Hello all, I've been using Mac OS since I was a little kid, but now that I'm in college hoping to be a CS/Math double major I want to give linux a try. When I first started picking my parts out off newegg, I only knew about OpenSuse, OpenSolaris, Ubuntu, RedHat, and Fedora, but a week of researching has confronted me with Debian, Puppy, Zenwalk, Slackware ect... and even the possibility of making my own linux from scratch @_@.

So, My question is how advanced should I go? I've got all summer to tinker and configure this machine from scratch, and I was wondering which distro will teach me the most about what's going on "Under the hood." However, I'm also worried about getting in over my head.

The five distros I've been considering recently:
Zenwalk
Zenwalk64(if it's out by late may)
Slackware
Slamd64
LFS

I want the system to do little as possible to configure itself so that I'm forced to learn the command lines. I want the steepest learning curve that I can become literate and functional in over a span of 3 months. My thought is that LFS would be the ultimate learning experience, but it also seems like a HUGE undertaking to think that I'll have a desktop up and running to my liking by the end of summer vacation. I want to use Slackware, but with my new Intel E8500 3.16 GHz core 2 duo I feel like I should take advantage of a 64 bit system (however, I'm such a newb that I don't even know the specific advantages of 64 bit other than the fact that some newer apps use it). So, any advice?

Specifically:
How important is 64-bit?
Does Slamd64 live up to Slackware's speed, small footprint, and steep learning curve?
What about Zenwalk?
Would building myself a custom version of linux even be possible in 3 months?


I'm sorry if any of this is easily searched, I tried to search the forums/web first, but I thought of some questions while writing this.

I think slackware and gentoo (either or) would give you a good experience. I have not used slackware but there are always verbal battles going on between the two. Gentoo is what I use, and it definitely doesn't auto-configure anything for you, except the kernel compilation (actually, you are given a choice--manual or auto).

Gentoo has excellent documentation, but everything compiles from source and is the main point of ridicule. See the installation guide here, specifically for your 64-bit Intel chip:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-ia64.xml

Give it a quick read-through to see if it looks like what you want... You know, I'd almost suggest just downloading multiple distributions and installing them one-by-one (wiping the disk each time) just to get the hang of it. Ubuntu is a joke to install, so don't bother with that. Again, I can only speak for Gentoo (vs slackware) when I say that you won't have trouble installing it, and will be able to learn everything since the documentation is very verbose.

-AM

I hadn't looked at Gentoo because the profile on distrowatch made it seem like it was past its prime. Once I get it compiled will Gentoo remain happy and stable or will I be frantically trying to fix the system on top of schoolwork in the fall? The ideal is high customization/forced "do it yourself" (I'm happy to spend days, or weeks setting this thing up), with longterm stability and easy maintenance.

if you know nothing about digging around in the guts of a system, you'll be taking your time getting this system working. It is fast and stable, but not bug-free (what is, these days?). If you want something that is easy to maintain and has longterm support, ubuntu LTS is what you want. Systems with high customization require high attention throughout their lifespan. Updating software requires integration with your system, and you'll need to make sure it does. Emerge (gentoo's installation/package management system) does a nice job of patching, configuring and updating everything, even the configuration files it can merge for you. I've had gentoo working on my machine the past year no problem.

I'd say, start now, burn a bunch of distros and just try them out for a few days each. If you like, you can also dual/tri/quad/etc boot your machine to have multiple OSes on it. That way if one breaks, you can just reboot into the other, and still access your files (since linux uses ext3 as the default filesystem, and any distro can read from it).

Honestly, the best way is for you to just try them out individually. Ubuntu is one that is easy and will just work.

IMO, you need to add Arch Linux to the list. Thus, I recommend Gentoo, Slackware, and Arch Linux. A very deep learning on Linux system (BSD init style).

Emerge (Gentoo) and Pacman (Arch) do dependencies while pkgtool (Slackware) not.

I did this last summer

I was Dual booting slackware as a way to learn Linux and openSUSE as my main platform for uni work/media etc.

Well until openSUSE wouldn't play with my graphics card (kept using nv driver even when I went though nvidia installer) and slack would. So I Just kept booting Slack

Since them I've kept slack and moved to Ubuntu and Debian.

I use Debian everyday and like the huge program catalogue.
Ubuntu is to help out friends and family who I have convinced to use it
Slackware is again a bit of fun to teach me Linux.

I've herd Gentoo is good for this but cant really comment as haven't used it.

Although with Linux the best thing is to try lots and see what fits.

Hmm, ok, do gentoo and arch both support 64 bit?

Is 64 bit even something I should bother with (I plan on using this for my CS course work and limited gaming (i.e. WoW, perhaps other stuff later down the line)

Yes, they do. However, some programs, drivers in repos are made for 32-bit only.

This has something to do with large memory, I guess. If yours is less than 4 Gib Mem, it does not affect performance. Actually this is so complicated to explain. You can try to compile two kernels (one with 32-bit support and another with 64-bit support) and compare.

CMIIW.

Gentoo supports 64-bit, as well as simultaneous support for 32-bit and 64-bit libraries while running the 64-bit version. What this means, is that on my 64-bit install, i can run firefox that was compiled for a 32-bit system. Some distributions are solely 64-bit or solely 32-bit, which might be a thing to watch out for...

