Re: What linux distro is recommended

[Niels L. Ellegaard]

Quentin Spencer <address@hidden> writes:

> Obed Sands wrote:
> 
> > Bought a new computer and want to  build linux and run octave.
> >
> > What is recommded for this? What works out-of-the-box?
> >
> > Used SuSE in the past and was pretty happy but 7.2 won't build Octave.
> 
> Many distributions come with Octave as part of the distribution,
> although they will generally will not have the newest version. I like
> RedHat, and I have posted some RPMS for RedHat 9, Octave version
> 2.1.49, on my website (www.ee.byu.edu/~qhs/octave). I believe there
> are several users on this list who would recommend Debian. The
> advantage of Debian is you can use apt-get to install the latest
> version without compiling anything yourself.

I don't think it is right to advice a Linux novice to start out using
Debian. I did this myself, and I learned a lot, but it also took a lot
of because Debian does not work out of the box for novice users.

Novices should start out with one of the following: Mandrake, Redhat
or SUSE. Each of these distributions offer Octave. You can find them
by searching at 
http://rpmfind.net

I don't know how many of these distributions offer octave-forge which
is a nice collection of add-on's for Octave.
http://octave.sourceforge.net/

As an alternative to all this you may wish to use Octave under windows.
http://octave.sourceforge.net/Octave_Windows.htm

If you have questinos that are related to installing Linux rather than
using Octave, then you should probably post them on a Linux list
rather than on an Octave list. Or you may wish to ask one usenet.
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&group=comp.os.linux.help

Good luck

-- 
Niels L Ellegaard  http://dirac.ruc.dk/~gnalle/

Heat is the self-restoration of matter in its formlessness, its
liquidity the triumph of its abstract homogeneity over specific
definiteness, its abstract, purely self-existing continuity, as
negation of negation, is here set as activity. - Hegel



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