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Old 06-10-2006, 03:43 PM   #1
kamil212
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Registered: Jun 2006
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Choosing a distro, a couple of questions.


Hi all,
I'm finally fed up with WinXP (have multiple legit licenses and it still gives me the piracy warning and will not let me change the key without reintalling)

Well, help me choose a distro, this is what I use my desktop for, in order of importance:

Internet (firefox fan)
Pictures (from digicam)
Movies (DivX)
"Backing up" of DVDs (DVDshrink fan)
Word processing (school)
DreamWeaver
Edonkey/Overnet (got used to it, but runs on win2003 server so disregard)

This is what I'm installing it on:
AMD64 3200+ on Asus K8V SE Deluxe
1GB of DDR400 (2 512s)
NVIDIA GeForce FX5900XT 128MB (256bit) EDIT: dual display
onboard gigabit and audio
VIA SATA RAID 0 (two seagate 160s)

Main question is:
will I have any problems installing the RAID?
for winXP I had to connect an USB floppy to install the driver for installation

EDIT: How is the dual monitor support on Linux (nvidia drivers?)

I'm thinking ubuntu,
looking for something with a lot of support (forums and such)
Any opinions, sugestions would be welcome.
I know that everybody has their own opinions and I want to hear all of them.
Thanks in advance,
-Kamil

Last edited by kamil212; 06-10-2006 at 03:47 PM.
 
Old 06-10-2006, 06:52 PM   #2
musicman_ace
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Registered: May 2001
Location: Indiana
Distribution: Gentoo, Debian, RHEL, Slack
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I'd suggest Ubuntu or Kubuntu for the linux newb, although I learned on slackware and loved its simplicity. Drop in an Ubuntu Live disc and see if you can get everything working that you want. As popular as Dreamweaver is, I imagine it'll run under Wine, but I don't use Wine so I can't say for sure. OpenOffice should do fine as a replacement to MS office. There are Edonkey/Limewire type programs. I believe its called emule? in linux. Not sure on the SATA Raid, I'm still using PATA as I know it works well.

BTW: Kubuntu had problems when I tried it once, but it was the original release of KUbuntu so maybe they fixed the issues. Also, you could always dive into the Gentoo world.
 
Old 06-10-2006, 09:22 PM   #3
ctkroeker
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Location: Paraguay
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Here is a comparison table between linux and windows apps: http://www.linuxrsp.ru/win-lin-soft/table-eng.html
 
Old 06-10-2006, 09:57 PM   #4
masonm
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Registered: Mar 2003
Location: Following the white rabbit
Distribution: Slackware64 -current
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Check out SimplyMepis. It;s a really good distro to start with. You can go up from there.
 
Old 06-10-2006, 10:38 PM   #5
AwesomeMachine
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Registered: Jan 2005
Location: USA and Italy
Distribution: Debian testing/sid; OpenSuSE; Fedora; Mint
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download:

ftp://mirrors.kernel.org/opensuse/di.../boot/boot.iso
Burn it
Boot from it

when it gets to the part with F1, F2, F3 near the bottom of the screen, hit F3 then F4, choose FTP and enter:

server: mirrors.kernel.org
directory: /opensuse/distribution/SL-10.1/inst-source
enter
F2 for screen resolution
enter
Away you go.
SuSE is the best distro for beginners. You can advance and get into debian, slackware, Ubuntu, mepis. But, for now stick with something easy.
 
Old 06-10-2006, 11:08 PM   #6
LzW-x
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SUse is a good distro but you may not like it for divx... I don't think it can play many at all infact! It probably would with more stuff installed but I've not done anything much in the multimedia arena with it!

I might get a different linux after a bit and try that! The freedom in linux is you pick you want!
 
Old 06-11-2006, 02:31 AM   #7
wundermac
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Registered: Jun 2006
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My Vote

If you want simple but limited - Unbuntu or similar. If you really want to learn Linux / UNIX then Slackware.

I'm a newbee and just brought up Slackware 10.2. I've been using Mozilla apps (Firefox and Thunderbird) with Open Office on XP. Both sets come up fine on Linux and work the same (there was a wrinkle getting Firefox to work with CUPS).

I have not got to the video parts yet.
 
Old 06-11-2006, 02:44 AM   #8
reddazz
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Registered: Nov 2003
Location: N. E. England
Distribution: Fedora, CentOS, Debian
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LzW-x
SUse is a good distro but you may not like it for divx... I don't think it can play many at all infact! It probably would with more stuff installed but I've not done anything much in the multimedia arena with it!

I might get a different linux after a bit and try that! The freedom in linux is you pick you want!
You can if you install the win32 codecs and the full xine packages from http://packman.links2linux.org/ .


If you are new to linux, try out a few of the major distros and then stick with the one you like. Most have very good forums and its fairly easy to get help.
 
  


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