red hat, or mandrake?

ok this is going to be my first time using linux


so, which should i get>>

also whats the pros/cons of each?>

RedHat have attempted to join the KDE and Gnome desktop so that they look the same with a theme called Bluecurve, however this produced outrage from some corners of the Linux community and crys that the KDE desktop was crippled to achieve this.
Personally I just do not like it.

Mandrake is widely used by the Linux newbie and it was where I actually started myself, i can not really comment on it now as its been a while since I used it... but it was ok imho

IMO, they are pretty similar. Both attempt to appeal to the same group of users: people who are new at Linux. Either one should work well for you. Also, remember that the capabilities of Linux do not change much between distros.

There is the BlueCurve issue, but it is mostly a visual one, and won't affect the capabilities of the system, nor your ability to learn from it. I wouldn't rule out Red Hat based soley on BlueCurve.

When I ran Mandrake 9.0 I noticed it to be particularly resource intensive. (Particularly with KDE).

I run RH 9 now and it seems less resource intensive, albeit it's on a more powerful machine. (2x XP1700/512 MB vs 1x XP1800/256 MB)

They are the same thing. It's a known fact that Mandrake is based off of RH. The biggest differences between the two is the KDE/Gnome/Bluecurve issue, and the installers. Other than that all the progams that are all installed should be the same version, and everything will run the same.

The only pros or cons will be user preference. All the distros run the same stuff, some might have difference ways of installing (like gentoo), or others might not to use the newest cutting edge version of a given program until it has been proven stable, but Linux is Linux. Try both, and decide for yourself which one you want to use.

I have used em both. I would go with Mandrake for a new user. Allthough Redhat seems to have more support..

I have never used either one of them but have used SuSE 8.2 Pro. This was my first distro and was very easy to get running. Very noob friendly.

Titan386 said:

IMO, they are pretty similar. Both attempt to appeal to the same group of users: people who are new at Linux. Either one should work well for you. Also, remember that the capabilities of Linux do not change much between distros.

There is the BlueCurve issue, but it is mostly a visual one, and won't affect the capabilities of the system, nor your ability to learn from it. I wouldn't rule out Red Hat based soley on BlueCurve.

Click to expand...

well, erm whats blue curve lol?

and ive decided with mandrake for now, thanks

fiji said:

well, erm whats blue curve lol?

Click to expand...

BlueCurve is a theme for the KDE and Gnome desktop environments, found in recent Red Hat distributions (8.0 and up, I believe). It aims to make the two environments look the same.

Some like it, others don't. It's a personal preference.