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What flavor of Linux do I want?

By R. John Quisenberry

Choosing a Linux distribution is often a tricky thing. You need to look at what you want to be able to do, and balance it against what kind of hardware you have to work with.

Those of you who just want to find a use for an older machine will have the fewest choices. This is not to say that there are no options, but you may have to forego some bells and whistles. In fact, the only thing that is hard to get in a small Linux distribution is graphical interface. For that, you need at least 8MB of RAM... I have an old WinBook XP laptop. It is a 486DX4 75 with 8MB of RAM. The floppy drive does not work and it only came with a 230MB hard drive. On this beast, I have loaded Dr DOS and from DOS I load MuLinux. This gives me a web server, a mail server, a router, a web browser, a graphical user interface (GUI), and a basic text editing environment. There is, of course, more than that in it even. If I download the packages, there are many programs I can install. If my floppy drive worked, I would not even need to use the hard drive. The down side is, the learning curve on installations like MuLinux is steep. Even when the GUI is used, it is not exactly as easy as most mainstream OS's.

Want some way to try Linux without actually installing anything? As long as you have at least a Pentium CPU, 32MB of RAM and can boot from CD-ROM, you can try Demo Linux. This one is lots of fun! It has all of the bells and whistles of the main distributions. You can even have it partially install itself to your hard drive so that it will have added features and work faster. But wait, there's more! It can also give you a full Debian Linux installation. The down side? Your CDROM is going to be much slower to run things from than your hard drive. Other than that issue, I love Demo Linux. It is a great way for the timid to get their feet wet with minimal pain if they can't hack it (pun intended).

If you want an even better version, try Knoppix. It's easy, fast, full featured and has attractive graphics. It even detected and configured my Wacom Graphire USB graphics tablet and made it work seamlessly. It can also be installed as a full Debian Linux installation. The drawback? It defaults to German as the system language. You can set it to anther language, but the menus to do so are all in German. I also had hoped that this latest release (3.2) would include an up to date version of KDevelop. The only other gripe I have is that it (like all other flavors of Linux I've tried so far) does not detect or use the sound on my Thinkpad 600 laptop. All together, I think this is the best of the CD-ROM based distributions. If you want a painless way to check out Linux, or a way to have Linux wherever you have access to a PC that can be booted from CD-ROM, this is it!

Want a big name? Recognized for quality in service and workmanship? Try Red Hat Linux. By far, the Linux flavor most known by the non-techies of the world. You can even buy stock! This one will demand more of a machine. I would not run it on less than a Pentium II with 64MB of RAM, but that's just me... They give you all kinds of stuff with it. Anything from graphics and photo editing to programming in multiple languages. Oh, and there are all kinds of games too. Don't like command lines? Hate text based interfaces? No problem! One of the questions it asks you during the install is if you want a graphical login. It also comes with an update feature that allows you to run updates on one machine indefinitely so that whatever bugs are discovered can be fixed with minimal pain (if you remember to run it). Drawbacks? The install program is much improved over the older ones I used years ago, but it is still not able to give the kinds of hand holding most average users desire. This is a great distribution for the mildly technical person and makes both a great server and a great desktop platform.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, what is the easies to install of all? Mandrake Linux has an automatic install mode that requires so little technical skill to install that almost any average user should have no trouble with the install. You also have the option of a more hands on approach. The mind boggles at the sheer quantity of software that is considered standard with this package. I once installed the retail version of Mandrake Linux for a guy, it required 8 CDROM's! You can install all of it or you can pick and choose. There is even an install that requires no more than 86MB of hard drive space. As with Red Hat Linux, you can choose to log into the system graphically. The user can even choose a cute icon to represent themselves on the login screen. The included Apache web server is a special version only standard in Mandrake Linux that has more features and options than the regular version. The down side? If you do an automatic install, expect it to take gigs of hard drive space. The fun toys that run at boot will also take a toll on CPU and memory resources if are not selective.

By far, that is not the whole list of distributions to choose from. I have simply given you a list of those that might serve as a starting point for you. Explore! There are an amazing number of distributions. They each have strengths and weaknesses. Who knows, maybe you will come up with your own distribution that will be even better than all the rest. Good luck!

Your feedback is welcome!