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Originally posted by Ernest Friedman-Hill:
It depends on why you're asking. Do you want to get job-relevant experience? Or do you want a desktop Java development environment? At work? At home? At school? Do you do multimedia stuff? Do you have one machine, or a thousand? Do you need to be the adminstrator of all of them? Have you ever touched UNIX before? Can you type? Do you know Perl?
No distro is intrinsically "best". Each one targets a different kind of user and market segment. If you tell us why you're interested, we could probably help you choose.
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Originally posted by Jesse Torres:
Can I perform J2EE development or Mandrake or Suse?
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Originally posted by Ernest Friedman-Hill:
Yes, absolutely. The thing to remember is that all distros are, when all is said and done, 99% the same. You've got a Linux kernel, all the UNIX utilities, an X/Windows server, office software, web browsers, etc. Pretty much every distro gives you the same set of choices for all of these.
Where they differ primarily is in desktop environment and system administration tools. Some distros are really aimed at desktop users, and some are designed for server use. They'll use different kernel patches to optimize performance for a certain pattern of use, or include extra or enhanced drivers for certain classes of hardware. For example, a desktop-oriented distro will have better USB support out-of-the-box. But you can run Java on every one, and in fact, use any distro as a desktop or a server, regardless of what it's primarily intended for, and it will work just fine. And if you want better USB support on RedHat, you can learn to compile and install the drivers yourself. It's not rocket science.
RedHat has recently dropped all the consumer products to concentrate 100% on the server market. They don't have the best products, but they do have the best market share. They offer a certification program, so if you're interested in that, then Red Hat would probably be the way to go, but otherwise, there's really not much to recommend it.
Mandrake and Xandros are both very user-friendly, desktop oriented distros which would help make a Windows user feel comfortable.
But remember, whichever distro you use, you'll learn about Linux, and you can do Java development and J2EE server deployment. Unless you're specifically intending to cough up the money to get a RHCE certification, then for you I'd recommend going with Mandrake or Xandros.
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Originally posted by Jesse Torres:
In that case, which is easier to setup and run Suse, Mandrake, or Fedora?
Thanks again
The secret of how to be miserable is to constantly expect things are going to happen the way that they are "supposed" to happen.
You can have faith, which carries the understanding that you may be disappointed. Then there's being a willfully-blind idiot, which virtually guarantees it.
Originally posted by Tim Holloway:
Mandrake and Fedora were both built on the Red Hat RPM base. If you're pallning to get a job in Paris, Mandrake may be useful. In the US, Mandrake has faded somewhat - though I have a set of install CDs in case I ever want to try them. SuSe is more popular in Europe and has been favored by some of the big vendors like IBM (most of them also support Red Hat).
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MH
Originally posted by Arjun Shastry:
Go for Mandrake.Its the only one distro which will support songs in MP3 format.
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MH
Get a better web browser:<br /><a href="http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/switch.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/switch.html</a>
Originally posted by Petr Blahos:
Hi Jesse,
I would also recommend trying a livecd distro so that you know
that your machine does not have any aparent problems with
linux.
Best regards,
Petr
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Originally posted by Jesse Torres:
Can I setup a tri-boot environment to run XP Pro, Mandrake, and Suse?
The secret of how to be miserable is to constantly expect things are going to happen the way that they are "supposed" to happen.
You can have faith, which carries the understanding that you may be disappointed. Then there's being a willfully-blind idiot, which virtually guarantees it.
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Bruno Collet<br /><a href="http://www.practicalsoftwarearchitect.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">www.practicalsoftwarearchitect.com</a><br />- The Paradox of Software Architecture: It is easy to make a complex architecture, but it is difficult to make a simple architecture.
Originally posted by Bruno Collet:
I use Linux Mandrake 10 for all my work as J2EE architect. That is, UML modeling, development, testing technologies, application server, db, and so on.
I just wrote a few tips and a small article on this topic on my website to share this experience. Feel free to comment.
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Consider Paul's rocket mass heater. |