I'm planning to pick up a cheap pc and upgrade to linux in an effort to learn about it. I've been looking at red hat 9 or mandrake 9. Can any of the more experienced users on the board enlighten me on the pros or cons of either distribution? Would going back to mandrake 8 be a better choice for "learning" sake? i'm really thinking of using this as a pc to play with in an effort to learn linux with a view to move core apps to it if i get hooked. anything in terms of system requirements i should keep in mind?

Many thanks

It depends on what exactly it is you want to learn. My thought on RedHat is that you don't really learn much about the OS itself. It's a little too easy, as they want to give you little wizards and whatnot to separate you from what's really going on. This is not inherently bad (though there are other things about and surrounding RedHat that I think are), but it doesn't help you learn much beyond how to click the right buttons. It will allow you to familiarize yourself with it without too much knowledge to start with. I also have a problem in that it's become a standard of its own. It used to be that programs were written for Unix, and any Unix OS could run them. Then they started being written for Linux, with no consideration to the other Unices, and some now are being written for RedHat, ignoring other distros. But that's not really their fault, nor does it make RedHat inherently worse.

Mandrake I've not used, but, by all accounts (unless I'm thinking of something else), it's pretty much RedHat++. I don't think that you'll have much of a different learning experience with it.

The ultimate learning experience would be by using Linux from Scratch, but I've found that it can be a little tunnel-visioned. Still, you'll learn a lot, even if it's kinda got something of a bias.

Slackware would be somewhere inbetween as far as learning goes, but it's the oldest still existant distro, and, as such, has its own foibles that can make it seem disconnected from the rest of the Linux distros.

You can try Debian if you're interested in learning about open source politics. Many people prefer this one, actually, as it seems to be more for developers by developers. But that doesn't mean that it's either friendly or a good learning experience.

Those are about all that I have much familiarity with at all that are likely to fit what you want to do.

This fragmentation is one of the reasons that I find Linux hard to deal with these days. Each distro is almost different enough from each of the others for it to be considered a separate OS. Certainly, as a beginner, most of the stuff that you'll learn will be specific to the distro. Only with experience will you begin to understand where Linux leaves off and the specific distro begins. But trying to use a generic one may be too difficult initially and turn you off.

it doesn't help you learn much beyond how to click the right buttons

I've been messing with Mandrake recently and this is my exact experience. Though I have a little more understanding of how Linux handles drives differently from Windows, for the most part I can't tell much difference except that it's unfamiliar and therefore the simple tasks that come naturally to me in windows are more frustratingly difficult. Unfortunately I don't have time for any real in-depth learning so I keep using Linux in hopes that when I finally get a chance to mess with a Unix system for real some of the non-windows concepts will have crept into my brain. FWIW I've been relatively happy with Madrake, though I'm still immensely uncomfortable in a lot of areas.

One thing to note is that these Linux-with-wizards distros are trying to emulate the way Windows does things, but Unix simply doesn't do things that way. 99% of the time, the way configuration under Unix happens is by modifying text files, either configuration files or scripts, and the way run-time modification occurs is by running command-line programs. It helps to understand the thought processes behind Unix, not because they're any more inherently difficult than Windows', but because you've gotten used to the way Windows does things and you subconsciously want all computers to work the same way. But RedHat, Mandrake, etc. intentionally hide that Unix-ness, creating this weird hybrid that doesn't feel right either way. (Basically, it's creating a GUI to modify text files and run command-line programs, when, as long as you know which ones to edit or run, it's easier and more robust to do it by hand. It's kinda like the Wizard of Oz; pay no attention to the command line behind the GUI!) I feel that they, in some ways, hurt the Unix lobby, but it might be easier for a beginner. I'm not sure though, as I was well removed from beginnerness by the time they became available.

It won't really help you with Linux directly, but there's a book called Think Unix that does a good job of describing the thought processes behind Unix in general.

