[conspire] public distribution, too choose 1.

[bruce coston]

Okay, you will need to choose a distribution or , at
least I recommend you do some work towards choosing
your distribution before Sat. I looked at many
screenshots before deciding I liked KDE better than
Gnome, this matters since you will look at the results
after you install it, easy installation means little
if you get inferior results. Going to distrowatch.com
on the web and selecting all of 2005 should let you
lok at enough distributions, especially if you pursue
some of theose links. The window manager matters but
you can change it, Kde and Gnome are both much more
than just window managers, which is nice when one
builds a linux distribution so they get used the most,
xfce as on the xfld disc also gets shipped on the cd
frequently as it is smaller than "k" or "g". 
      Less obviously, if you will get support from
CABAL you should seriously consider the .deb package
system over .rpm. The linuxmafia.com web pages say
lots about package systems, they make your life easier
so you probably want one. Currently you will need to
match the .rpm packages to your ~exact distribution
while a .deb is a .deb is a .deb unless someone messes
up. Debian has branches where you can install packages
that are older or less tested on your box iif you
dare. "stable" got too archaic for me. "testing" is
what most people should use but packages don't move
out of "unstable" into "testing" fast enough because
people don't fix the problems the automatic checkers
find in the "unstable" branch fast enough. Unless you
wanna do extra work to guard against security problems
"testing" represents extra risk. Initially things go
into "experimental" which means the author thinks it
may work. Many distributions use "unstable"
permanently nicknamed "sid" since you gotta change
stuff for security reasons less than with "testing".
     Kde is more popular than Gnome etc. when people
choose based on screenshots. Mandrake was #1
ondistrowatch last I looked, so you way want to check
out the pcLinuxOS cd as its based on mandrake and is a
single "live cd" so you can try before installing.
Other good .rpm 'distro's' exist like yoper. Avoid
Fedora unless you love fixing problems but RHEL based
cd's look o.k. If you want Gnome, Ubuntu looks good,
it's a .deb. I use the Mepis 2005 beta cd as a live cd
and thats my current install too, MEPIS had the #1
spot last week. Finding the perfect Linux "distro"
rarely works, you need to think about too many things.




	
		
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