Linux Distribution...Which one???

dreamweaverdude

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Hi there,

I've been using linux on and off for a while now trying out various distributions of it but am not sure about a few things. I like the look of Suse and have used it a little bit. I've also tried red Hat and found it reasonable. I tried Mandrake and also found that fairly straightforward. One thing I am not sure about is if there are any good media players out for linux at the moment as I use my computer mainly for the internet and music. I read somewhere that winamp is available but in beta. Do you know any players such as a good one on sourceforge that i've not heard about. Help on choosing a distribution would also be helpful. I am willing to learn from scratch even though so far I have found linux pretty straight forward so far but still need to learn how to install programs from the terminal. Any recommendations on distro's and suitable media players would be helpful. most of the music is ecoded in mp3 and the spec of the machine to run linux on is, - 1Ghz amd duron, 192mb ram, soon to be 512mb, 64mb geforce2 FX400, 40gig with a 10 gig slave.
 
You do not wanna be using the beta Winamp on GNU/Linux. There's a great alternative called XMMS. Most distros should include it. Its a clone of Winamp with codecs to play almost any audio filetype. If ur looking for an iTunes-like media player then there's Rhythmbox. There are countless media players for GNU/Linux but these are among the more prominent ones. For video there are Xine and Mplayer. Google these. Most distros should include a few good media players so u shouldn't really worry bout that.

For a distribution, I would recommend Fedora Core 3. In my opinion its pretty good as its not too "noob". You actually don't need to use the terminal to install software as well. There's this program called APT. Just download the APT RPM from www.rpmfind.net for ur distribution and type

apt-get install (package name)

and it'll solve all the dependencies and install the package. There's a GUI for it called synaptic as well.
 
Thank you for you're reply, I've heard a lot of good things from friends of mine about Fedora and will probaly go eith this. What do you think of Suse 9.2 Pro? Is it any good? I might also want to watch tv throguh linux using a tv capture card a possibly record it. Does fedora work ok for this sort of thing. any replies are greatly appreciated.

thans so far
dan
 
Well, Suse 9.2 Pro isn't free so I haven't had much usage with it. Well, it's supposed to be better than Fedora. In terms of usage its pretty similar to Fedora. After all, they all use KDE and/or GNOME. But one major plus point of Fedora is the huge amount of software available for it.

Fedora can do tv and recording. It comes with one program called tvtime. There are others of course. The main limiting factor is that not all cards work out. You might want to check GNU/Linux compatibility lists to find a GNU/Linux compatible card before purchasing it. I don't have one so I can't really help you out on this.
 
Gentoo linux is a good distro. The installation process is entirely user defined command line. Which is good because you can configure it to run the best it will with your hardware. But don't let that bogue you out because there is a VERY good installation handbook at www.gentoo.org that is VERY easy to follow and describes things in depth so that the new user will understand everything he is doing.
 
Personally I would go for SuSe; I don't know why but were somebody to put a gun to my head and say install a Linux Distribution that would be my choice.

Of course - if its not free I'd recommend downloading it through Shareaza or something like that. If its Open-Source it should be free anyway.
 
persoanlly i like mandrake 10.0 simple as ever. comes packed with everything you could want. easy software installer etc.

recently I have been playing with MEPHIS, and enjoy it too.

almost all the distros out there come with LIVE disks. download a bunch test em out and see what one you like best.
 
think i'll go for suse pro 9.2, i've used it before and haven't had any problems with it and I really like the layout of things in it, but i'll get the amndrake live dc first.
 
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