Also, there are other Unices available that might actually help you understand Unix and Linux better, as they don't hide their Unix-ness, at least not as much. The BSDs (Free, Net, and Open) and Solaris (almost free of cost -- $20 -- here) are all reasonable.

You can try Debian if you're interested in learning about open source politics. Many people prefer this one, actually, as it seems to be more for developers by developers. But that doesn't mean that it's either friendly or a good learning experience.

Debian tends to be a distribution one ends up at - I've seen many comment on switching to Debian, but not many switching from...

The politics can, generally, be completely ignored unless you're actually interested.

The initial installation can be a bit rough on a newbie - especially those that select expert mode, get dumped into dselect (which isn't the most intuitive tool I've used), and refuse to read the help/manual... But once installed it's very easy to keep up to date, or occasionally upgrade to the latest "stable" release. It was a long time since I did an install from scratch...

At least it used to be that the Debian installation procedure asked more questions of you than say RedHat, but also left you with a better configured system immediately after installation.

/Michael

The politics can, generally, be completely ignored unless you're actually interested.

Sorry. Just my snarky comment. I never enjoyed Debian, personally. But that's just me. I should give it a shot again one of these days.

One thing to note is that Linux installations evolve. That is, unlike Windows, you probably won't be reinstalling from scratch all the time. The form of this evolution is variable. If you have a distro that has a solid package tool, you might end up removing packages you don't use, upgrading those you do, etc. Or you might end up ignoring the package tool and installing new applications yourself. Or a combination of the two. Either way, you're likely to end up with an installation that looks nothing like what you started with.

Linux upgrading is also more of an evolutionary process than under Windows. More often that not, pieces and parts will be upgraded; not everything at once. That even includes the base OS. And, unlike Windows, that doesn't mean that your system will become less stable. It might, potentially, if you make bad choices, but it's more likely it'll end up more stable, or at least have more features. Windows seems to be a monolithic composite of a number of pieces of software, but Linux is more of a conglomeration, each of which uses the other pieces, but each of which is upgradable on it's own with a few exceptions here and there.

Sorry. Just my snarky comment.

No worries. It does get old sometimes...
But I do respect them for actually only including free software in the base, even though they sometimes take flak for kicking some popular package with non-compliant license until the license can be reconsiliated. And I really like the package management tool, apt-get.

Fully agree on the rest of your post.

/Michael

It may be important to note that package tools, while useful as time savers, kind of fill the same spot as GUI wizards (though GUI wizards, I think, are an abomination; I'm coming around somewhat on the package tools. ). They do stuff for you behind the scenes, and a beginner doesn't get to understand what's going on or how it's really accomplished.

I think Debian's installer is annoying, but I do mean to start building Debian systems in the near future anyway.

One word: Gentoo.

One word: Gentoo

Seconded. I started out with Slackware, used RedHat for ages, spent about two days on Debian fighting a losing battle with its package management, and ended up building a completely custom distro just before all those neat "build a completely custom distro" kits came out -- LFS, Sourceror, Gentoo. From what I've heard, Gentoo is the best of the three, especially for starting out with. I reckon if it had come out only months earlier it'd probably be on all my machines now.

Peter

Heh. I installed Gentoo on my Beige G3. It took days.

While the system you end up with is fairly generic, and the package system (if you can really call it that) is pretty nice, I don't know how much you'd learn from it being a newbie, and the amount of time it takes to install (okay, I'm sure it's less with a modern PC) might be off-putting.

Well, this doesn't answer your *specific* question, but I agree with Bitt and his comments about Linux. So, my answer is to not try to start with Linux at all. If you can run a real UNIX machine, you can run a Linux machine (the differences are relatively minor as far as configuration is concerned).

The BSD distros are "real UNIX". I really like OpenBSD, but others really like NetBSD. The cool thing about OpenBSD is their "secure by default" mentality, which is good for beginners IMHO. OpenBSD does not enable very many services by default and you need to manually turn them on if you want to run them. That's good, because you learn how to configure them and you learn how they are started, etc. You will also learn about ssh and some about crytography, since OpenSSH is built in to their system. In today's world, I think that learning about an operating system should *always* include learning about how to secure the operating system.

