Linux Noob: 31 Flavors
Hi all. A recent outburst of hardware purchasing and Frankensteining has left me with a second computer sitting happily next to the one I'm now using. I want to use it to finally get around to playing with Linux but I'm curious which distribution would be best. So if you are a devotee of one in particular then this is your chance to score a convert.
I used Sun Solaris all through college (though that was several years ago) so I'm vaguely familiar with Unix from a user's perspective. I've also made a few half-hearted attempts at this before but dual-booting got on my nerves and I needed Windows for work. I've used Red Hat in the past just because it was packaged with the books I bought. I like having a physical reference nearby when I'm fiddling.
My main intent with this is to turn the Linux box into a firewall and programming platform. I've spent 15 years writing software for Windows so it would be fun to learn something completely new. As for the firewall, all I want is for the Linux box to sit between my DSL connection and this one XP rig. Presumably such that I wouldn't need a software firewall on the XP box.
I don't require any "professional" tech support from my eventual chosen vendor but a fully loaded and non-stagnant distribution would be nice and free is obviously a plus. Wide hardware support is also fairly important.
Red Hat has now diverged into RH Enterprise and Fedora plus there's Debian, Mandrake, SuSE and others that I can't name off the top of my head.
So does anyone have any thoughts on a suitable learning distribution for someone whose new to Linux but not much else?
I used Sun Solaris all through college (though that was several years ago) so I'm vaguely familiar with Unix from a user's perspective. I've also made a few half-hearted attempts at this before but dual-booting got on my nerves and I needed Windows for work. I've used Red Hat in the past just because it was packaged with the books I bought. I like having a physical reference nearby when I'm fiddling.
My main intent with this is to turn the Linux box into a firewall and programming platform. I've spent 15 years writing software for Windows so it would be fun to learn something completely new. As for the firewall, all I want is for the Linux box to sit between my DSL connection and this one XP rig. Presumably such that I wouldn't need a software firewall on the XP box.
I don't require any "professional" tech support from my eventual chosen vendor but a fully loaded and non-stagnant distribution would be nice and free is obviously a plus. Wide hardware support is also fairly important.
Red Hat has now diverged into RH Enterprise and Fedora plus there's Debian, Mandrake, SuSE and others that I can't name off the top of my head.
So does anyone have any thoughts on a suitable learning distribution for someone whose new to Linux but not much else?
