Which distribution should I choose?

I think that even the most die hard fan of a given distribution would admit that this is largely a personal decision; though you might have to pry that admission out of them from what I’ve seen in my searches. Given that realization I thought that I would use this first post after my introduction to discuss which distribution I chose, and why.

Initial Considerations

As I mentioned in my “Hello (KDE) World!” post I started my journey at the suggestion of Neomantra, one of the KDE Community Members. I talked with him for a short time about which distribution would best suit me as a long time Windows user looking to ease into Linux from both a daily use viewpoint and as a programmer wanting to contribute. From his suggestions I took some time to research into a few distributions looked good to me from their respective websites.

As I said above picking a specific distribution is largely a personal decision but this blog is about the path I took into Linux so I will cover the nuances of why I selected openSUSE as my distribution. (Again, this isn’t a “right or wrong” choice just one that you, the new Linux user, has to make. My purpose here at Little Blue Penguin is to detail the good and the bad of my trip, and try to help make that trip smoother for you and as such I will be talking about openSUSE!)

Why openSUSE?

To help myself into the Linux world I wanted a desktop environment that functioned at least reasonably like Windows. In talking with Neomantra I learned there are basically two choices these days, KDE or Gnome. While both looked from the surface to be reasonably Windows type systems Neomantra is from the KDE crowd and I wanted to eventually be a contributor there so I decided I would use KDE as my desktop environment.

As a new user I was a little confused here by the terminology, so I will elaborate a bit on what I learned. Unlike Windows where everything related to the OS is (basically) part of what is simply called “Windows” Linux is a bit different; openSUSE would be my chosen “OS”, while my “desktop environment” would be “KDE”. This was a tad confusing to me as I had assumed that KDE or openSUSE would be my “OS” and that would be the end of it. Hopefully this little side note helps a bit.

Having picked my OS and desktop environment it was time to start evaluating features that I thought I would need. Now, as I have been using my new setup for a few weeks I have learned a few things that I didn’t know day one but I am going to pretend I did in order to provide you with that knowledge in a better chronology.

As a Windows user coming over to Linux I think that two of the most important features the system can provide to make the user feel comfortable are a solid “system manager” and easy access to software updates and installers. To achieve these two functions openSUSE offers a wonderful tool called “YaST“. I do not want to get to far off the topic of simply why I chose openSUSE by going into why YaST is so good (since that will be my next article anyway!) so for now I will simply say in hindsight YaST is one of my top reasons for choosing openSUSE. (Again, I am sure that other distributions have wonderful system management tools too, but that is for another days discussion.)

Secondly, since I would be trying this whole affair on the only computer I would have available with me for a few months while I traveled on that new job I mentioned, I wanted to be sure that I could try my new OS first without breaking my only means of internet access! Here again I was greeted with a plethora of options as most distributions of Linux now offer what is called a “LiveCD” option. In case you are not familiar with LiveCD’s they are a version a given OS that loads (almost) entirely into RAM from a bootable CD-ROM so that they can run on a computer without actually installing or changing anything about the computers current OS.

Making the call.

It was these three basic reasons that landed me in the camp of openSUSE: the distro was as “Windows” as possible, YaST was the tool for system management, and a try before you buy approach. For now I highly suggest that you given the openSUSE LiveCD a try, you can get a copy of it here, from their site (be sure to click the KDE Live option). Burn that ISO to disk and reboot with it in the drive. In just a few minutes time you will be trying your new Linux system with full confidence that you can return to Windows when you need! Obviously feel free to try a few other LiveCD’s too if you like, you may find that you like a given distribution better than openSUSE; a few I tried include Kubuntu and the KDE LiveCD (which is based on customized openSUSE actually).

In my next post I will be talking more about what I have learned in these first few weeks of using openSUSE, focusing on the tasks that were necessary to get the system “working” like I thought it should. Be sure to have your LiveCD ready to follow along!

-chrisj