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Linux Recommendations for Linux newb
Like Kix, I might try to run some Linux...
Someone wanna hip me to the best graphics card that'll run under Linux? (And what flavor of Linux and what box, etc.)
Someone wanna hip me to the best graphics card that'll run under Linux? (And what flavor of Linux and what box, etc.)
Nvidia graphics cards have better Linux support than ATI cards. ATI has gotten a lot better than they used to be, but Nvidia still has a significant lead. Nvidia's drivers support all of their cards up to the Nvidia GeForce 7800 GTX, so that'd be the best one that'll run under Linux, but for price/performance ratio I'd say a 6800 would be a better choice (I currently have a 6800 Ultra).
As for which distribution you want, it really depends on what you want to do. Personally I really like Gentoo. It gives you lots of control over how you want your system setup, and everything will be compiled to be optimized for your hardware. The main drawback to Gentoo is time, since it compiles most programs on your computer rather than installing precompiled packages. But Gentoo's Portage makes it very easy, and on today's hardware it doesn't take all that long to compile most applications.
Gentoo's Portage makes it very easy to compile & install applications, but it is all command-line based. If you're more comfortable with GUI installation utilities, you might prefer an RPM based distribution, like Red Hat, SuSE, or Mandriva. But I've never used any RPM based distro myself, so I can't help you much if you want to go that route.
As for which distribution you want, it really depends on what you want to do. Personally I really like Gentoo. It gives you lots of control over how you want your system setup, and everything will be compiled to be optimized for your hardware. The main drawback to Gentoo is time, since it compiles most programs on your computer rather than installing precompiled packages. But Gentoo's Portage makes it very easy, and on today's hardware it doesn't take all that long to compile most applications.
Gentoo's Portage makes it very easy to compile & install applications, but it is all command-line based. If you're more comfortable with GUI installation utilities, you might prefer an RPM based distribution, like Red Hat, SuSE, or Mandriva. But I've never used any RPM based distro myself, so I can't help you much if you want to go that route.
Fully agreed with beo's recommendation.
Even with an RPM-based distro, you're still going to be doing command-line installs of packages, because not every app out there is packaged for EVERY distro in town, and many come as source code that you need to compile yourself.
I'm currently running Fedora Core 4 (which many people will scream is bloataceous, but meh) and it probably has one of the least difficult learning curves for most distros.
Even with an RPM-based distro, you're still going to be doing command-line installs of packages, because not every app out there is packaged for EVERY distro in town, and many come as source code that you need to compile yourself.
I'm currently running Fedora Core 4 (which many people will scream is bloataceous, but meh) and it probably has one of the least difficult learning curves for most distros.
I'll see what I can scrape up for hardware. If I can get my old B&W G3 running as a testbed for Linux, I may go find some other nicer, faster, box to try it out on...
Stay tuned for the inevitable "Um, I think I broke something..." posts...
Stay tuned for the inevitable "Um, I think I broke something..." posts...
Even with an RPM-based distro, you're still going to be doing command-line installs of packages
Er, you'll never touch a command line to install packages in Ubuntu unless you want to. Deb-based works pretty differently than RPM-based in that regard, because of the extremely meaty repositories.
That said, Fedora and Ubuntu are definitely pretty good choices for PPC hardware. I don't know if Suse or Mandriva work on PPC.
Er, you'll never touch a command line to install packages in Ubuntu unless you want to. Deb-based works pretty differently than RPM-based in that regard, because of the extremely meaty repositories.
That said, Fedora and Ubuntu are definitely pretty good choices for PPC hardware. I don't know if Suse or Mandriva work on PPC.