[Wolves] advice on version of Linux to install

[Chris Ellis]

On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 12:29 PM, Nick Hall <nicholasbhall at yahoo.co.uk>wrote:

> Hello All,
>
> Well here is my first question about Linux. I am working towards the Linux
> Professional Institute Linux Essentials exam (the very basic one), and I am
> using Ubuntu, but was thinking is this a good version. Should I use
> another, a mate suggested I use Fedora? Or Red Hat.
>
> Cheers
> nick
>

I figured I'd throw my humble opinion into the mix.  Not sure this is very
coherent but....

Personally I think to be good at Linux you need to be able to work with a
range of distributions.
I feel its more important to understand the underlying software which they
are distributing.

I've used a range of distros at work and home: Mageia (nee Mandriva, nee
Mandrake), openSUSE,
SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server), Debian, Ubuntu, Centos, RedHat.

I've tended to use openSUSE more and more recently, especially on my
servers.  I prefer to run
bleeding edge rather than outdated 'enterprise' distros.  This is mainly
because I want to use
the new shiny features that are emerging all the time.

I find the family tree of distros quite impressive:
http://futurist.se/gldt/wp-content/uploads/12.10/gldt1210.svg

Out of RedHat, Ubuntu and SLES, I think Ubuntu is the only one which marks
specific releases as
Long Term Support (LTS) eg: 12.04 LTS etc.  Where as SLES and RedHat have a
looser coupling
with there community distributions, I think this makes openSUSE and Fedora
more community owned
than Ubuntu.

My suggestion would be to install KVM / VMWare / VirtualBox and install
some VMs running different distros
explore the differences, see which you find the more comfortable.  Afterall
what I'd install on my desktop
is different to what I would use on a server, so don't worry too much about
which distro to put on your laptop
now.  If you like Ubuntu (and the horror called Unity) then stick with
that.   Live disks are a good way to get a
feel for different distros without the hassle of installing.

Regards,
Chris
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