Hi

The machine has only 750Mb ram. Ubuntu 9.04 works. 10.04 kept falling over. Fedora kept falling over. OpenSUSE only booted to a black screen, which is inconvenient in a LiveCd. I haven't tried Wolvix Cub yet because i worry about losing the Cd as it cost quite a bit and has all the repos on it. I am looking for a distro that i can get very cheaply/free but with an official and professional look&feel to it.

I got this output from lspci
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82865G/PE/P DRAM Controller/Host-Hub Interface (rev 02)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82865G Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev c2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)
01:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82562EZ 10/100 Ethernet Controller (rev 02)


At work i have been running a LiveCd of Ubuntu 9.04 for a few weeks without getting noticed too much. I don't think Ubuntu is the right distro because it is too heavy for 750Mb. I'm somewhat disturbed by the lack of mention of graphics card in the output so please let me know which command would help me find that out.

Many thanks and regards from
Tom

[edit] Ok, so it's an intel graphics chipset and my eye skipped over it because no-one in their right minds would buy a new system with intel graphics in the same way that no-one would buy a new desktop machine with Xp and only 750Mb ram! (Sighs deeply)

Tom6, when looking for a "professional-looking" Linux distribution that works on low-powered pc's, I have had the best luck with Peppermint One. Light weight, uses the best from Ubuntu and Linux Mint, does not install a lot of heavy applications, and is designed for the computer user who does many things on the web, rather than on their hard drive.

http://peppermintos.com

Anything from the top 10 or 20 at Distrowatch.com. Most distros should run OK with 750mb RAM (except Ubuntu, which recommends 1gb).

More likely, it is a problem with your graphics card (Ubuntu has terrible support for Intel graphics) so just try a bunch until you find one you like.

I always liked Knoppix as a live CD. It has fairly low system requirements. Maybe it will suit your needs.

Hi

The main thing i am looking for is a professionally printed Cd. Ideally free or cheap in a similar way to Cannonical's Ship-it or their "buy5 for $5" or something along those lines. However the most important thing is the professional printing of the Cd, not the price.

I have tried 3 from the top10 already and only an older release of 1 of them worked which is why i thought it worth asking the question in here where people might know.

Thanks so far and regards from
Tom

[edit] knoppix is well worth a try, thanks Any other ideas?

Maybe you have your Adblock turned on? The Distrowatch site is slathered with advertisements offering Linux CDs/DVDs for under $5.

You could also pick up one of the Linux magazines at your local news stand. They often include DVDs showcasing the latest distros.

Hi

Ok, so you are suggesting just randomly buying a few dozen of them and see which one works? I was hoping for an answer from someone that had tried a few different ones or had some idea about the hardware, or both.

Sorry i seem to be suffering from the gigo effect. My question is not precise enough.

Regards from
Tom

No, that would not be my first suggestion at all (I would use inexpensive CD-R's or even a reusable USB flash drive to test multiple distros) however you have stipulated you are only willing to use a professionally-printed CD.

Most Linux distros are available for download free of charge; you are the one that wants to spend money on something you can get for free, not me.

Hmm.. Does seem to be a slight disconnect here, but I'm not sure how to reconnect the disconnect.

As mentioned above somewhere (I believe), *many* linuxes should work quite well for you, and comparably to each other. Your computer isn't exotic, so generally speaking, support for your hardware should be not too big a deal.

distrowatch.com has a really great search engine where you could select "Live Environment" (i.e. LiveCD version available) and select your architecture, and see what there is for offer (there'll be quite a few). Then, based on your reading at distrowatch, and reading on the website(s) of the distro(s) you choose, decide on a few that you'd like to try out, download them for free and burn them to CD, and if you like them and they work, *then* investigate what the CD might physically look like, or ask if people have ordered official CD's and what they looked like. Some of the official distros have their own online stores (Slackware comes to mind, but there's no Live CD) where you can purchase, and some of these may show actual pictures of the official CD's they ship.

It seems you're trying to decide on some distros to try, based mainly on the packaging and if so, I don't know how well that will work out for you. After all, fancy packaging was invented to make people think they were getting something more than what's inside.

