Best distro for corporate world?

[Led Zappa]

I am a windows administrator who needs to learn Linux. Can someone tell me the best dist to learn for the corp world and give me a link where I can download it. I have a pentium 2.8g wiht 2gigs of RAM I am going to be using for a test system.

Thanks, LZ

[techieMoe]

I don't mean to hijack a thread on my first post, but I need similar help and didn't want to start a new thread.

Then don't. I've taken the liberty of splitting off your own thread for you.

I am a windows administrator who needs to learn Linux. Can someone tell me the best dist to learn for the corp world and give me a link where I can download it. I have a pentium 2.8g wiht 2gigs of RAM I am going to be using for a test system.

Thanks, LZ

The answer for this is "we can't tell you." Linux distributions are very much a matter of personal preference. In the corporate world, it's the preference of whomever buys the support.

What I can say is that the most popular Linux distributions in corporations are those with some sort of corporate support system, such as (in no particular order): Redhat, Ubuntu, Mandriva, SuSE and to a lesser extent Debian.

Any one of those will give you a solid Linux foundation from which you can learn whatever else you need.

[Led Zappa]

I thought it was a similar question. That's why I looked at the thread in the first place. New thread is fine with me.

I guess I will go with Redhat since that is what I have seen the most at companies I have done contract work at.

I have tried to figure out what the main difference between RHEL and Fedora is and the best I can figure is Support.

Is there a reason from a learning viewpoint to purchase RHEL vs just downloading Fedora and going from there?

Does it Include / Support all the same Drivers / Apps?

[techieMoe]

I have tried to figure out what the main difference between RHEL and Fedora is and the best I can figure is Support.

Actually, no. If you're going to be using Redhat Enterprise, the closest free equivalent is CentOS, which is built off the same source code. Fedora is a completely different code base. It's more of a test-bed for new features than Redhat Enterprise. The main difference between RHEL and CentOS is support.

Is there a reason from a learning viewpoint to purchase RHEL vs just downloading Fedora and going from there?

Not really, but I would recommend a RHEL clone rather than Fedora as I mentioned above. It's more of an apples to apples comparison than RHEL/Fedora.

Does it Include / Support all the same Drivers / Apps?

Yes, CentOS is functionally identical to RHEL, it's just missing some Redhat logos and their official support.

[MikeTbob]

Is there a reason from a learning viewpoint to purchase RHEL vs just downloading Fedora and going from there?

Fedora is a test bed for RHEL, Fedora has the latest and greatest software packages while RHEL is built for Stability. As for your question, No, from a learning point Fedora would probably suit you just fine.

[Led Zappa]

Thank You techieMoe.

I will go with CentOS then.

[jmadero]

I would personally recommend Ubuntu at this point just because it has been the first distro to get a computer corporation to back it fully (Dell). I think that Ubuntu will make huge advances in terms of getting linux to the every day user and it's easy enough to where you are a new linux user you can ease your way into it.

[Led Zappa]

I would personally recommend Ubuntu at this point just because it has been the first distro to get a computer corporation to back it fully (Dell). I think that Ubuntu will make huge advances in terms of getting linux to the every day user and it's easy enough to where you are a new linux user you can ease your way into it.

Thanks for the info