Also with the memory hurry hui mentioned, I have 8GB of ram in my machine (yes, overkill). 32-bit operating systems on my 64-bit hardware will not be able to access all of it.

So if I have 4 gb and want the option to upgrade to 8 I should make sure to get 64 bit? Sounds like gentoo a good idea

Yea, gentoo is one option. I wouldn't limit myself to just that, if you're unsure what system you want to get running (try, try, try!).

Some things to consider: not everything supports 64-bit software. For example, the flash plugin (i just checked) for linux is only a 32-bit binary, which means you'd have to get firefox compiled on gentoo as a 32-bit executable to use flash. Now, to some that is a pain in the a** and to others it's just a couple minutes of clicking/typing. (It's not really a difficult thing to get working). Drivers are another issue. If you have some obscure hardware, the manufacturers would probably not have considered writing a linux driver for 64-bit systems, but there's always the opensource drivers created from reverse-engineering that work well a majority of the time. Again, these are just things to consider.

How many disks are in your system? If you have more than one, you could designate them individual purposes, such as disk1 to hold the OSes (windows, linux, unix) and the second to hold your /home directory where all of your documents would be (so that if you do a reinstall, or reboot to another operating system, you access the same exact files).

I find it fun to install and play around with new releases of linux distributions, but that's because i'm a dork. Download the Gentoo IA64 installer disk, Arch, slackware, etc and just get them working, play around, try things out, etc. I'd say use the summer to experiment, not to become an expert in one distribution.

Just to save you some time (and out of my own boredom), here are the direct links to downloading arch, gentoo and slackware:

http://bouncer.gentoo.org/fetch/gent...-minimal/ia64/
ftp://slackware.mirrors.tds.net/pub/...ware-12.2-iso/
ftp://ftp.gtlib.gatech.edu/pub/linux...x/iso/2009.02/

-AM

Thanks, I have to say one of the nicest things about linux is the community. I think Open source makes this all a community effort to some degree, and I've never found this level of support behind a paid OS (and that goes for all of the linux related forums I've been reading up on these last 2 weeks)

In regards to obscure Hardware:

GIGABYTE GV-N98TOC-1GI GeForce 9800 GT 1GB 256-bit GDDR3
GIGABYTE GA-EP45C-UD3R LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard
Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale 3.16GHz 6MB L2 Cache
with 2x CORSAIR 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066

I'm not totally sure which monitor I'm going to use but it will probably be a 18.5" samsung, any forseeable conflicts?

Oh and I'm going to use a 500GB, 7200RPM, 3.0Gb/sec HD by Western Digital but I can probably make that 2 smaller drives if y'all think that's a worthwhile idea.

Indeed the community is awesome

NVIDIA > ATI when it comes to linux support, hands down, so you're good there (doesn't really matter which nvidia card you have, since they give you one driver for all cards, pretty much).

Check your intel chipset is supported in the linux kernel, or has drivers for it...
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/CS-028823.htm
This looks like some things are still missing? It's safer to get a motherboard that isn't BRAND-SPANKING-NEW just so you can see if other people have had issues with it, not just in regards to linux support (if the hardware itself is bad).

Read this, and note the second posting
http://www.motherboardpoint.com/re-f...l-t152835.html

Only the chipset is what you need to check. I run AMD and the nforce chipset on my motherboard, which I know works (there's an option in the linux kernel, when compiling, to support the nforce 590 chipset). If you know you want Intel, search around google (i mean, internet) for anything that indicates your chipset is supported. OR-- better yet: just boot up your system with the gentoo disk and see what drivers it loads for the motherboard (# lsmod), and if it boots at all. This is however, assuming you already have the motherboard and computer purchased

Hard drives don't matter, they're all on the same interfaces: SATA/IDE/whatever. Don't worry about RAM either, or the monitor.

Hmm It looks like my Mobo was "bleeding edge" about 6-10 months ago, and it was given a fairly safe review as far compatibility with the Linux kernel. However, in the course of my search I realized I could get a quad core with 2.66 GHz and 4 MB cache for slightly cheaper than the 3.16 dual core 6 MB cache. Which do you think would provide better performance? (I really wish Intel and AMD would just label dual and quad cores on a scale as if they were single core to make comparison easier!!!)

There is a reason why. You cannot measure the experience of multi-core systems when not all the software you run on it takes advantage of it. Single core systems obviously get faster with more speed, but now that the speed of CPUs has basically hit an upper barrier, more cores are added. If applications don't take advantage of the cores, then they won't improve in performance and enhance user-experience. Slowly but surely applications are becoming multi-threaded (and in the case of the Chrome web-browser, multi-process), the "speed" of the computer should seem to improve. Generally, at this point in time, more cores can really only help you with number crunching (image/video/audio editing) and possibly games. Just browsing the web, or writing papers, or whatever won't give you a better experience with more cores. So, to be more "future-safe" more cores is better even if everything might not take advantage of it at the moment.

Between those two, disregard speeds and the caches, as they are pretty similar and both large. The quad- vs dual-core... i'd say get the quad, but that's just my selfish hardware dork speaking to you

-AM