Best Distro for my hardware? Thx

<3Tux · 09-20-2005, 01:07 PM

I have a
P4 2.26GHz Northwood Core
Powercolor Radeon 9600 Pro (256mb)
D-Link DWL-G520 Wireless Network Card

I'm looking for a starter linux browser really, just something that can start me on learning a lil bit about it. I tried SuSe but i couldn't get into KDE or anything was just SSH commands the whole time.

Thx any help is well appreciated

kuser:) · 09-20-2005, 01:15 PM

try this thread

<3Tux · 09-20-2005, 01:19 PM

yeah, I wanted to use SuSe, I did install it and all... but any idea why I'm not able to get any GUI to show up? It always boots into ssh command prompts.

wmakowski · 09-20-2005, 01:40 PM

This topic comes up quite often on linuxquestions. You'll find many opinions already posted and probably still be just as confused when it comes to picking one. Your hardware is not an issue, it will do fine with just about any availabe distribution. One suggestion would be to try out some of the LiveCD's that are available and pick one you like. Here is an article that might help Linux LiveCD Roundup. Although it didn't make the list Gentoo also has a LiveCD out.

Other things you might want to consider is where are you going from here? If you are just out to explore most likely any distribution would fit your needs. If you would like to learn about Linux for a possible job in the future I know RHEL and SUSE are in use at many businesses. There are others of course, but that is what I've seen. Whitebox Linux is free and based on RHEL.

Bill

<3Tux · 09-20-2005, 01:48 PM

Thanks, I'll try the live suse CD, it could be something I configured wrong that I'm not able to get a GUI to show up, and if thats the case I could go from there

wmakowski · 09-20-2005, 02:45 PM

9 times out of 10 it is a problem with the Horizsync and Vertrefresh rates for the monitor. Start by taking a look at your XFree86.0.log or Xorg.0.log file in /var/log to determine if that is the problem. The log file will also tell you which config file it is using. Most likely either /etc/X11/XF86Config or /etc/X11/xorg.conf. You can then go into that file and make adjustments based on the documentation that came with your monitor. You won't have to reboot to test out your new settings. Just use the startx command at the prompt. If things still aren't right, show us any errors that are in the log files and we might be able to help.

Bill

<3Tux · 09-20-2005, 03:33 PM

Yeah I started another post on that and Micro420 lead me threw it I'm up and running good now, just gotta configure my Video Card, Network card etc.