New To Linux

[Johnny™]

I have been wanting to try linux for some time now and recently tried to install an older version of red hat. Apparently parts of my system werent compatible as after installation i cuddnt get a window to fit my screen.....evrything was way to big and i cuddnt get to the bottom of a page. I am currently downloading the latest release of mandrake but was wondering before installation if someone could tell me what the most user friendly and easiest linux O/S to learn on. I am somewhat familiar with unix but the days i used that there were no pointers or "windows" on the o/s and have heard that linux will use alot less resources than windows so i have an interst in finding a good linux O/S to learn on but also one to build on so i dont have to chnage after learning the basics of linux..any help would be greatly appreciated

[ipdave]

Don't want to cross post, but just answered in the new Linux section of some not-painfull ways to check out linux.

Try: h#p://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html -- it is a CD you boot from with full Linux functionality to learn from before you actually install it on a HD.

For full install, I prefer Mandrake (easiest, most goodies). For a production server in a business, Red Hat would be a more stable and supported choice. No real advantage for home, same basic code, just not as friendly as Mandrake.

[Midnightangel]

@ipdave are there any english versions available? i searched the site you posted and when it comes to ordering the cd its all in german.

[lore]

Yep, for a full install go for mandrake, I'm new too about Linux but this distribution is really easy

[Midnightangel]

thanx for your help guys

[Johnny™]

ok i installed mandrake fairly easily......however there is one problem... during install my mouse was activated, but once the install completed and the machine rebooted my mouse will not work... is there a way i can open the settings so i can reconfigure my mouse without havin use of the mouse? i like the looks of the O/S so far however cant do anything with it until i get the mouse to work

[Johnny™]

got it working and online.... gonna take a little getting used to but i like what i see so far

[ipdave]

pokopiko, actually not all hardware changes are so painfull. I find that the newer versions of Linux (such as Mandrake) allow you to run hardware detection on bootup to uninstall and install hardware that it finds added or removed from your system. The days of going to a console to manually change are not quite gone, but are more rare now. Kudzu crawls everywhere, it seems.

A good example of this is that knoppix live-linux-cd. It boots from a cd and autodetects hardware quite well. Check it out.

[Johnny™]

actually ipdave was rite......the way i got it working was to run the interactive startup when booting and it detected the problem on its own and the mouse began to work