[Wylug-help] Which Version of Linux?

[Dave Fisher]

On Mon, Oct 24, 2005 at 11:56:40PM +0100, david powell wrote:
> was going to leave it at that 

Me too.

Stuart (the original poster) might, however, benefit from a second
opinion on SuSE and its manuals.

> but feel i must point out 
> the manual may not be needed to do the actual install 
> but i have the suse manual here it describes in detail things like how you 
> want to organize partitions on the hard drive etc 

One of the things I was trying to suggest in my original response to
your first posting in this thread, was that beginners are generally
better off avoiding partitioning entirely.

There are far more productive things for them to be doing than learning
the black arts of disk partitioning in order to achieve negligble
spacing/performance benefits on today's low cost hardware.

It's neither necessary nor is it worth the hassle.

> it also explains the 
> install process and helps you customize it to fit your needs 
>  and gives you a lot of info on what any of the setup options do and options 
> you may want to try also very usefull for a beginer

Surely, customisation should come below basic familiarisation and
operational experience in any sensible list of newbie priorities?

Until you have a working system and know your way around it, how can you
make sensible judgments about customisation?

> besides that theres a good administration guide 

I'm not sure that system administration should be a priority either.  

A stable system based on the distributor's default setup is going to be
far more helpful for the task of learning how things work, than one
which is constantly being tweaked and 'administered'.

I can't tell you how many times newbie friends of mine have asked me for
help recovering systems that they've trashed through 'premature
administration'.

> and a guide to some 
> applications also , i seldom look at the manuals but for a beginer having 
> them can be a god send especialy when they tell you the distro spesific 
> features , 

That's true and the SuSE manuals are probably the best of breed when it
comes to explaining distro-specific stuff.

On the other hand, I'd expect most experienced users would back me up in
suggesting that distro-specific learning can occasionally make the long
term task of learning Linux a bit harder, i.e. you invest the time you
could have spent learning stuff that works on any Unix-like system on
acquiring non-transferable skills/knowledge.

> don't know about you but when things go wrong its takes longer to reinstall it 
> to search the cd for the docs and print out the page to find how to correct 
> your mistake especialy if its something silly like accidentaly switching the 
> display to the secondary vga card (that you don't have a monitor connected to 
> at the time ) and not realising whats happened :) 

> btw it costs more to print out the manuals in paper and printer ink than it 
> does to buy the boxed set 

Agreed, and I also agree with you that the SuSE manuals are of a high
quality and can be of great help to a beginner.

However, I think their primary use for the beginner is in helping those
who have plumped for SuSE to get hardware and software working in the
first place.

I really think the SuSE is an good option for some one who just wants to
get going with a Linux distribution.  

For some one in a hurry, the default setup and the single configuration
interface (Yast) are better than anything I've seen on other distros.

On the other hand, Yast and SuSE achieve this partially by hiding common
Linux features from you and partly be departing from common Linux
approaches to system admin.  Which is absolutely fine so long as SuSE
does what you need.  

However, if you eventually need/want to work with other distributions,
SuSE can be more difficult than others to start from.

Dave