Gentoo right for me?

Hi there!

I bought myself a brandnew Dell Inspiron6000 and wonder which distri to use on it besides windows. I don't have much experience with Linux but I like the idea of Open Source and the willing of the Linux Community to document and provide their software for free (besides that I try to avoid MS, which is more into money making instead of serving and helping its costumers with functioning software...).

All my experience is the following: I installed Mandrake 9.2 on my old Pentium I, and basically used the GUIs KDE and GNOME. I used office tools or worked with pictures etc. Besides that I can configure my fstab file, Lilo, give rights to users, or partition my harddrive.
I am also using a Laptop which is usually not connected to the internet, all I can do is download stuff somewhere else and burn it on CD (or do you know a way to connect my Laptop to library PCs?).

What I cannot do and what I don't want to put much time into, is editing sourcecode or programming any kind of software except html. This doesn't mean that I am not willing to learn, it just means that I don't want to put all of my time into my Computer.

So next Friday I am gonna load down either FC3, Mandrake 10 or Gentoo and see whether I can get this laptop working. I already checked out the Gentoo Linux Handbook and read the installation part. Now I had almost no clue what they were doing in an stage 1 or 2 installation. So I would choose 3 when I had to install it.
So I would like to know if I have more trouble with a Gentoo linux, which is cool for sure!, than with Fedora or Mandrake. For the things I a want to do which I mentioned above.

Ok, guys, thanks for reading this thang here first!
I am happy if some guys could help me with only one of my questions at a time. Also I want to point out again that I am not totally clueless, I at least got Mandrake running on my old P200 System!


So looking forward to hearing from you guys!
Greetings, Boris

And can someone please explain to me again quickly what GRPs and Snapshots are? I mean I know that you have to get tar files and unzip them in a directory, but I didn't really get the meanings of GRP or Snapshot.
And BTW how do u UNinstall software in linux? Can you simply delete the files? (You see that I come from Windows OS hum?)

And when I want to connect my notebook to my friend's who is using Windows and exchange files, do I need to have samba or something like that? Or are connections like that not working properly, yet?

I'll try to answer at least your main question ...

Choosing the right distro usually comes down to trial and error, but if you know what you want in a general way, that will help. For example, if you want bleeding edge, then some distros are better for that, but if you want reliability, some other ones are better. Some distros emphasize a desktop (kde or gnome) but not everyone likes either of them (for example, me). But you can only decide what you like by getting in there and getting bloody :D

Your best plan to choose a distro hinges on knowledge: both knowledge of your choices, and knowledge of what the choices mean with respect to what you want to do. So try somewhere like http://distrowatch.com/ to see what's out there. You can't always trust what people say about themselves, but that's a part of life :D

Bottom line, though -- there's no way I can recommend a distro to you since I have no idea what you'd like. Not everyone uses the same set of criteria.

Good luck, though, be brave, get in there, and expect to learn something :D

Hi!

Yes, of course it's everyone's own choice! But I already said what I want, and of course I know distro watch.

I want to... :
...connect my laptop to windows systems for data exchange.
...use Office, email and internet.
...connect my digital camera and edit pictures.
...rip dvds or cut movies from my camera.
...not compile or edit my linux very much.

So do you think I will have more troubles to get my hardware working and all that stuff with Gentoo than with Fedora? Which is a good "out-of-the-box" distro for Laptops?

Oh yeah, BTW: where is that Page again, where I can get the linux pendants for the Windows progs?


gr, boris

hey boris, for one thing. most of things u want in your linux distro are pretty much standard. but if u dont want to have to comile or edit files to get your system the way u want it. i good distro would be SuSe allthough not free. it has great hardware support and autoconfiguring. and in some cases where u actually might need to edit some files. suse has a great program with it called yast. which allows u to edit some of the major text files by just filling in fields and choosing options. another one which is good is well...mandrake, which uve had experience with. but there are a few others that are good for beginners where the system basically maintains itself. anyways, good luck on your choice(s) and IM me or talk to me in linuxforums IRC channel.

-Chris

Els, i have just read your initial post, and from the suggestion of what you would like to do, gentoo would not be a suitable distro, i personally dont think. It seems to me that you want something quick and easy to setup.... gentoo is not that..... it took me a weekend to get a base install going with X and fluxbox, and then installing applications like Openofice takes another 10 hours or so.

The reason for all this is that gentoo doesn't use pre-compiled software like other distro's (usually) do.

You say you want KDE/Gnome, these will take an awful long time to compile.

Personally i would never use KDE/Gnome on gentoo, because i believe they destroy the thinking behind gentoo..... gentoo is designed to be sleak and lightweight meaning the computer will run at optimum performance, and installing KDE/Gnome adds lots of (usually) unnecesary stuff, lots of stuff that you will never use, and if you do, will only use a couple of times.

Out of the 3 u say you will download (FC3/MDK/Gentoo) I would suggest MDK, but over MDK i would suggest SuSE, i have used that a lot, and have grown to like it.

Hope this has helped you out.

Steve

Ok, guys!
Thanks a lot!

I was just wondering wether you can use gentoo also in an easy and not complicated way or better say in a not-much-time-demanding way.

So I will go with fedora, since I have had mdk already. But btw is it better to use fc3, or is fc2.x in some ways more advanced?

eis


EN PLUS...
Please help me with my questions, they are still important for me (since you guys must have lots of time anyway compiling progs for hours... *g*):

"And when I want to connect my notebook to my friend's who is using Windows and exchange files, do I need to have samba or something like that? Or are connections like that not working properly, yet?"

"where is that Page again, where I can get the linux pendants for the Windows progs?"

Eis, regarding SAMBA for file saring between comps, its great, and I have had no problems with it ;)

dylunio

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Eis

Ok, guys!
Thanks a lot!

I was just wondering wether you can use gentoo also in an easy and not complicated way or better say in a not-much-time-demanding way.

So I will go with fedora, since I have had mdk already. But btw is it better to use fc3, or is fc2.x in some ways more advanced?

eis


EN PLUS...
Please help me with my questions, they are still important for me (since you guys must have lots of time anyway compiling progs for hours... *g*):

"And when I want to connect my notebook to my friend's who is using Windows and exchange files, do I need to have samba or something like that? Or are connections like that not working properly, yet?"

"where is that Page again, where I can get the linux pendants for the Windows progs?"

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Not to steer you away from Fedora or anything, but there is a pre-built Gentoo distribution called VidaLinux

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dylunio

Eis, regarding SAMBA for file saring between comps, its great, and I have had no problems with it ;)

dylunio

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And from everything I've read/heard, it works better than Windows native file sharing. :wink: