Linux Distribution Choices for SCIT students

Linux Distributions

One of the strengths of Linux is that there are many different distributions available - a distribution (or distro) can be thought of as a set of packages / tools / etc. that have been gathered together into a CD. Distribution preference is a very personal thing - some are designed for scientific research, some designed to look as close as possible to Windows, some for other purposes. If one distribution does not work for you, another might, so don't give up on Linux if your first distro does not work or you find it difficult.

DistroWatch is a website dedicated to providing a full list of available distros, with details on which is right for which purposes.

Personal Distro Preferences

If you have a preference for a distro that you'd like to share with other students, please write it below, stating your name, the date, the distro and version and reasons why you think it is suitable for university students in their studies. If you have preferences for distros that are not specific to university studies, please make that clear so that novice users don't experiment with distros that might put them off if they don't work well for their studies.

The University installs SuSE Linux 10.0 in the student labs.

Ubuntu

• Matthew Green, January 2007, version 6.06 and 6.10
  • Reasons: I believe this is an excellent distribution for novice users, as I have had the most success on the widest range of hardware compatibility with this distribution.

Simply Mepis

• Matthew Round, January 2007, version ???
  • Reasons: Will Work better than UBUNTU on older computers as it can work on 64MB RAM if configured correctly.