linuxgeek: Re: [LINUX_Newbies] Distribution Question

Thanks Scott, I will look into the two that you mentioned.

On Thu, Feb 07, 2013 at 05:55:26PM -0000, Charles wrote:
>
> I've been reading a Linux newbie guide and I'm trying to decide which distro to use. Toward the bottom of this page http://tinyurl.com/a57w9ln there is a chart makes reference to dependency problems and in Chapter 8 the "Dependency Hell" of RPM based distributions is mentioned.
>
> How worried should I be about the dependency issue?
>

Not very. That really hasn't been true for years. Yum, the package
handling tool for RedHat and some offshoots, handles things very well
nowadays. In the old days, pre yum, one would run the command rpm -ivh
whatever to install a package, only to have it fail because it was missing
something. Then, when you searched for the missing thing, it turned out
that you needed yet another rpm to install the missing rpm.

However, these days, almost all distributions, including those that use
RPMs, have very good package management programs that will pull in all
dependencies. On occasion, due to various factors, any of them might fail,
but 99 percent of the time, whether one uses rpms or debs package
installation is not a problem.

>
> I found this groups link to the Top Ten Distributions. That is a lot of information to digest. I know there can be no definitive answer to this question and I don't want to start a flame war but I would be interested in hearing some advice on which distribution to choose.
>

For a beginner, Ubuntu or Mint seem to be the best choices. In addition,
both have pretty friendly and helpful forums.

--
Scott Robbins
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