The obvious advantage of Linux is the tremendous HOWTO resources, which are great and tend to be written for command line & config file editing systems administration.

Keep in mind that you don't *need* to use the widgets with Linux. You can still manually edit all of the files. That's what I do with one of my machines that still runs Linux.

If you've never done anything with Linux/UNIX but you know about computers, the biggest initial learning curve will probably be learning the text editor. Editor of choice is a topic of religious fervor for many, but one thing is certain: vi can be found on *any* UNIX or Linux system. Its actually a powerful editor once you learn it and it has the advantage that you will be able to use it anywhere. Other editors might be great, but what do you do when you're on a system that doesn't have them installed? It sure is a hassle to install an editor just to modify a line or two. Learn vi. There are good online tutorials for it.

FWIW,
Jim

Oh, one other thing:

Immediately go and order UNIX System Administration Handbook, which also covers linux in its latest (3rd) edition.

I agree with you. However, OpenBSD (at least -- I'm not as familiar with the others of late) kinda has a similar issue as far as wizards. In RedHat, you might click on a checkbox in some GUI to turn on a service. In OpenBSD, you modify a flag in /etc/rc.conf. Conceptually, there's little difference. My point being that you could take the same mindset and just fliip a switch and now it's done. Of course, with OpenBSD, it's much easier to see what's going on, as you know everything that was modified and you can easily go look to see what that affected.

Also, while the Unix System Administration Handbook is quite good (probably the best such book out there by far), I have two caveats. The first is that there's also a Linux System Administration Handbook that looks identical. I wouldn't get that one over the Unix one. Second, it's quite expensive for a paperback.

Which brings me to my question, can someone tell me the difference between the different BSDs?

I needed to build a gateway/router/NAT/firewall box for our radio station network. I looked to doing it on linux (cos I've almost completely converted) but found the firewall/ipmasq documentation sketchy and also found that implementations are wildly different across distros and even across different versions.

So I downloaded the ISOs for Open and FreeBSD, I initally tried to install Open on the decrepid 166 we've chosen to do the business and found the thing just wouldn't boot. It was late, so I gave Free a try, much nicer install and to top it off, the machine booted and even worked!

The security aspects of Open initally attracted me, but on delving deeper I found that a lot of busy sites are run on Free instead.

So, considering my requirements, which BSD is best?

vi can be found on *any* UNIX or Linux system

Except, of course, for the empeg. Gotta use emacs there. More specifically, ae. (arm emacs)

I have OpenBSD running on a Pentium 166 working as a firewall, SMTP and IMAP server, HTTP and HTTPS server, NFS and Samba file server, and, I'm sure, some other stuff. The file serving is slow due to a slow disk drive, but otherwise it's fine.

OpenBSD is nice with regards to security, but one thing to consider is that they got in a huff about licensing issues with IPFilter, so it's no longer the default firewall software. They've developed their own, and I have very little information on it. However, you can still install IPFilter after the fact. IPFilter is what's used under FreeBSD and NetBSD by default. I'm using it on my OpenBSD install and it works quite well.

FreeBSD is the most polished of them by far. It's also probably the fastest, as it only supports a few processors. OpenBSD also only supports a few, but it was started as a derivative of NetBSD, and although it's not really gotten there yet, portability is one of its goals. Otherwise, once installed and whatnot, I doubt that you're going to find huge differences.

Nuh-uh. vi's at the bottom.

Holy [censored], where have I been......

More specifically, ae. (arm emacs)

What's arm emacs? Stock xemacs compiles out of the box on a car-player (although because of the extraordinary hairiness of the build system, it can't be cross-compiled).