If I've missed the point here, accept my apology please. But, if we all are missing the point here, kindly clarify what exactly you plan to do with the CD, and *why* it must look so good? I.e. are you going to present it to the boss at work, and try to switch him over??

Snowpine

Again, thanks for attempting to help me. However, each time you reply i get this message
"There may also be other replies, but you will not receive any more notifications until you visit the forum again."
and my experience of other forums suggests that if i do not respond then other people will see this thread as answered and will tend to write answers to unanswered questions as a priority. So, when you send me an answer i have to stop what i am doing to respond. This is getting very frustrating for me.

Please, if you are going to answer a question please consider the question and think about the parameters that i have clearly stated and then try to work out a decent answer. If you don't have a decent answer and just want to increase the number of posts you make then start a discussion topic in another forum. I would really like an answer that answers the question. I am not interested in some sort of flippant pub-chat or social-networking.

Answering questions is great and i commend you on your willingness to help but your answers are just wasting my time and failing to deal with the question.
Regards from
Tom

[edit] GrapefruiTgirl's answers are of a high standard and it is worth having a look at her approach.

Apologies for wasting your time. I shall refrain from further comment.

GrapefruiTgirl,

Thanks for the suggestion of distrowatch, always an excellent place to start and i posted the question in their "Reader's Comments" page already. I didn't realise i could search by architecture and i don't really know what that means. I will have to explore their site later.

I am not deciding by packaging, otherwise Windows would be the answer as it has the nicest looking Cd with fancy holograms and everything. (Un)fortunately Windows does not work as a LiveCd and is anyway a broken, vulnerable system. I am not looking for some sort of malware trojan which is pretty much a good definition of Windows imo. I am looking for something that works and hopefully has gimp, a web-browser (preferably one that allows flash) and a nice text-editor.

However, if my office manager or boss see me booting up the machine with a home-made Cd with my horrible writing or blank then they are going to assume the worst or be highly suspicious of me and of linux. Not a desirable outcome! If caught i want them to see that Linux is comparable to Windows and that far from being something cobbled together in dodgy people's bedrooms that the distro does have some sort of organisation backing it.

Many thanks and regards from
Tom

LOL thanks for the details. I understand about the 'cobbled together in some basement/bedroom' thing - but who knows, maybe your boss is a Linux junkie


Anyhow, distrowatch is indeed a great resource for this sort of searching. As for "architecture", this means x86, x86_64 (for 64bit machines), or PPC (PowerPC, such as older Macs.) etcetera. Chances are near 100% that your machine is x86 or x86_64. x86 is also known as i386, i486, i586, and i686, in order of older to newer. Selecting based on this (and/or other) criteria will help you filter out OS's that won't work for your machine (though an extremely high portion of OS's out there will have an x86 release, as it is the most common PC architecture.

You'll also notice that distrowatch shows you what major and semi-minor packages (and versions) are included with a particular distro. Virtually all will have a text editor; virtually all will have a browser, but with Adobe Flash being non-GPL licensed (proprietary), I'm not sure how many distros and/or LiveCD's will include Flash by default (I believe Mint does, and that's a nice distro which comes Live), and some may have Gimp, but Gimp is a pretty large application, so finding it on a LiveCD might be tricky, since they are somewhat limited for space on LiveCD's.

Anyhow, best of luck in your search -- let us know where it leads you.

The last time I downloaded Knoppix they provided a self-printable CD label, although that was some time ago. You can purchase a Knoppix CD for as low as two dollars US from one of the vendors listed here. I looked a bit for pictures of the CD but didn't find anything.

You are probably correct that you won't find a Linux CD with such a fancy look as on a Windows CD.

I know I said I was gone from the discussion, but...

If all you want to do is mess around with Linux on your Windows computer at work, have you considered virtualization software (such as VirtualBox)? You can run Linux as a virtual machine inside of Windows, without rebooting. This way, the hardware problems become a non-issue (Linux only "sees" the virtual hardware), and if your boss comes over, just hit Alt-TAB and you're back to your Excel spreadsheet.

Of course you will probably be fired on the spot if you get caught, either way. I'm assuming you know that already and that's your motivation for starting the thread.