Debian, Yoper or Other??

I am looking for a linux distro. I have used Suse in the past but am looking for something I can learn more from. I have Downloaded disk 1 of debian. But I do not know if this is the way to go. If I go with Debian which disks do I need to DL in addition to disk 1. I am just looking for the basic install that includes a GUI (KDE is preferred).

I have heard about Yoper as well. Is this a good choice.

I will be installing on a XP1700, Epox 8K5A2+, MX440 rig with a WD 40gb drive. This rig MUST be able to Fold. I also hope to use it as my day to day rig so as to help my learning. I will of course use the rig in my sig for gaming purposes.

Thanks in advance for the help!!

I really like Yoper linux because it can use rpm files, deb files, apt-get, and of course tarballs. Also Yoper comes with 3d acceleration out of the box, and is one of the fastest distros around. Overall Yoper is a great system and you should give it a Try.

Yoper is a pretty good choice for a beginner though its not really mainstream the way fedora, mandrake, or suse are. Overall its an excellent distribution. Its repository of packages available thru apt-get is not very large right now, but its possible to install things via other methods as already mentioned. In that regard it can give you some experience with rpm's, deb's, slackware tgz, and installing from source. It uses KDE as the default desktop, and has some nice GUI tools for beginners. There are some pitfalls in the installer, but if you can avoid them, it installs very fast- usually in 5-10 minutes. A lot of people in these forums use it because it offers more optimzation than most distros without the effort involved in installing gentoo (a very optimized distro).

Of course Debian is also a nice choice. Very straightforward, widely used, awesome package manager (apt-get) with huge repositories of packages. Not really a beginner's Linux, but a very good distribution nonetheless.

Arkaine23 said:

Of course Debian is also a nice choice. Very straightforward, widely used, awesome package manager (apt-get) with huge repositories of packages. Not really a beginner's Linux, but a very good distribution nonetheless.

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So if I decide to go with Debian (or at least try) which ISO's do I need. I have #1 and am Downloading #2 right now. Do I need the rest??

Going on info from here you probably want disks 1 and 5. http://linuxiso.org/distro.php?distro=4

I've always used a modified Debian, installing from a single Knoppix-based live CD.

Arkaine23 said:

Going on info from here you probably want disks 1 and 5. http://linuxiso.org/distro.php?distro=4

I've always used a modified Debian, installing from a single Knoppix-based live CD.

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Thanks for the help Arkaine!!

As a side note, I have used Overclockixx for a few days now to test my comps and it is what gave me the initiative to try Linux again!!

Thanks!

You can install it ya know. It may take a little change to a config here or there after install to make it secure, but its pretty much a working pre-built Debian system.

Arkaine23 said:

You can install it ya know. It may take a little change to a config here or there after install to make it secure, but its pretty much a working pre-built Debian system.

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How do I install it??I have only ran it as a CD based OS.

As root: knoppix-installer

And for the 3.4 version it would be: knx-hdinstall

<Debian zealot>Knoppix is NOT Debian! It is based on Debian, but if you install it on harddisk you DON'T have Debian!<Debian Zealot>

Neither are any other Debian based distros (Ubuntu, Xandros, Linspire, Corel, ....) Debian. Ubuntu and Knoppix might make better Desktop OSes than raw Debian however

And any Linux can fold, if push comes to shove, just get the statically compiled version of F@H

I smell some Bias. :-x Arkaine is on the development team for Yoper....but that doesn't mean it's bad or anything.

Klingens, define debian then. Knoppix, Ubuntu, etc all use Debian's filesystem, package management, etc. You can't really say they're not Debian. It'd be like saying Windows Media Center isn't Windows.

It doesn't really matter so much which distro you choose. Ultimately they are all Linux. They have some internal differences and they'll have some strengths and weaknesses because of these differences. Of the distros discussed, I tried to focus on those strengths and weaknesses. For instance, yoper offers some nice performance tweaks and a very quick installer, yet package management can be problematic (lots of options which is both good and bad and the primary package manager, apt-get, does not have a very big repository at the moment because the distro is very young), also the installer while quick does have some issues where newbs can get hung up. Non-debian, debian-based distros have their own quirks as well. The Overclockix live CD (and most other knoppixes) for instance have the installer as an afterthought and so they've got lax security. Either way support for yoper and debian and its cousins is very good here in these forums because a lot of very knowledgeable users are familiar with them. One advantage of the live CD's and of yoper are that they come on a single CD image and generally are not hard to install.

The thing is, if you go to some official Debian place to get support with your newly installed Knoppix "Debian", one of the first questions will be: which Debian are you running. As soon as you say the word "Knoppix", no one will or can help you: cause Knoppix is just not Debian. The maintainers of Knoppix have made different choices than the Debian ones, and therefore it's a different system. If you have a "real" Debian, the ones trying to help you have a far better knowledge of how your system is set up. Mandrake is based on Redhat, but no one would say mdk _is_ RH. Same thing.

Also, Knoppix sucks as a general purpose distro: it is a great one for a LiveCD, but Knoppix doesn't have an upgrade path, doesn't do security updates, etc. This is all outside the scope of Knoppix since it's the original LiveCD distro. It is a damn good LiveCD, but it's not meant for installing. Debian proper on the other hand is a bit hard to use and configure, especially for newcommers, as a desktop. Stuff like hotplug are not automatically loaded and configured and such, nvidia doesn't ship binary .debs of their drivers, etc. So other distros, like Ubuntu try to fill that gap: make a user friendly distro, based on Debian which has a clear update path and support.
There are of course other distros than Ubuntu which does this, but it's the only one of the Debian user-centric offspring I know which is 100% free, as in beer and freedom. They even mail out free CDs.