Re: [gnome-love] Which Linux distribution

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

On Thu, Jan 08, 2004 at 03:19:53PM +0100 or thereabouts, Erik Grinaker wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-01-08 at 14:10, Kathleen Hodgson wrote:
> > I'm a graduate student in CS who became interested in GNOME
> > Accessibility, especially as it relates to visually impaired people,
> > as I researched a paper for an Operating Systems course.  I would like
> > to learn Linux in order to contribute to GNOME Accessibility in the

Cool!

> > future.  Can someone advise me on which Linux distribution I should
> > obtain, and also any books or online tutorials which would be
> > helpful?  My knowledge of Unix is minimal.  Thanks,
>
> Hi
>
> Choice of distribution is really a matter of taste. Different
> distributions are usually made for different goals - some are good for
> servers, some for desktops, others for developers and so on.
>
> Since you are just starting out I think you should start with one of the
> major ones, such as Mandrake, SuSE or Fedora Core (former Red Hat). A
> good site for distribution information is www.distrowatch.com.

I agree with the idea of using a well-known one. It tends to mean
there are more people on the same distro who have met the same
questions and problems as you; and there is more chance of getting
up-to-date packages.

If by contributing you mean coding, the important thing with 
whatever distro you install is to include "developer tools",
"development environment" or whatever name the distro calls this
group of packages.

If by contributing you mean coding or anything else, you will
probably end up wanting to use or at least test the most recent
packages. There are various scripts around which (semi-)automate
building either bleeding-edge CVS or the latest unstable releases.
Again, the more widely-used the distro, the more likely these are
to work first time.

> To keep up to date on what is going on in the GNOME community, you can
> check out FootNotes (www.gnomedesktop.org) or Planet GNOME
> (planet.gnome.org).

If you are interested in accessibility in particular, presumably
you already know about the Gnome accessibility mailing lists? You 
found this list, after all, so I assume you knew where to find
the others. If not, then they're all available off
  http://mail.gnome.org/ 

Telsa