Here is how it goes:

Red Hat used to have a free community edition in the past. They discontinued that and now thy concentrate on paying enterprise clients.

In the meantime they started the Fedora foundation for developing a free version of linux based on Red Hat core.

So Fedora is the community testbed for all the bleeding edge stuff. They incorporate all the risky kernel modules, new applications, do the security tweaks and etc… Whatever works in Fedora is usually later adopted by Red Hat in their newest stable version.

Ubuntu on the other hand is owned by a multi millionaire Mark Shuttleworth who essentially just throws money at the project. If you don’t believe me, look it up. ;)

Ubuntu is based on Debian, but it aims for a much faster development cycle. When Debian releases new version of their OS every 3-4 years, Ubunu gets a new version out every 6 months.

Also, Debian based distributions are a piece of cake to upgrade.

For example to go from Hoary to Dapper all I had to do was to change every refference to Hoary to Dapper in my /etc/apt/sources.list and then just run:

apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

An hour or so later I had a shiny updated OS, with all my data and settings remaining intact.

This is one of the reasons why I like Debian based systems – the ease of upgrading to a new release, installing new packages and etc..

Both Ubuntu and Fedora are fine systems though.

The best way to start with Linux is to install it on your old computer. When you upgrade to a new machine, just take the old junker and install linux on it. It will be slow, but most Linux distributions are much nicer for the old hardware than WinXP.

Once you have a computer that you don’t really “need” for work or school, you can just go nuts and play around. If you trash it (which is unlikely with most modern Linux distros) you can just format it and start over. :)

I will probably dip my fingers here and there. There was one point where I was downloading Ubuntu, but, a magical voice came from nowhere and told me not to. And so I didn’t.

Anyway I’m stuck using someone else’s laptop, and the school’s public comps,
fortunately, they haven’t blocked this blog for some reason.

Fedora was sounding better; I read that it’s better then Red Hat, and that it owns Red Hat; has more features and such. I don’t know, but I may just want to be a newb for awhile instead of diving into a pool of bullshit.
Not to say it’s bullshit, my friend.

Well, that’s just my preference but I figured that someone new to linux would probably enjoy having a package management system like that. Or maybe not.

Personally, I prefer to use Debian based systems with apt (like Ubuntu), rather than RPM based stuff. But that’s just me.

No, it uses the tgz archives like SlackWare. Vector was designed for ease of installation, not necessarily ease of manageability. I recommend sticking with the big names (Red Hat, Debian, Novell/SuSe) if this is a requirement.

Does it have apt like package manager though? Most of modern linux distros have them nowadays.

RH and Fedora have Yum. Gentoo has portage (ok, it’s different from apt, but similar idea). Mandrake… I mean Mandriva (hate that name) has urpmi. SuSE has Yast. FreeBSD has ports (ok, not Linux, but still)

I’m not aware of anything like that for Slack though.

Vector Linux is good for newbies. I used to run it a few years ago. They pretty much took out the guesswork of what packages you get to install. The only choice is X. It is pretty much all or nothing. I also liked the Slackware packages. If I needed something added, I just went to the Slackware site to get it.

I haven’t tried Vector. I’m a Debian/Ubuntu guy myself. :mrgreen:

Oh, didn’t know. I have a Creative.
I read about the Zune on here

Sorry bout the link, would have used TinyURL this morning but wasn’t thinking. Supposed to wake up at 5:30 but I was an hour later then that, with only a cup of Columbian (Walmart brand, he he.)

When I get a few hundred more $, I’ll get a PC desktop, some kind… I’m planning to try Linux Vector.

Craig – I think I saw Darwin Ports. I didn’t know about Fink. I’m saving these for future reference (ie. if and when I get a Mac). :)

Elephantman – thanks for the link. I trimmed the URL a little bit so that it doesn’t mess oup the spacing in the post so much.

The Zune is by far more compatible, and I (sorry) fucking hate Apple. Apple’s DRM is ridiculously incompatible, can’t do anything. Anything is better then apple’s ipod.

Zune DRM is just as evil as the iTunes DRM. In fact, Zune’s DRM is viral. If you put a standard mp3 on ZUNE it will be wrapped into the Zune DRM whether you want it or not. The songs bought from Zune store will only work on Zune.

At least on the iPod you can store un-protected mp3’s and transfer them from one unit to another. With Zune that’s not possible.