If you want to run Linux® you'll need to choose a distribution. Your desktop environment preference will probably influence your choice.
A Linux distribution or distro is a ready-to-install operating system package, often designed for a specific purpose or user base. A Linux distribution will include the free Linux kernel, usually the X Window System, a desktop environment, and other free system software, applications, and code libraries.
My picks so far:
There are a few hundred Linux distributions now, from full-service desktop distros such as Ubuntu to special purpose and mini-distros. Distro proliferation probably makes things a little confusing for Linux newbies at first, but I'm not sure that can be helped. That's one reason I try to suggest what I think are a couple of good places to start. The up side, of course, is diversity, intellectual competition, and choice.
I think the best references I've seen, for someone new to Linux and trying to choose a first distribution, besides this page, are the DistroWatch top ten distros page and the Wikipedia articles linked on this page, including the general ones linked here and the ones below about individual distros. That's assuming you don't want to just take my recommendation.
Mainstream Linux distros have been made available in several conventional ways:
Most desktop-oriented distros are available for free download, but not all distros are. Some projects are donation-based, including Elive, and there are enterprise distros that are commercial products.
For $1.95 plus shipping OSDisc.com will mail you a professionally produced and labeled CD copy of the free Linux distribution of your choice, including LiveDistros and many distros you won't find in retail outlets. Orders generally go out the next business day. Not only is this easier than downloading a 700MB ISO file, it should also tend to take the stress out of choosing a free distro; just pick one and go for it. If you decide later you'd like to try something else, it's only going to cost you another $1.95 plus shipping. There are other vendors that do this, but I like the quality and testimonials for this one.
LiveCD distributions or LiveDistros, which can boot Linux from the CD, can be a good way to experiment with Linux without taking the big step of actually installing it to your hard disk, provided your computer has the ability to boot from its CD drive; most do. When a LiveCD boots, it loads all or part of Linux into RAM memory, so it's good if the system has a generous amount of RAM, say 512MB or 1GB. An installable LiveDistro is a single CD which can be used either to boot the distro from the CD, or to install it onto the hard disk. Most distro CDs are installable LiveCDs now.
You can also boot LiveDistros from flash media: USB flash drives and flash memory cards, such as SD and CF formats. For non-Ubuntu distros you can use a utility called Unetbootin, on Windows and Linux, to install an ISO file onto a flash drive. Lightweight mini-distros usually support installing to portable media, usually with provision for persistence, meaning configuration changes are saved. For all Ubuntu flavors, you should instead use the native USB Startup Disk Creator utility, which also provides for persistent configuration. More about these options below.
Debian-based Ubuntu® is the world's most popular full-service desktop Linux distribution project. For folks who need it, the Ubuntu project has an online program called ShipIt, which will snail-mail you a CD copy of your choice of Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or Edubuntu, free of even duplication or postal charges, if you can maybe wait a month or two.
Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx LTS is out, supposedly booting twice as fast and with a new unified Ubuntu Software Centre, among other improvements, and, surprise! it's not brown. Controversially, The GIMP (the open source answer to Photoshop) is no longer installed by default; but if you need it, and I do, you can install it from the Software Centre.
There are dozens of download mirror servers for Ubuntu all over the world, and not all of them have the resumed download support needed by multi-threaded download managers. Also, selecting a mirror site close to you geographically makes your download more likely to be fast and free of errors. A Google search on ubuntu mirrors should get you to the big server list.
The Startup Disk Creator utility (called USB Startup Disk Creator before 10.04 Lucid) creates a startup drive from any Ubuntu ISO-format download file; it's been included with Ubuntu versions since 8.10 Intrepid Ibex, at System, Administration. There's a slider to choose how much space to devote to storing persistent configuration data. The usual thing is to max it out, but I've been told for best results one should leave a small fraction open. You can even use the utility from a LiveDistro boot; for example, recently I booted Ubuntu Lucid from an SD card in my netbook's internal card slot, and used the utility to install another Ubuntu version to a second SD card in a USB card reader slot.
In new Ubuntu and Kubuntu 10.04 Lucid, Startup Disk Creator has a nifty new Erase Disk button, which will completely wipe a USB flash drive or memory card, including volume label if any, before you make it a bootable startup drive. Obviously one should be very careful to select the right volume.
Ubuntu versions appear every six months, and every two years in April comes a Long Term Support release. (6.06 Dapper was late.) LTS versions are supported with security updates for three years, or a year beyond the next LTS release. Ubuntu versions in between are supported for eighteen months. Ubuntu releases are identified by what looks like a version number, but is actually a year-and-month date—9.04 means April 2009—plus a fanciful adjective and noun about an animal or pseudo-animal. People mostly use the adjective by itself as shorthand for the release, rather than the animal, such as Jaunty for 9.04.
