[Wylug-discuss] What Distro to give away....

[robh68 at ntlworld.com]

> As for a distro, I'm a little annoyed by the comment that "Ubuntu
> would be the obvious choice" though I understand the sentiment behind
> it. As the saying goes, "The path of least resistance is also the
> worst possible teacher of how to administer Linux". I am a Fedorite at
> heart though have great respect for the Debian folks and would
> actually recommend something like Debian, Slackware or Fedora

I couldn't agree less. If new users are to take to Linux, it needs to be made reasonably easy for them. I have just installed Debian for the first time (on my Eee) after several years of using and Ubuntu, and I'm perfectly happy with it. If I was a newbie, though, I'd probably now be pretty discouraged, having been left with just a command-line interface. Installing gdm (and gnome-panel, gnome-session, ...) using apt-get would not be a happy introduction for a newbie.

It's fine to push new users towards one of the hardcore distros if they're doing a "Linux Admin" course. However, without this it would tend to put most of them off (except for those who are already serious geeks). To new users, I'd suggest Ubuntu, or even Knoppix if they just want a taste (great for spreading the joy of *nix).

There are some people who want to learn Linux, but there are many more people who just want to be able to do things with their conputers. I think that there is a point to spreading the good news to this latter group as well.

Rob

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