linux

[Thomas Ward]

Hi, Ryan. Personally, I think Red Hat is the way to go. I am using Red Hat
7.2, and I think you will find it to be the easiest to get started with.

Here is why I feel Red Hat should be your first choice.

1. Dialog based install. The Red Hat install is vary strait forward, and
even the custom install which I recommend is not vary hard.

2. A host of configuration tools to do the post install portions of your
setup such as: sndconfig for configuring oss compatible sound cards, ntsysv
for configuring your system services, and so on. There are several of them.


3. Red Hat comes with quite a nice starter set of applications. Not as much
as some distributions like Mandrake, but enough for a beginner to get
started with.

4. Do to Red Hat's general popularity you can usually find compiled binary
packages of just about any app you want. sometimes you may have to build an
app, library, or something from source, but often most come in rpm packages
ready to go.

5. With the release of 7.3 it comes with emacspeak a emacs tts which doesn't
require a hardware synth. You can actually use many apps with Emacspeak, but
I don't feel the screen feedback is anywhere near as good as Speakup.

6. Red hat and Mandrake can save your install options in a kickstart file,
which can be dropped on your install floppy, and you can do a unattended
install without ever having to make another choice again unless you upgrade.

Hope this helps.