Hey folks,

I'm fairly new to linux, and have tried Mandrake 9.0, 9.2, and 10.0 (both Community and Official). Sadly, All of these had some problems, problems that, to me, were major enough to stop using Mandrake. These days, messing around with a bit of knoppix every month is about as much as I do.

But, there's always the longing. Basically, I need a distro which meets all of these requirements. (excuse me for the outline, i havent written one in months.)

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I. Reliability
A. Works with my hardware (not hard, every distro I've tried has no problems)
B. Doesn't crash 6/10 programs i try to run

II. Ease
A. Relatively easy to install (Mandrake gets a plus for that)
B. Actually has a GUI
C. Lets me log on as root, from the login screen

III. Speed
A. Boots quickly
B. Shuts down quickly
C. Does other stuff quickly

IV. Programs
A. Runs XMMS
B. Runs grip
C. runs all other necessary stuff, just like it should

V. Compatibility
A. Runs WINE and wineconfig, along with associated applications
B. reads my cds, cdrs, floppys

VI. Other stuff
A. has a cd-burning program other than K3B or GNOME/Nautilus burning
B. Actually lets me write to floppys, burn CDs, etc.
C. Is not Mandrake
D. Installs on your hard drive, not a live-bootable or whatever like knoppix
E. Doesn't piss me off (hehe)

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Sorry if all of that was too much, if im being too picky, etc, but I think that every distro is capable of these things, even though it might take hours/days of work. All I want is something that does all these with a minimum of work.

Thanks.

What error message do you get when you try to burn CDs with Nautilus or K3B?

About the floppy issue, check your /etc/fstab file and make sure it lets all users read/write to /dev/fd0.

You could try SUSE and Fedora Core.

Debian would meet most of your requirements except for the "ease of install" one. And you can trey to run some other Winodws manager instead of KDE.

And another one of those moved ...

Please, use the means that the forum provides to search.
Use distro-watch...
Use google...



Cheers,
Tink