Thursday, April 9, 2009

Choosing a Linux Distribution

Which Linux Distribution Should I Use?

When it comes to open-source operating systems you would think that there would only be a few choices. I was pretty amazed to find out that even in the land of Linux there was many different views on what makes the ideal operating system or what is known as a "Distro".

If you are interested in learning about the different types of distributions out there you can check out:
  1. Wikipedia - List of Linux Distributions
  2. DistroWatch - A good site to see which distributions are the most popular
Since I am a complete Noob with Linux I decided to look for the most popular version of Linux, one that has a very strong community to help me when I crash my system, one that makes installation a snap, and one with a strong package manager.

After researching the different distributions I finally ended up choosing Ubuntu. What I like about Ubuntu is that it commercially sponsored even though the OS is offered for free. That means that it will be continuously be improved upon and hopefully in the future is will be so feature rich that people will flock away from Windows :) Also the folks at Ubuntu provide an Educational version to help children learn about computers and helps supports educational institutions. Not a huge selling point, but I since my entire family is made up of teachers... it is nice bonus.

Since I am using an Intel Duo Core 2 processor, I have decided to download AMD64 ISO for installation to take advantage of the multi-core processing power of Ubuntu. From what I read there are a lot of packages (software) that can have some problems using the AMD64 framework, but given enough research I am sure that I can overcome these issues.

Once I download the ISO, it needs to be burned to a CD as an image. This is very important, I fell into this trap once before when I just burned a "data" CD. I am using a free software called InfraRecorder for this and it handles image files beautifully.

Not that I am geared up with my Linux Distro on a CD... I am ready to install. (My hands are sweating a little bit)

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