Windows Programmer Seeking Advice 1

[Beeps]

Hi all,

I was wondering if anybody could give me a direction to place my first steps in using Linux? I've read through a couple forums here to get a idea, but the vast amount of choices has me a little confused on a place to start. Mandrake, Red Hat, GNU....arrgh!

My programming experience background is entirely with MS products (VB, C, C#) and engineering software that runs on Windows (Rockwell/Allen-Bradley, etc.) around 10 years.

Nobody I know professionally or personally uses Linux, so I'm kinda on my own. I'm looking for an easy user friendly version that has the most bang.

Thanks in advance!

 

[RhythmAce]

I don't think you can go wrong with whatever you choose. Most distros use the same kernal and have pretty much the same packages from the same vendors. Where they differ may be in the directory structure and where apps get installed. The big ones like Red Hat and Mandrake pretty much install themselves and even partition the drive for you. Being a programmer, you will be impressed with all the open source software out there. If you do a complete install, you will find libraries and development kits for just about all the GUI stuff you see, not to mention the latest and greatest C compiler. Another thing you'll love about linux is that just about all software that runs on linux is open source. That means you get the source code so you can tweak and compile an app to your own specs. An now for the part you're really, really gonna love. It's all free. Welcome to the world of linux.

 

[Mellegem]

As a beginner you should probably start with something Mandrake cause the package managment system is quite painless and the installation is fairly straight forward. Make sure you search around and find out how to configure thing like you're graphic card etc before you start the installation as it will save alot of frustration later on. Also read a the standard newbie docs for whatever distro you choose to avoid headaches.
Other than that, welcome aboard!!

 

[manarth]

Everyone has their one favourite flavour, Red Hat, Debian, Mandrake and Suse seem to hold the top slots though....

Red Hat is almost an industry standard for web server work these days, so if you have any work to do in that area, it may be worthwhile to get used to operating with that (I run a RedHat server to have my test server running as similar en environment as my live site).

My personal flavour of choice so far is Suse - it was simple to install and so far I've not found a reason to change.
I've installed Debian before and it's definately a more complex install process (it asks you all sorts of questions about partitioning and module loading).

Short version - any of those 4 distros should get you running smoothly! The only pitfall is if some of your hardware doesn't have an available driver yet (a mistake I made buying a particular 11g wifi card). Of course, as a programmer, you could always write your own!

<marc> i wonder what will happen if i press this...[ul][li]please give feedback on what works / what doesn't[/li][li]need some help? how to get a better answer: faq581-3339[/li][/ul]

 

[Beeps]

Thanks

RhythmAce, Magellem, and manarath.

This weekend I picked up a copy of Suse Pro and installed it on an extra laptop. I am completely amazed. It only cost $40, and I could figure out quite a lot for me being a complete beginner in this world. OpenOffice is pretty good for being free. Acutally I was surprised on what you could do with it. I should have done this long ago.

I did have some trouble with the monitor settings though, couldn't get the screen to fit the monitor quite yet.

A bit later, since the software is so affordable, I'll pick up a copy of Mandrake and Red Hat and give those a whirl since they're recommended here.

Two last things?

One thing I noticed was that the disk formatting (at least for Suse) needed to be FAT and could not use NTFS. Since this is the case, I was wondering if I could load Linux on a removable hard drive? That way I could use it on both my tower at home and laptop while travelling?

Is there a favorite book on learning about the kernel?

Thanks everybody,

In just one weekend, I'm already straddling the fence. Good stuff.

BP

 

[manarth]

Hi Beeps,

Suse will support READONLY for NTFS, READ-WRITE is still experimental (it's available but you have to recompile the kernel and there's not enough testing to guarantee it'll work). AFAIK Fat32 is the main R-W format to cross between Windows and Linux.

Not too sure about a book on the kernel, most of the books I read were about administration (and are now quite out of date!) I'm sure there's a few here who can recommend somethine

<marc> i wonder what will happen if i press this...[ul][li]please give feedback on what works / what doesn't[/li][li]need some help? how to get a better answer: faq581-3339[/li][/ul]

 

[Beeps]

Thanks manarth,

Answered my own question about books on

http://www.linux.org/

Duhhh...Should have known.