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Choosing a Linux Distribution for Your Needs

The operating system is the most important component of any computer system. Without this piece of software, your computer is nothing more than an expensive paperweight.

Why Linux?

When you purchase a computer from a retailer, online or direct from a manufacturer, chances are that it comes with some version of Windows already installed. This has been true since 1990, and was one of the major issues brought up on the 1998 anti-trust case against Microsoft.

It is possible to purchase a computer with Linux preinstalled, or without any operating system installed.

Similarly, Apple Computer supplies Mac OS-X with each Macintosh sold, including iBooks, MacBooks, PowerBooks, and iMacs.

Mac OS-X and Windows are commercial products, and therefore customers and devlopers alike are at the mercy of the vendors. (At least Apple supplies some software development tools with the Mac OS-X distribution. Microsoft does not even do that.)

Commercial licenses, of course, were designed to prevent unauthorized copying. However, they also limit the freedom for consumer and developers as far as customization and modification of the software to the work and/or home computing environments. (More often than not, that freedom is limited to the point where consumers have to customize their computing environment and habits to the software! Not exactly freedom, is it? Sad thing is that when you read the end user licenses carefully, you will find that the consumer basically has no rights as far as what the consumer can do.)

Linux, and other software products distributed under the General Public License, empowers the consumer and developer alike, by allowing modification of the software to the computing environment, not the other way around.

Of course, Linux has other advantages over commercial products. First, Linux is cost-effective. Since Linux is distributed under the GPL, i.e. you can freely distribute the product, Linux costs the same for one machine as it does for 1,000 machines. (It does not take a genius to figure the cost savings here.)

Second, Linux is not dependent on one software vendor. In fact, thousands of programmers worldwide, as well as corporate and non-profit entities, are involved in its development. As a result, you have better quality software, support that is not difficult to find, and if you have the programming skills, can be improved upon or modified for your systems and environment.

Which distribution(s) you obtain for your systems and/or network depends upon your needs, the size of your network, how your network is setup, where the systems will be used, what other devices you have, which document and media formats you need to support, and ultimately, your personal preferences. In the end, it is you or your company that will need to make the decision. But before you do...

Ask Yourself These Questions

  1. Is your computer a standalone machine or connected to a local network?
  2. Do you know what physical components are installed in your system? (i.e. audio card, video card, hard drives, modems, network cards, etc.)
  3. Besides your monitor, what other devices do you have connected to your system? (i.e. printers, scanners, speakers, external card readers, etc.)
  4. Do you have an iPod or other hardware media player?
  5. Do you have a digital camera or scanner?
  6. Do you want to do extensive multimedia processing?
  7. Are you using Linux primarily in a home environment or a business environment? (or a bit of both)

If you are connected to a local network, you will want to know...

  1. Are you building a server or a workstation?
  2. Are you connecting to a server or a workstation?
  3. What is being shared on this network?
  4. Do you have Windows PCs and/or Macs connected to your network?

Of course there are other factors to take into consideration, but these are among the more fundamental factors to consider when choosing a distribution.

The Out-of-the-Box Experience

Even with these questions, it is the "out-of-the-box" experience that will make or break a Linux distribution in terms of usefulness in a home or small business environment.

By "out-of-the-box" I mean how useful a Linux distribution is after installation and basic configuration, i.e. doing what needs to be done to get your hardware working as soon and as easy as possible.

SimplyMEPIS

This is my strongly recommended distribution for home and small business use.

  • Hardware support is the best in the business.
  • Kernel includes drivers for Lucent-based internal modems, many wireless network cards, and includes the commercial ATi and nVidia drivers.
  • The best user-friendly administration utilities.
  • Includes Acrobat Reader and Sun Java (the latter now a GPL product)
  • Comes with OpenOffice.org and KOffice
  • Best multimedia support for any American distribution. Includes amaroK and RealPlayer with the full set of codecs!

Though the distribution requires 128MB of system RAM, I recommend installing this distribution on a system with at least 256MB of RAM, and with a processor of at least a Pentium III for performance.

The distribution comes on a live CD or a live DVD so you can try the distribution before you install it. As with any live CD/DVD product, the installed product always runs faster because the product is running off the hard drive rather than the CD/DVD.

When fully installed, SimplyMEPIS will support your iPod and other hardware media players, many digital cameras, many digital camcorders, card readers, PDAs. In addition, MEPIS supports MP3, MPEG video, AVI, and other popular formats. (Linspire is the only other Debian based distribution to do so.)

Linspire and Freespire

This is another popular Debian based distribution incorporating KDE that is is suitable for home and small business use. Unlike SimplyMEPIS, Linspire is not compatible with Ubuntu packages.

In fact, Linspire does not include Synaptic, but instead has a web interface to their famous Click-N-Run software library service. (The Click-N-Run basic service is now free as in cost to use. Only the enhanced version has a subscription fee.)

About Click-N-Run

For those of you not familiar with Linspire or Freespire, Click-N-Run is to software what iTunes is to music.

Simply install Linspire and/or Freespire, then click on a Click-N-Run icon, that little picture of a running man on your desktop, and sign up for a Click-N-Run account. Click-N-Run allows you to setup a library of software packages of your choosing. For each time you select an item to install, Click-N-Run will download and install your selections (and any dependencies) to your system. You can also remove packages you do not want on your system using the same interface.

Software management could not be any easier.

As of this writing, Linspire plans to make this service available for SuSE, Mandriva and Fedora distributions, making Click-N-Run the iTunes of software management.

Freespire has both Click-N-Run and Synaptic for package management.

When it comes to multimedia support, Linspire beats Freespire for out-of-the-box experience. This is because Linspire contains RealPlayer and its codecs. RealPlayer is installed separately for Freespire.

However, Freespire beats Linspire when it comes to out-of-the-box support for software and web development. For starters, Linspire does not come with GCC! In fact, Linspire comes as a bare-bones designed for the home environment for people used to Windows installation.

About the SuSE distributions

The ease of installation and configuration makes Novell SLED and openSuSE among the most user-friendly distributions around. I could not agree more.

Unfortunately, this is one of the factors that resulted in Novell making the controversial deal with Microsoft. Microsoft has been a brand synonymous with products that are easy to use, and quite convenient (and unfortunately comes with a high price tag, not only in terms of money, but in terms of safety, security, privacy and even your consumer rights).

This controversial deal makes any SuSE distribution difficult to recommend. Remove the politics, however, and SuSE becomes the best distribution for any home and small business environment.

But, I am going to keep an eye on what happens with the deal and its effect on Linux itself. Until the deal proves itself to be beneficial as promised, I will not recommend the distribution.

Trademarks Acknowledged

  • SimplyMEPIS and MEPIS are registered trademarks of MEPIS, LLC
  • Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds
  • Ubuntu and Kubuntu are registered trademarks of Canonical, Inc
  • Debian is a registered trademark of Software for the Public Interest
  • Mac OS-X, iTunes, Macintosh, iMac, PowerBook, iBook and Apple are registered trademarks of Apple Computer
  • Windows and Microsoft are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation
  • Acrobat Reader is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems, Inc
  • Sun and Java are registered trademarks of Sun Micrusystems
  • Click-N-Run, Freespire and Linspire are registered trademarks of Linspire
  • all other trademarks are properties of their respective owners

Copyright 1996-2007 Patrick G Horneker.
Distributed under Free Documentation License, because the greatest enemy we have in this world is ignorance.