[colug-432] Introduction and distro preference question

[Brian Miller]

On 01/31/2014 11:30 AM, Dan Kaiser wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm fairly new to Linux (I've dabbled for the past four years or so) and
> newer still to the group (joined in late December.) . . .  If anyone has notes from the scripting talk I'd love to see
> what was covered.

I just used a very simple outline.  Nothing that would be helpful if you 
were looking for good advice.

>
> I have a question for the group.  I've recently purchased a new-to-me
> ThinkPad X220 with the intention of making it my primary machine running
> Linux full time.  I used to triple boot my MacBook Pro, but I found
> myself in OS X most of the time, and while I tried virtualization, I
> couldn't really make myself "work" inside a virtual machine.  Now that
> my wife's laptop died and she started using the MBP more and more, I saw
> it as an opportunity to finally make the jump.
>

I use OpenSuSE, mostly because SLES is our Linux of choice at work.  I 
started running Red Hat, but when Novell bought SuSE, that forced my 
hand.  We were a large NetWare shop at the time.

Jon talked about different Window Managers.  Another reason I like 
OpenSuSE is that they default to KDE.  It uses more memory than LXDE, 
but I find it more configurable and useable.

SuSE also has a great advantage for people new to Linux:  YaST.  If you 
don't know what file to edit, or how to make a configuration change, run 
YaST, and you will likely be able to figure out how to do it.  Over 90% 
of your system administration can be done through this one interface. 
The other distributions generally require you to know multiple commands. 
  The disadvantage of YaST is that you might not learn the command line 
options as quickly.

Red Hat and SuSE are about as close as you can get to each other, too. 
Other than the distribution specific management commands (and Red Hat's 
default to Gnome), if you learn your way around the command line on one, 
you can find your way around on the other.  They are both LSB compliant. 
  They both use RPM under the hood for package management.  And although 
Red Hat gets most of the press coverage, most large organizations which 
years ago used NetWare, will likely be using SLES, just because of the 
NetWare connection.