Browsing alternatives to Windows

Hello all,

I am very new to the Linux community, and while I am mildly intimidated, I look forward to delving into this field.

I'm curious, is there a compiled library of Linux operating systems out there? Being open source, I would expect a lot of user generated variants.

Currently just getting familiar with terminology and looking into the technical advantages and disadvantages of different mainstream Linux packages

I am not aware of a list of all distributions. There probably is, but I do not know about it. As a starting point for investigation, you could visit DistroWatch. Their list has at least a hundred. Just ignore their "ranking" system and read the information about the systems. Each description has a link to that distro's web site, if you want more information.

Aloha and welcome to Linux.org!

Here is a link to a post about Distrowatch rankings (http://www.linux.org/threads/thinking-of-switching-to-linux.5239/#post-15873). I believe that is what @Cyber-Berserker had in mind while typing. Am I correct?

Thank you very much! I have looked a bit into the Distrowatch, and noted a few of the flaws mentioned in the post you linked. I'll likely just start off playing with the major packages and learn how to swap between OS's. do some of the 'noob' bouncing and testing different things.

There's just so much to filter through!

A few basic ideas pieces of knowledge will make the picture much less confusing. At first glance you will see a very large number of "distributions," but a closer look will reveal that most are actually slightly modified versions of the main distos. Those main distributions have different package managers, which is probably the biggest difference between them. There is little difference between derivatives within one lineage. (Debian, Slackware, Red Hat) For the most part, the derivatives have different levels of so-called "user-friendliness."

You may/not find this interesting: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg

There are three main distributions - Red Hat based, Debian based and Slackware based. There are also a plethora of other lesser known original distributions and many more derivative distributions based mainly on the big three, but also on some of the others. Which you decide to go for is up to you and it doesn't really matter where you start as you're not signing in blood and anything you learn is transferable to other distributions.

Note that while SUSE/openSUSE started it's early life life as a Slackware fork (a German translation of Slackware in fact), everything after the first release was actually based on the jurix distribution and uses Red Hat package management (RPM), but is not a Red Hat based distro. So the myth that SUSE is a Slackware fork is just that.

Some other main distribution lines are Arch and Puppy Linux.

You may find this article interesting - http://www.linux.org/threads/about-the-distros.4680/

and this one - http://www.linux.org/threads/which-distro-is-right-for-me.4834/

Wow. Those posts are more or less exactly what I am looking for. A lot to take in, but it's a much more condensed source of information!

Superblobmonster said:

Wow. Those posts are more or less exactly what I am looking for. A lot to take in, but it's a much more condensed source of information!

Click to expand...

Enjoy and thank you for marking my answer as the best.