RE: [TCLUG:12143] hello

["Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom" <carls@agritech.com>]

>Red Hat, for the (supposed) ease of its installation.  I figure if I don't
>like it I can always try something else.  I thought that I'd start with the
>one that seemed to be generally recommended for Linux beginners, though.
        IMHO, Caldera is the easiest newbie install.
        Redhat offers *many* more configuration options; but be leery of
it's GUI install. RH's GUI is little more than a pretty face on its
text-mode install (adds all the hassle and slowness of a GUI, with few of
the interface benefits); whereas Caldera's really makes use of the GUI for
configuring the mouse (even detects wheelmice! yay!), configuring the video
(tho it could be a *lot* more helpful in this regard; it's still by far the
best out there).
        Stormix looked interesting when I installed it; but the GUI
installer is b0rked in some places (disk partitioner crashes repeatably),
and video configuration was hosed after I got it to install (to be fair,
even Caldera can't make the SVGA server do better than 320x240x256; tho the
VGA_16 seems to be able to get 640x480).

the thing that I *really* appreciate about RH, after mucking with other
distros, are the post-installation configuration tools. Xconfigurator,
mouseconfig, soundconfg, printtool, and linuxconf are *lifesavers* for newbies. 
        now *why* aren't those things included (or workalikes for them) in
virtually all distros by now?

Carl Soderstrom
System Administrator	307 Brighton Ave. 
Minnesota DHIA		Buffalo, MN	
carls@agritech.com	(612) 682-1091