[NCLUG] Anecdotal Research Question

[Brennen Bearnes]

On Sun, Jul 3, 2011 at 10:28 AM, Bob Proulx <bob at proulx.com> wrote:

> Your goal is laudable but people are people and will have strong
> attachments and opinions.  If this were a club of car enthusiasts and
> you were to ask for a car recommendation you wouldn't be surprised
> people to be strongly Ford or strongly Chevy biased.

Bob makes a pretty good point here. I think in some ways the most
useful question is not be "what distro should a newbie pick" - this is
often in flux - but the meta-questions that guide how one approaches
selecting, installing, and using an OS.

My list includes the following, in no particular order:

- Political concerns - how free is it, etc.?

- Quality of the installation process

- Ease of use and robustness of package management utilities

- Breadth, depth, and freshness of available packages

- Ease of installing stuff that isn't packaged

- General rate of churn

- Size of existing user base, Google-ability of good documentation,
forums, mailing lists, etc.

And a handful of basic practices that make life easier:

- Put your home directory on its own sizable partition

- For desktop Linux, don't worry about partitioning schemes beyond that

- Keep a checklist of the stuff you want to install right away any
time you switch distros or set up a new machine.

- Keep rough notes on the little customization tricks and hacks you
learn as you go

- Start learning a version control system

My priorities are not the same as someone just making the leap away
from Windows or what have you, but I think the approach of "consider
these things" might be more helpful than "use this distro".

-- Brennen