New, user-friendly, but not derived from Ubuntu distro for a laptop
 

Hi ya

I thank you all for previously helping.

NOW, I'm looking for a non-Ubuntu, but still easy to use, download, and install via USB drive distro that's user-friendly.

Any help? It's for an Acer Aspire 7741Z-5371

It has a 64bit processor, but i generally use 32bit 0Ses. 250 GB hard drive, 3 GB DDR3 RAM.

I'm just sick of Ubuntu and want to branch out a bit, as a new user

You'll get 30 answers to that question.

You'll have to try out a few.

Give Arch a try if you want to. Good software repository, good docs, good package manager.
http://www.archlinux.org/

It's a little more BSD like.

You'll have to figure out what you want to do with the machine. How heavy or not a GUI you want... etc.

That was a silly question, wasn't it?

Basically, I'm just looking for something that's different. All I use the machine for is primarily to write when I'm not at home, and streaming live.twit.tv when I am.

I'm new to Linux but I want to expand my horizons beyond the Ubuntu family.

Here is a nice comparison of the major distros, anything on this list is worth trying (in my opinion): http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

I would suggest making Live CDs of several that you are considering and taking them for test runs. Then pick one that feels right.

Off the top of my head, based on your first post, I would recommend Fedora (I don't particularly like yum, but that's just me and no I don't want to discuss it [grin]).

The functional leader of my LUG (we don't have any official leaders) likes Mandriva.

My two favorites are Slackware (but a USB install might be problematic) and Debian. The Debian web install works just fine as long as you have internet and can be done from a USB key. Here's the Debian wiki article:

http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC/HowTo/Install

Thank you. This is why I like the Linux community. So many answers.

Basically, I use my laptop now to write and chat with friends and stream media at the library via wireless, stream media at home.

I have a desktop, so having a stable machine isn't a big deal.

Like I said, I just want to move away from the -untu family, and branch out but I don't want to try anything that'll make me want to take a sledgehammer to the laptop. heh.

if your a writer try pocketwriter os it's salix/slackware made for writers

Thanks. I'm looking for something that I can actually install (unless im missing something there) not something that'll run off of the USB stick.

For what it's worth, I'm another newbie to linux, and just last week I went ahead and put debian squeeze on my 'ol thinkpad x41 tablet. The browser is screaming fast, it streams video flawlessly (it could NEVER do this w/ the stock xp tablet OS), and the only hiccup came from having to set up the wireless, which when I actually took the time to sit down and configure it properly, was pretty darn easy.

A couple things to note - you can keep the install pretty light, I only went w/ the first two iso files from http://www.debian.org/CD/ - any less than that and you're running pretty bare bones. With disks 1 and 2 you get open office, a slew of browsers, terminal and root terminal, a synaptic package manager, GIMP, and a pretty full harem of preference menu items for you to configure. I mention all of these because if you only use the first iso, you're limited to one browser, the terminal, and that's about it. Granted, I'm pretty hopeless at this point w/o google, but if easy is what you're looking for, Debian is a nice way to go in my book.

Hmm...seems that you dont know quite how the debian system works, or you have left out some important information.

As long as you have internet access, you dont need to get anything more than CD#1. (well, to be honest, in a lot of cases you wont need more than the 40MB 'business card' .iso). Getting more than CD#1 just gives you more of the debian repos on CD. All the same files are avaible from the repos, via apt-get, aptitude, synaptic or even software center.

Something Red Hat-based? How about Fusion Linux? It's to Fedora what Ubuntu/Mint is to Debian, although personally I've not tried it. I like Fedora the way it is :)

http://fusionlinux.org

Let's have a look:
Slackware
Slackware
Slackware. Anyways, are there distros that are hard to download?
Slackware
Slackware is totally friendly to me as user.

so i geuss you would suggest Slackware?

Yes, I think that would be my recommendation, but I am biased.

lol. Slackware eh?

I tried Fedora last night, don't like it. The software center didn't like me.
I tried PCLinuxOS as well, it wasn't bad. I'll definitely give it another look.

I'm going to try Slackware and openSUSE today.

Oh dear, Tobi is being silly again! Slackware is a very good distro, but it is not easy. Try Salix (Slackware made easy) or PCLinuxOS (easy and not related to Ubuntu; 32-bit only).

Thanks!

I did try PCLINUXOS

I did like it. It was interesting.

I'll definitely try Salix.

I'm just trying to find that middle ground between Ubuntu and "omg..what do i do!? *bashes laptop*"

If that makes sense of course.

In which way is Slackware not easy to use?

So, I see that Salix doesn't have a GNOME desktop. What would be a good one to try out of the choices? XFCE? KDE? Flux or LXDE?

No one of us can say which of theses choices is the best for you. If you want something that is somewhat similar to Gnome 2 then try XFCE, but I would recommend to try them all and see what you like.

That's what I'll do. I was just asking because I am still a little new to Linux, and I was thinking more of which one was easiest in terms of learning.

Okay, so I'm finding that i like XFCE. I'm using Xubuntu and I like it. Not a bad interface and it's fast moving.

Edit: my machine's running hot, but i think that's more the heat outside than the actual OS, right?

Found a distro--Linux Mint LXDE.

Posting another thread about that in a moment, having some issues and I don't want to clutter this one up.

debian is a really good, stable distro. it's what ubuntu is derived from. plus as of squeeze it's taken all of its binary blobs out of the kernel making it 100 percent free and open source. pretty much the only distro around that does that other than lame communist distros like gnewsense and trisquel. that is.. if that stuff matters to you.

if you really want a learning experiance, i would go with arch linux. it'll be a real project the first time around but its fun.