Enter Red Hat: Speaking from experience (as a newbie) I lurked this list for some time before choosing a distro. From this list, I decided that Red Hat was one of the (if not the) most newbie friendly (with MS background) distro available. Given the fact that I installed Red Hat from CD with no one holding my hand (as in InstallFest), I feel I made the right choice. Actually, I got to install RH several times (learning curve) as some early choices proved less than wise. Living in newbie land, not knowing how to fix my errors, I just blew the whole thing away and re-installed with partition, format and all. Therefore, for a stand alone (little of no help) I am comfortable recommending RH. However, Every now and again, one of RH's functions just seems to decide to do nothing (no error messages). The most recent if the Red Hat Network (up2date). As of yesterday, I get an email telling me that I should update. When I go to that menu selection "Start" (the Red Hat) - "System Tools" - Red Hat Network" the system does nothing. Granted, it does nothing very quickly but none the less it does nothing. Enter Debian: If I were at an InstallFest (as in the next one), where a Debian type will help with (as in do) the install, I would eagerly accept Debian as my distro choice. In fact, I plan to arrive at the next InstallFest with boxen in hand seeking Debian. Conclusion: If we are going to hand out CD sets (to newbies) with a document (check list) covering the decision points (I have just such a check list for RH 8.0), I vote for Red Hat. If we are going to install (for the newbie) and teach how to update (apt-get I think), I vote for Debian. BTW, a presentation on how to update under Debian might make a good presentation. Do we get to vote on this??? YMMV George -----Original Message----- Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2003 00:44:55 -0700 (MST) From: "der.hans" Subject: Re: InstallFest decisions Am 11. Sep, 2003 schw=E4tzte Alan Dayley so: > Well, not having used Debian I may be blowing hot air here, but it > doesn't have the reputation for a newbie distro. Nor can I usually walk This is for the install, which is why they're showing up to the InstallFest= =2E Once installed debian, I believe, has the best features for what newbies need. Maybe having apt-get and similar packages for Red Hat ( or other distros ) will tip the scale. Features I think the distro needs, in no particular order: 1. security only feed 2. easy to use upgrade device that works and automagically gets dependencie= s 3. stable 4. a good desktop environment 1 is important. newbies should only worry about security updates until they're a little more familiar with GNU/Linux. It would be best if we could have a way to automagically get and install security updates. Maybe do it via a big red button on their desktop. 2 is important for 1 and is important as they transition to mediumbies or find new packages they want/need. 3 is obviously important :). 4 is also obviously important for newbies. I think it's also good if the distro has a good upgrade path and a track record of that working. The apps not being as stale as the c-rations is also a good thing :). ciao, der.hans