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Which flavor of Linux

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5683565

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Original poster
Feb 18, 2006
586
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Hong Kong
Ok, first I will say that I do not want to start some huge Yellow dog vs. something else war.

Basically I was wanting to install linux on my Intel iMac, presumably using Parallels ( It can do this right? ). I already have Windows XP installed on a seperate partition with boot camp.

So which flavor of Linux do you people think I should download?

I have had some experience using Mandrake and Yellow Dog, but nothing much.

I take it everything works normally with drivers on the Intel macs?

Cheers.
 
Yellow Dog is only for PowerPC Macs, so won't work on the Intel iMac. As the hardware in the iMac is brand new, it's pretty much a work in progress at the moment. Although Linux boots and uses the X1600 card for the desktop, there are still issues with the thermal management.

As regards to the distro, it depends how much Linux experience you have. Ubuntu, based on Debian, is probably the best for new users (or Kubuntu if you prefer the KDE interface). If you liked the Yellow Dog way of doing things, you'd be better off with Fedora, the code on which Yellow Dog is based.

More info here:-

http://www.mactel-linux.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.ubuntulinux.org
 
IMHO All Linux distros are the same so try a few and see which ones you like. Personally I like CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux but I only use Linux on server hardware. It really depends on what you want to do with the machine.

As for everything working out of the box I doubt you'll have support for your video card out of the box, sure you'll get 2D but don't expect 3D acceleration out of the box.
 
janey said:
Gentoo and Ubuntu are my two favorites. But in all reality, it sort of depends on what you like and what you want.
Click to expand...

Another thing I learned was that is wasn't clearly stated what one distro has that another doesn't. I have the opinion that there is TOO much choice for the average joe in the world of Linux.

I always used Red Hat in the past - now Fedora Core and I have used SUSE.
 
If you're most familiar with Yellow Dog and Mandrake (both RPM based distros) I'd recommend Fedora Core 5. Otherwise, try out Ubuntu which is pretty nice and I have installed under Parallels myself, and works well.
 
Try Slackware.. The best distro. Ever.

If you would want a 1 CD Version of Slack, try Zenwalk.

If you would want to play around with Slackware and the XFCE desktop environment, then try Slax(Live CD)
 
kingjr3 said:
Another thing I learned was that is wasn't clearly stated what one distro has that another doesn't. I have the opinion that there is TOO much choice for the average joe in the world of Linux.
Click to expand...
That's what I love about it. It's not clearly defined, but there are things that make certain distros stand out from others, regardless of what you do. Portage being an example, I'm quite fond of it.

To the OP, if you ever want to learn a lot and also spend a week installing things you need, go for Gentoo or even better, Linux from Scratch. It's a LOT more work than just the pop-cd-in-run-installer-and-go approach found particularly in Fedora Core and Ubuntu, but it's a better learning experience.

Also, Parallels is virtualization software - you can run the OS inside Parallels but you can't boot from it. Booting from it requires another partition or drive and all that messy stuff.
 
May I be the first to ask: Why do you want/need linux? Each distro has its strengths and weaknesses, and one disro may be better suited to the task than another.

Of course, you get 99% of the unix goodness just running OS X and X11 + fink or darwinports so there has to be a real specific application pull for me to think about running any Linux on my Macs.

Personally I still like Debian for the few linux boxes I use, but they tend to be headless server type boxes...

B
 
all depends on how new you are to linux. if you are a noobie, and there is nothing wrong with that, then pick the simplest distro for you to get things going with. When I started out I used red hat and suse, at work we have some systems that i put together special and i used debian and that is one sweet system.

that is just my recommendation though, check out the following link that webpage just might be worth reading. might help with some installation issues. good luck :)

http://www.mactel-linux.org/wiki/Main_Page
 
ToddW said:
all depends on how new you are to linux. if you are a noobie, and there is nothing wrong with that, then pick the simplest distro for you to get things going with.
Click to expand...
imo you're going in the wrong way.
With Gentoo and Linux from Scratch, you are forced to go through the process of doing a lot of things by yourself and not use something prebuilt and spoonfed to you a la FC and Ubuntu. Have you ever compiled a compiler? Ever configured a kernel? In fact, I don't even think you do much from a non-fancy-GUI with something drop dead simple other than typing in "boot" at the prompt or something. You don't ever have to do ANYTHING, and so what use is that if you don't know how to use the tools that come with your computer? This is why you get all the same questions from every single new person..."how do i install programs?"...how do i do x? how do i do y? there's no pretty app to help me decide what to do?

Do most Ubuntu or FC users know how the hell to use fdisk to format and partition their drives? (also, i'm picking on users of those two distros right now, but this goes to all the fancy schmancy distros out there too) Wait, do they even know wtf reiserfs or ext3 is? Odds are that unless they're dualbooting a winxp partition as well, they wouldn't know what to do if they needed to fix their GRUB configuration either.

Not categorizing all Ubuntu or FC users into one group of idiots (in fact the devs and power users are anything but idiots...they're awesome and i'm trying to contribute a little to ubuntu L10n at the moment as well), but I'm just saying, how's an easy distro supposed to be helpful in any way? Nothing wrong with being a noob in the beginning, but there's something wrong about staying a noob on purpose if you mean to give linux a try for a while. Seriously, installing one of those two distros is one hell of a learning experience and youd end up knowing how to do a lot of basic things just because you did it a couple times during the install.

in this case, easy != good.

Of course you can argue that the user shouldn't have to live through all that suffering for an OS when a XP or OS X install is a matter of clicking a few buttons and waiting for a few minutes. If that's seriously your mindset though, then maybe FC or ubuntu are the right distros for you, or maybe linux just isn't your cup of tea and you'd be better off using something a bit more "mainstream" and user friendl(ier).
 
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