I've read that bug fixes are sometimes added to Ubuntu releases for up to a month or two after the nominal stable release date (such as 10/29/09 for 9.10). Consequently many users prefer to wait a month or more after release dates before downloading a new Ubuntu version. The project hasn't been particularly forthright about this process, and I didn't learn of it until mid-November 2009.
| Distro | Supported | ShipIt |
|---|---|---|
| Ubuntu | |
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| Kubuntu | |
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| Edubuntu | |
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| Xubuntu | ||
| Lubuntu | ||
| Server | |
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| UNE |
UNE 10.04 Lucid Lynx
KNE 10.04
Netbook distros generally have interfaces simplified or optimized, according to somebody's theory, for the relatively small screens of netbooks. Some use dark themes to reduce power consumed by the display. Ideally when there's a power-saving solid-state hard drive replacement, a netbook distro will do write caching, so as not to wear out the flash memory prematurely from repeated writes to the same addresses.
Of course, just because you have a netbook, you don't have to use a netbook distro if you don't want to, especially if you have a larger 10-inch display. You can install regular desktop Ubuntu or Kubuntu, or experiment with any Linux distro that appeals to you. You may have to try several choices before you find one in which all your netbook's hardware works. Or you may find a distro you like that has a hardware issue on your netbook, such as sound or WiFi, but with a documented fix.
Netbooks don't conventionally have internal optical drives, so netbook distros are designed to do without. First you download the distro in the form of an IMG or ISO file. Using a Windows or Linux utility, you load the file onto a 2GB flash memory card or USB flash drive. Then you can either boot your netbook from that, LiveDistro style, or install from it.
There seems to be serious interest in cross-pollination between the OEM-focused Moblin project and Ubuntu Netbook Remix. I for one would like to have the fast-boot and energy-efficiency features of Moblin combined with the UNR pushbutton and desktop interfaces.
The user interfaces of the various netbook distros can feel a bit like mobile computing by Fisher-Price or something; their best place might be on the really tiny, almost pocket-size netbooks. I think it's important to be able to control the interface, to be able to get rid of stuff one don't use, and add stuff one needs that the designers didn't think was important. I guess it's good, though, that different groups of gutsy people are taking a shot at designing a special netbook interface. As always, the marketplace will choose.
The netbook boom seems to be doing more to introduce Linux to new users than anything else I can remember; here's hoping lots of them are corporate executives. Linux is a natural option for netbooks, partly because there were already mini-distros aimed at limited hardware, and partly because when the whole computer only costs $300, paying for a copy of Windows becomes more significant. Interestingly, there are now starting to be $300 larger laptops with internal optical drives, from Walmart and other sources, and a new processor architecture on the way, expected to lead to $200 netbooks and notebooks. The same Linux effect should happen with those devices too. Offering Netbook Remix in this situation is a very slick move for the Ubuntu project.
Puppy Linux is a 100MB mini-Linux installable LiveDistro, that's probably the most newbie-friendly current mini-distro. Unlike some of the really tiny minis, it installs with wizards and documentation. Puppy Linux isn't derived from any other distro, but it has lots of user contributed variants, called puplets, derived from it.
Puppy can run on some pretty old hardware. There are 1.x versions still available that can run in 32MB or 64MB of RAM, although 256MB is preferred.
Puppy Linux has a bunch of operational modes you can use. You can boot it from a full-size or mini CD/DVD disk, a USB flash drive, or a flash memory card such as SD or CF. You can have it load completely into RAM, if you have enough RAM, and you can then remove the boot media. It has write caching for running from flash media, to extend the life of the flash memory. Puppy can also boot from a Zip disk or over a network.
Puppy can even boot from a multi-session-formatted CD-R or DVD-R, and save all configuration changes back to the optical disk. In this mode the Puppy OS is completely self-contained, with no config-file or any other writes on the host system. When it runs out of space on the optical disk to save config files, it prompts to write itself and its current config file onto a fresh disk. I suppose you might want a memory card or USB flash drive for document files. See the site for details; DVD-R or mini-DVD-R formats are more efficient for this multi-session mode than CDs.
Other projects of interest for this light-hardware scenario:
When you exit a LiveDistro mini-Linux such as Puppy Linux, DeLi, DSL, or Tiny Core, generally it will want to save configuration settings to a backup file in some writeable location. It could be on the hard disk of the host system, on a diskette or flash media, or in the case of a multi-session Puppy DVD, in a new write to the boot disk. Windows, or whatever native OS is installed, will ignore this backup file.
To log out of a mini-Linux, typically you'll need to do one of two things:
If you set a backup file location, this setting will be saved in the backup file, along with any other changes you make later, and your Linux LiveDistro will exit politely after that without bugging you. So this is the preferred choice.
The big exception to this is within the Ubuntu family, including Lubuntu. With any Ubuntu variant, including CrunchBang, you should install to USB or memory card using the USB Startup Disk Creator utility (just Startup Disk Creator in 10.04 and later). See the Ubuntu topic above for more about this.
Almost all current Linux distributions are derivatives, directly or indirectly, of three early distros, which are all still with us: Debian, Slackware, and Red Hat. The Linux distribution article on Wikipedia (linked near the top of this page) links to a large SVG graphics file showing a family tree and timeline of Linux distros.
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