Peter

``ae'' was not some misspelled latinate abbreviation. He meant the editor named ae, which I believe I've seen somewhere.

thank you very much for the advice. i will take a look at some of the distributions mentioned. I am not afraid of the idea of getting my hands dirty. from what you and others say it seems red hat and some of the other more sophisticated products do really seem to help as i had thought.

it doesn't sound like linux is very processor intensive for everyday apps. i'm thinking of picking up a used P3 500. is this enough, overkill or fine? this may eventually end up being a music server if all goes well.

My impression has been that once they're going they are pretty much the same. I like the fact that Open has a more rigorous security audit of the code and is (theoretically) less vulnerable to buffer overrun type exploits. The "packages" undergo nearly the same audit rigor as the main OS, but the "ports" haven't been audited, so depending upon which services you run can open yourself up to exploits in the ported code. You're still no worse off than running another BSD, however.

I like the fact that OpenSSH is already in the OS. I like the extremely robust randomization code in Open, which is implemented throughout the OS, for example in process IDs, etc.

I dislike the fact that the audit process tends to slow down the inclusion of new versions of the packages. For example, Open was still runing Bind 4 until a year ago. You could, of course, remove the Bind 4 and install the new stuff, but then you lose out on the benefit of the auditing, so why not just install a more up to date distribution like Free?

Anyhow, I use Open for Samba, firewall, web, DNS, mail and a few other things. It gives no problems and runs along with very little maintenance.

In my personal opinion, updates are less frequently required for security defects with Open. Others have commented that they are comfortable with doing a default install of OpenBSD and letting it run for *years* without updating. Naturally, if you want to take advantage of new functionality you're going to be updating more often.

If all you're using it for is a gateway/router/NAT/firewall machine and you disable all the other services, my guess is you can get OpenBSD running quickly and then forget about it for a *very* long time.

FWIW,
Jim

A P3 500 is way more than enough for most server things in a home/broadband environment. Somebody said somewhere that a P90 running the Apache web server could fill a 1.5Mbit pipe. Of course, lots of CGI will slow things considerably.

My web server/firewall/mail/etc server is a P3 300MHz and it is more than sufficient for me.

My music server, which runs an old version of Red Hat, has software raid on a library of 300+GB of mp3 files. It is only a 133Mhz Pentium with 32MB of RAM. I run Samba so that the music appears as a Windows share on my Windows machines. I can play music on the server, upload new music to the server and browse the shared directory from a Windows machine all at the same time and it keeps up. In fact, it has sub-second response on the browsing from the Windows machine with all of that going on.

I can make it skip with a large file transfer, music playing on the server, and 2-3 other client Windows machines playing mp3s via the shared drive all at the same time. A cool thing about UNIX/Linux is that the multitasking is managed by the kernel not by the processes and you can adjust priorities. So, if you're playing music with the machine and you don't want it to skip, you can adjust the "nice" levels of the other services to always give priority to the player application.

You'll be amazed at how fast a P3 500 is after you get the godawful Windoze off of it.

One other thought: if you really want to learn, stick with the "console" and don't use Xwindows right away. It takes significantly less resources and removes some of the widget issue. A *great* console mp3 player is a program called "mp3blaster".

Jim

As Jimmy said, a P3-500 should be fine. However, there are certain things that take a lot of processing power no matter what OS you're running. Amongst these things are encryption and audio/video encoding and decoding. Well, maybe I should say that they'll take about the same CPU power regardless of OS. My point is that if you're just running some web servers or file servers you'll be fine. However, if you start encoding mp3s, running an IPSec endpoint, and playing videos with CPU-intensive codecs, then you might run into problems.

The only reason I settled on Free was because I couldn't get Open to boot, it complained that it could load the kernel image, which seemed odd. I'm running Free now and I'm very happy with it...

Thank you for all the info. I'm currently waiting for a 800mhz P3 i picked for £150. I'm leaning toward gentoo. if it turns out to be too much i'll back down and go for a softer distro or OpenBSD. the LFS install info recommended some unix reading which i'll go through before i start. Anyway, thanks for all the recommendations