Linux Users Group of Miami

Getting Started

Written by Site Administrator
Monday, 09 October 2006
Welcome to the wonderful world of Linux and Open Source Software! Take a look at the following websites to help you find a FREE Linux distribution (distro) suitable to your needs: DistroWatch - www.distrowatch.com - This site keeps a list of most active distributions along with reviews, news about recent versions and updates. Here you will find a distro to suit just about any kind of use. Ubuntu Linux - www.ubuntulinux.com - Currently the fastet growing version of Linux. Known for it's general friendliness, wide hardware compatibility and rapid development. Features the Gnome desktop environment, with variants for KDE (kubuntu) and XFCE (xubuntu) enabling a suitable for just about any taste in interfaces. Fedora Linux - http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ - Also among the most popular and is sponsored by RedHat, the most widely deployed creator of Linux for enterprises. Features a Gnome interface and usually has the leading edge of RedHat inspired software. Open SuSE Linux - http://www.opensuse.org - Sponsored by Novell, Open SuSE is the free edition of their commercially available distro. Much like Fedora it features many of the newer versions of software that make their way to the commercial versions in later releases. SuSE is known for it's excellent rendition of the KDE graphical desktop which is a little more Windows like than Gnome. PC-BSD - http://www.pcbsd.org - For something a bit different, a fully open source BSD-based Unix that has all of the features of the average Linux desktop distro. BSD Unix forms the base of commercial operating systems such as Mac OSX and is known for it's reliability and high performance networking but is further behind in hardware support than most Linux distros. You can also get started without formatting your hard drive. Simply boot off a LIVE CD such as Knoppix (www.knoppix.org), Ubuntu v6.10 and higher, or PCLinuxOS (www.pclinuxos.com). If your hardware is on the older side (128MB/400Mhz type of thing) check out Damn Small Linux (www.damnsmalllinux.org) or Puppy Linux (www.puppylinux.org) There are many specialized distros as well for things like music and video editing (Dynebolic, VideoLinux), media servers (Geexbox), security/firewalls (Coyote, Engarde, m0n0wall), science (Scientific Linux), and even accomodation for the visually impaired (OraLinux) and many others. See Distrowatch for a comprehensive list. Ultimately, the choice is YOURS! You don't have to run only one operating system, or desktop, or suite of applications. There are many to choose from and you can surely find one to suit your needs. We hope you found this information useful and look forward to seeing you on the forums and at our meetings. Sincerely, The LUG of Miami Team