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Which Linux Distribution?


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I know this is off topic from the norm (so sorry in advance), but you guys seem be VERY knowledgeable about Linux. Is there a certain distribution that is recommended over the other? Suse, Fedora, Redhat? I know each has their differences, but can one be considered "better" than the other? I hear great things about Linux over Windows, especially in production, and well I figure its time to learn it and see what the big fuss is about. Thanks, sorry for the off topic post :)

Anthony

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this is the 3rd most likely thing to kick of a flame war - after windows vs. apple and religion discussions :D

most distros have a live CD which you can boot from, and experience them without making any changes to your system.

ubuntu or suse are probably the best to start with, particularly ubuntu.

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this is the 3rd most likely thing to kick of a flame war - after windows vs. apple and religion discussions :D

Yea I figured it might, but I wanted to ask anyway :). I am having alot of probelms with SUSE, mainly with my graphics card (not that it means its a bad Distro). it's most likley more user error than anything :P. My main purpose is to use it for Houdini, Maya, Shake, and just learning it in general. So I wasn't sure if one was better than the other for those purposes. Thanks Mark for the reply :)

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[one' date=Aug 15 2006, 08:39 AM' post='30056]

I personally tried suse and i liked it but I also had problems with gfx card.. (same apps as you wish to use)... I'm now on Fedora Core 5 and everything works great.

hope this helps.

cheers

Thanks :). I actually downloaded Fedora 5 last night just to try it. Now that you say it works fine, its getting installed this evening :). What kind of gfx card were you having trouble with? I have an Nvidia 6600...nothing special. Thanks sum][one.

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Thanks :). I actually downloaded Fedora 5 last night just to try it. Now that you say it works fine, its getting installed this evening :). What kind of gfx card were you having trouble with? I have an Nvidia 6600...nothing special. Thanks sum][one.

I have ATI card.. which works 100% under Fedora with latest ATI drivers... I'd give a try again with Suse... since ATI drivers gave a lot of improvments with latest monthly releases... but I'll stick with Fedora.. (and with ATI.. cause I'll never switch back from Thinkpad for a long while) ...

I'm 100% happy with my two Thinkpads and I cant complain at all with Fedora on 'em.

and... yeah.. i've always been a Nvida fan .. and still am ... but when talking about my SLI "gaming peecee" ... or expensive quadro for "serious work"... the SLI 78000GTX wont even let me use Houdini on 'em.. too much troubles... and a quandro can get expensive..

my laptops have FireGL V3200 and FireGL V5100 ... which are good enought for my needs.

(plus the t60p is dual core.. so i dont really need anything more)

cheers

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geez sure you need all those computers :P. I think I will give fedora a try later on this week, work's got me tied up. Thanks man for the replies, enjoy your farm of computers :P

Anthony

my farm .. you must had seen the "collection" on my website then.. eheh... but nope... that's not used that much .. in fact .. that's just a collcetion and i use most of those computers.. as furniture :D

seriously.. I got rid of my workstations (I had two until begin of this year) and i'll do the same with my gaming peecee.. i want to stick on laptops only for my job... and those thinkpads are the best for my needs... I got a serious farm at office already .. and i dont need anything more at home (I'm not even a freelance anymore.... and when I need some renders to be spitted out.. I can menage to use 2 laptops and 2 peecees, one of those is my office workstation).

cheers.

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[one' date=Aug 16 2006, 09:26 AM' post='30094]

my farm .. you must had seen the "collection" on my website then.. eheh... but nope... that's not used that much .. in fact .. that's just a collcetion and i use most of those computers.. as furniture :D

I just went to your site...its like a bone yard of computers in there :P. You have a nice room set up though.... cheers :D

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My 2 cents to the flamewar :)

For me the best linus distros are Debian based by far, in terms of flexibility/user friendly.

And is this field the best is Ubuntu, I haven't had any problem running Houdini, Maya or Shake in Ubuntu anytime.

I know that all the apps are certified in RedHat/Fedore distros. but after some years using linux I definitely prefer Debian based.

So my advice is to use Ubuntu.

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For me the best linus distros are Debian based by far, in terms of flexibility/user friendly.

And is this field the best is Ubuntu, I haven't had any problem running Houdini, Maya or Shake in Ubuntu anytime.

So my advice is to use Ubuntu.

Thanks :). I went ahead and tried Suse again, and seem to have decient luck this time around (at least I can duel boot now). Though I have never really used Linux so I wouldnt know one from the other at this point. I'm sure I will give Ubuntu a try when I get a chance. Thanks for the advice ;)

Anthony

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The best distro, its like asking which is the best religion, or best kind of house to have. It really depends on your needs. For a neophyte (someone new) using houdini and such, Fedora, and CentOS is a Redhat enterprised opensource. I prefer gentoo, but gentoo is not for beginners. Ubuntu is another good Distro, but not officially supported.

SimonTek

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hey y'all

Trying to get linux going on a dual boot system with xp. machine is a workstation hp [dual 3.6 xeon] with high end quadro 3450 and two monitors. I tried fedora 5 but just hangs during the install [at a pci address]. Is there a distro that would install easier on this machine ? suse, ubuntu?? I downloaded opensuse and will try that today...

any advice much appreciated - I would love to move this shop away from windows - but of course we have to maintain the dualboot until it's fully sorted

steve sloan

reality check studios

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The dual monitor only shows up when the video driver offers it - so once I got the nvidia driver correctly installed - there's a check box to enable it in the nvidia monitor control panel. Don't know if you're using a different graphics card driver but I assume ati would have something similar

hth

also to get the nvidia driver installed i had to include kernel develoopment and c/c++ compiler package installations for suse. then go to text screen - ctrl-alt-f1, log in as root, turn off the xserver "init 3" and then run the graphics card installer. the latest nvidia driver includes altering the xconfig for you so there's no manual editing

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The dual monitor only shows up when the video driver offers it - so once I got the nvidia driver correctly installed - there's a check box to enable it in the nvidia monitor control panel. Don't know if you're using a different graphics card driver but I assume ati would have something similar

hth

also to get the nvidia driver installed i had to include kernel develoopment and c/c++ compiler package installations for suse. then go to text screen - ctrl-alt-f1, log in as root, turn off the xserver "init 3" and then run the graphics card installer. the latest nvidia driver includes altering the xconfig for you so there's no manual editing

What's up Steve, it's Jason (from CORE) --

I just recently reinstalled my FC5 + XP dual-boot. Wound up doing it 3 or 4 times, in fact :angry: ... not sure if it's related to your installation problems, but I used to have problems where the installer would lock up, and I found that forcing the installer's screen resolution to 1024x768 cured my troubles -- when the installer first boots up and you get that command line prompt (where it gives you some options on how to run the installer), I run the installer with the following:

linux resolution=1024x768

As far as the X-server stuff goes, I always edit the /etc/inittab file and set it to runlevel 3, I've found the Redhat graphical login (runlevel 5, I think) has caused problems with Houdini and a number of other things in the past...

I realize this isn't a whole lot of info on your particular problem, but I hope it helps...

-JS-

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Jason!

The lockups I was having with the FC5 install is the reason I switched to openSuse! It installed fine on the first go. And of course since then I've actually reinstalled it 3-4 times on various machines... It's worked fine as long as I go with gnome and not kde for the gui

So do you always boot in text [init 3] mode and then type "startx" or "init 5" once you're up??

I preferred it when someone else knew how it all worked together ;-)

are you in LA still??

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