Endre Szabo wrote: > I'm an absolute Linux novice with no experience with this OS. Now I'm > looking for a suitable distribution. I'd suggest that you start with a Live CD/DVD of *any* distro, so that you can: . Get a feel for Linux . Determine how well Linux works with your hardware . Decide if a *full* or *minimal* install suits your hardware better . Browse that distro's packages, to see what's available http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php Highlights: tomsrtbt - "The most GNU/Linux on 1 floppy disk." http://www.toms.net/rb SLAX - "fast and beautiful ... fits on a 3.14in CD-ROM". Based on Slackware, "The original Linux distribution". Also has a fantastic modules system that you can use to customise your own LiveCD. http://www.slax.org Knoppix DVD - The Mother of all Live distros ... and one of the most complete, with probably the best hardware detection available. http://ftp.uni-kl.de/pub/linux/knoppix/DVD GeeXbox - Think "Windows Media Centre Edition" for Linux ... only better. http://www.geexbox.org SUSE 10.1 Live DVD - Polished, user friendly and very popular distro. http://tinyurl.com/jomww (opensuse.org) Ubuntu - A rising star in the distro world. *The* hot distro. http://www.ubuntu.com BLAG Linux And GNU - FC5 based Live and installable distro. Was previously listed as one of only 5 Linux distros in the world to be endorsed by the Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation. However, its listing has been deleted recently, for some reason. ftp://ftp.blagblagblag.org/pub/BLAG/linux/50000/en/iso/ > I've got a P3 800Mhz 256MB RAM 10GB HDD machine. I intend to make > database gui apps with MySql, Python and the wxPython toolkit with > Boa RAD tool and also web developement. So many of above will run > simultaneously. For a 800MHz system, I'd have to recommend Gentoo and a minimal desktop like fluxbox. FC5 will run on this system fine, however with only 10GBs to play with, you'll be struggling, and KDE in particular will slow the system down to a grind. I did a (nobase) extreme minimal kickstart install of FC5 on a MiniITX VIA 533MHz system quite recently, and it works OK, but I think ultimately I'll end up putting Gentoo on it, or even configuring a LFS system. > I've got a few questions: > > 1. Is Fedora suitable for me? Used with KDE and all above will it > have the necessary speed and stability on my machine? Stability and SELinux security et al, yes. Speed - OK, but not great. > 2. Where can I find a list of apps wich come with FC5? Browse the various directories at: http://mirror.linux.duke.edu/pub/fedora/linux/ > 3. Can I install new softs or update existing ones without internet > connection -- ie. from cd? Periodically there are "respin" editions of FC, which you could use to do yum localinstall's or set uo the disc as a yum "repo". http://torrent.fedoraunity.org/official-torrents If you don't want to download the updates, some "cheaplinux" type vendors offer Distro and Update discs for sale. The best distro (and everything else Linux) vendor I've ever found was "EverythingLinux.com.au" now abreviated to www.elx.com.au , and yes they're Australian. > 4. Can I install from tarballs (tar.gz) or only from rpm? Either, but of course RPM is *highly* recommended. I installed Google Earth just yesterday using their installer script rather than RPM (an RPM is not currently available AFAIK, although there *is* a Gentoo "emerge" package already !!!). > 5. Will softs not intented especially for fedora but for "generally > Linux" work? Some do, some don't. Depends on shared dependencies. The only way to find out is to try them and see. - K.
