testing out my various hardware. I can boot it up on any of my windows servers without having to install anything on a hard drive, and it won't mess up my existing installations.

At the moment I am testing out installations of debian. Lot's to learn!

[FrostyCoolSlug]

My personal 'Distro of choice' would have to be Gentoo.. Unlike most linux distrobutions, Gentoo gets compiled from the ground up, making it as stable as possible for your intended use. although there are different 'stages' avaliable (Stage 1, you download and compile EVERYTHING, Stage 2, All the important parts come included, you just need to download and compile everything that makes a system work, and Stage 3, the only thing you need to download and compile is your kernel). It comes with a fully covered manual to help you on your way, and some handy little features to make your life easier (for example, emerge will automatically download and compile packages with relevant patches for you).

Its great if you wanna get your hands dirty when it comes to building your system, and due to its nature, allows a lot of customisability

[EDIT]As a note, if you plan on installing the XFree86 system, you might as well stick to windows. i find X pointless for what was designed to be a 'command line system' :p[/EDIT]

Small tip: One problem at a time !

Maher