I personally like Mandrake 8.2 the best. I’ve tried SuSE 7.3 and RedHat 7.2 as well. Mandrake was the only distro I was able to get the Nvidia drivers to work at all. And the only distro I got the dynamic version of blender to work on (after the nvidia drivers were installed). I like its admin tools better. There are only 3 CDs.
The only problem I had with it was running Cinelerra. Mandrake 8.2 uses a newer png library that does not work with Cinelerra. Of course I did a workaround by installing the older lib (kinda risky).
I’ve had the best experience with Mandrake.
Personally I like debian or gentoo the best
Gentoo seems to operate the fastest and moststable but is harder to set up. For easier setup id go with redhat.
The only problem is Linux right now has problems reading/writing to NTFS.
Cheers,
taste some computer freedom
The NVIDIA drivers will istall fine on any distro. You can just download and install NVIDIA_GLX, but with the NVIDIA_kernel it works best to download the src-rpm, run a ‘rpm --rebuild name of file’ then go to /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/ and install the new NVIDIA_kernel rpm that is created.
As for blender, once the graphics issues are taken care of, it should run fine. I think on Red Hat 7.3 it will work by default, even without the Nvidia drivers installed.
Also, Linux can read fine from an NTFS partition, it is the writing that can be really dangerous. What I would consider doing, is shrink the 60GB NTFS by maybe 5GB, then set that 5GB up as FAT32, then use it as a ‘go-between’ with files you would use on both OSs. Such as blender textures and stuff, or else you would have to have seperate copies on each OS or put them on alternate media.
Both Mandrake and Redhat are good for starting with. At least the version of mandrake I got a wile ago sucked because it had all this windows type of stuff where it did everything on its own, Lead to tons of problems. And also this made it so you had way less controll over the system. Redhat is fairly easy to setup and is much more stable and clean running.
Enough ranting about Linux.
Wake up and smell the freedom–Linux
So far I have tried Mandrake, Redhat and SuSE (I also did some more crazy (?) things such as FreeBSD, for example…) on my box…
I’ve settled down with SuSE. The main reasons were that it has a lot of cool things in it (I’m gonna say it once more, it’s the most complete distro I’ve ever seen…) and because I had some problems setting up the other two (and I am really tired of solving problems…). But hey, these probles had to do with my configuration, so it’s not necessary that you’ll encounter problems to…
My advice is:
Try several distro’s and see which suits you best…
I know what you mean. Those M$ guys (the executives) who run their mouths off about Linux, probably do spend a great deal of time trying to get it up and running because they couldn’t find the registration code dialog. But if you understand it, it is faster to get up than windows. I had Debian 3.0 up and running today in less than a half-hour, and that was because I was picking individual packages to install. The last time I had to install Windows, I went and took a nap.
“September 19th, 2002 - Mandrake Linux 9.0 Release Candidate 3 is available…”
And I have been testing the heck out of it!
So the final release will not be long. And it is pretty good. The best distro I have used so far anyway, but I am also a redhat/mandrake kind of guy. But anyways, don’t get 8.2 and wait for 9.0 if you go mandrake, which I would certainly suggest. I believe that It may be the best linux for a first time user ( ease of install…easy to work with…setup wizards…etc, etc) to come out yet. and of course, its rock stable.
things such as FreeBSD, for example…) on my box…