hi everyone, i've been running ubuntu for a few months. i liked it because its free, small and its really really pretty. however, i've found it to be super buggy and the documentation to be incredibly chaotic.

ubuntu is very religious on open source, so no mp3, java, etc. i really don't care. so naturally none of that stuff is supported, so you are on your own. i got stuck and frustrated and nothing seemed to work.

i'm looking for something that is easy to set up and run. i am prepared to go for a kitchen sink distro like fedora if need be. what do you guys think? if it doesnt support stuff like java, i'm looking for a distro where i won't have to spend a day getting it to work.

thanks!
bradley

well u will find problme with mp3 even in fedora

if u are a newbie then i would recommend
mandrake

else go for slackware
it contains all general required packages

regards

i used to play mp3's in ubuntu, anyway i think mepis comes with mp3 support and the rest of that un-free stuff out the box. Check it out.

do yourself a favor and check out arch. everything seems to work out of the box -- i've never had an easier time with multimedia. if you run into problems, there's a super helpful community, and the wiki docs are short and to the point, and fix most problems.

He said easy to set up. Arch isn't it for someone relatively new to Linux. It's a good distro, but NOT a newbie friendly install.

Mepis comes ready to use 'out of the box" with java and multimedia support. It's a pretty good "easy to use" distro. Worth your time to check it out.

Mepis and PCLinuxOS are terrific. PCLinuxOS has the best fonts out of the box and is the only distro to give me a fully functional mouse.

i've seen people recommend gentoo to newbies. arch is no harder than most distros to set up -- if, like everything in linux, you read and take things step by step.

Arch isn't that hard, it has a ncurses installer what more could you want?

Similar isssues with mp3 playing. However, simple, knowledgable, and fast solutions at:

http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/index.php?act=idx

Everything works great out of the box with awesome docs. Standard equipment is Gnome 2.10 and KDE 3.4. Pkg mgr. is YaST -- fantastic!
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Just became available for no charge:

9.3 is available via FTP from ftp.Suse.com

ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/9.3/iso/

the 9.3 5 CD set is apparently on some mirror servers:

ftp://ftp.mirrorservice.org/sites/ft...e/i386/9.3/iso

There is also an "evaluation DVD" on others:

ftp://suse.mirrors.tds.net/pub/suse/i386/9.3/iso/
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This is a super and also stable distro:

http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/5855/1/

Good Luck and Have Fun!

Hey, I'm not kncking Arch. But, if you read what he said he was looking for, Arch isn't what he wants. He's obviously looking for something that won't require editing config files or additional tweaking to get things running properly. And saying Arch is no harder to set up than most other distros "if you read and take things step by step" is not only saying it actually IS harder to set up, but anyone who has installed Arch knows that editing the initial config files is part of the installation process and where many newbies run into trouble/frustration trying to get it installed and set up properly.

I like Arch, but by their own admission it is not a distro aimed at the newbie. Let's get real here guys, just because we experienced users like a certain distro doesn't mean it's a good choice for everyone, especially a noob.

I personally love Slackware, but note I didn't recommend it to him either as it sounds like he's after a good newbie distro that will provde the functionality he needs without a lot of additional tweaking. I think Mepis fits the description of what he said he is looking for.

thank you all so much. i'm actually writing this on mepis.

so far, its much better.

-better audio qualitiy and support
-plays most of my movies except AVI and WMV.
-java, which seems to be pretty good. (should i get sun 1.5? or stick with this one?)
-real player installed. sweet.

if mepis doesnt work out, i think i'm gonna call in the big guns and go for a kitchen sink distro like suse. but so far, i'm impressed.

there are some real problems though.

-firefox 1.1.3, not .4. mozilla won't let me add themes or extensions unless i upgrade. they say its a modified version? how much modding do you really need to do to firefox?

-when i was installing i was asked if i wanted the standard video driver or the nvidia one. i have an nvidia card and went with that. but now my monitor is making some awful humming (which cant be good) and i can't set my resolution over 1024 and i cant get my refresh rate up to 85 where it belongs. is there a way i can go back and say i want the other one?

-azerues was a nice touch, but its an old version and it wants to update itself, and it tries and fails.

here's something. when i go into synaptic after a fresh install, THERE IS NOT A SINGLE UPGRADE?!?!? unless it suck it in during the install when i was gone? i hope this thing gets updated frequently.

-not a real problem, but its not nearly as pretty as ubuntu ;-)

have you done a apt-get update as root?

hey i tried apt-get update as root. still no dice. do i need to update repositories?

btw, i reinstalled and selected the standard video driver. the terrible screeching went away but it still only lets me do 1024 and 70Hz

he also said easy to run. arch is one of the easiest to run distros, if not the easiest, that i have ever encountered. in using it for over a year, i don't recall ever having to edit or "tweak" a config file that i didn't want to, except perhaps rc.conf to add some services. but all that includes is removing an exclamation point to uncomment the name of the service. and even that is easier than most other distros, because all the configuration goes in rc.conf. so that is much easier than mepis, or practically any other distro.

it's also very easy to get help, because most any typical problem someone will run into is covered in the wiki, or answered in the forums. and the structure of arch is ultimately more slack-like than debian like, which is definitely easier. so arch is also easier in that respect. and again, the setup is not that hard at all. so it's definitely a good choice for anyone, experienced or novice. my system has been running from the initial install more than a year ago, with no tweaking of config files at all except rc.conf.

i think you either haven't used arch enough to know how absolutely easy it is to run, or else you are just trying to promote a distro you like. so let's get real here, arch is definitely an easy distro to run.

SuSE 9.3. Good for beginners or anyone. What I love about it is yast. Also, when installing..it'll give you a choice to perform updates. Choose yes...and install the multimedia packs. Everything basically will work right out of the box.