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| Although it may seem like a daunting task to select your first distro out of the vast array of choices, it's actually rather simple. You want a major distro that has a large community, a good track record, and regular updates. Secondarily, you want something that will support the software you want to use with the least headaches.
| | #REDIRECT [[Babbies First Linux]] |
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| Before researching and choosing the right distribution for you, you must have in mind what you want to use it for. Facebook machine? Programming? Gaming? A secondary consideration is hardware. Linux generally tends to play well with underpowered or aging computers, but you may want to try lighter distros.
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| In summary, these are the things you want to compare when distro shopping:
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| 1. Distro quirks
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| 2. Software availability
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| 3. [[Desktop environment]]
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| = Distribution Families =
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| For more information, visit each distro's homepage, Wikipedia, and [http://distrowatch.com/ DistroWatch].
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| == [[Debian]] ==
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| A community-developed distro focused on stability. Has the biggest user base if you include distros based on it. Comes in various releases with different tradeoffs of stability/up-to-datedness. More or less the most important distro in the GNU/Linux ecosystem today.
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| ==== Crunchbang ====
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| Takes Debian Stable and rices it for you. Openbox, Tint2, the works. Comes with drivers. Uses stable and backport Debian repos.
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| ==== [[elementaryOS]] ====
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| Takes Ubuntu and makes it look like OS X by developing the Pantheon desktop environment and in-house programs. Uses Ubuntu repos.
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| ==== Mint ====
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| Takes Ubuntu, removes spyware, adds proprietary shit like Flash right in the iso. Developed the MATE and Cinnamon desktop environments. Uses Ubuntu repos.
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| === [[Ubuntu]] ===
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| Takes Debian Testing, makes sure its packages are usable, adds drivers, adds handholding, and adds spyware. Not to fear, it's easily removable ([fixubuntu.com]). Comes with Unity by default. Repo is supplemented with user-maintained PPAs, so if it's available for Linux you can probably find it here. The most popular desktop distro with the most guides and solutions on various forums.
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| Developed by [[Canonical]], the evil empire of the free software world.
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| == [[Fedora]] ==
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| Developed by [[Red Hat]], probably the biggest corporate backer of GNU/Linux, as a testing bed for its commercial RHEL distro. Bleeding edge; usually the first widely-used distro to start shipping with new developments such as Wayland.
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| == [[Arch Linux]] ==
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| A community-developed distro focused on simplicity and vanilla-ness of its underlying parts. No hand-holding or preconfigured defaults; setting up the system is left to the user. Great for learning how a GNU/Linux system comes together. Repositories hold bleeding edge packages.
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| === Manjaro ===
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| Takes Arch, preconfigures everything, and gives it an easy graphical installer. Also maintains its own repository of more stable packages in addition to the Arch repositories.
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| == [[OpenSUSE]] ==
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| Developed by [[Novell]] as a testing bed for its commercial SUSE distro. Best implementation of KDE, and great GNOME integration. Has a well-regarded integrated configuration tool called YaST. OBS repositories are nearly comparable with Debian's PPAs.
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| == [[Gentoo]] ==
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| Install it. A distro with zero hand-holding, has to compiled by the installer pre-use.
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| *Unconfirmed reports of granting magic powers: i.e the ability to roll turds into gold, vibrate through walls, etc
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| == [[Slackware]] ==
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| Quite possibly the oldest distro in the books.
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| Made for the purist at heart.
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| == Other ==
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| Nothing here suit your fancy? Check out [[List of GNU/Linux Distros]] or [http://distrowatch.com/ DistroWatch] and browse around for something pretty.
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| = Desktop Environments =
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| Found a distro you liked? Great! If it doesn't have a natively developed desktop environment, go on to [[Desktop Environment]].
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| [[Category:HowTo]]
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| [[Category:GNU/Linux]]
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