i will only use gnome, i hate kde.

currently i have been on mandriva 2010 and now on 2010.1
i'm looking to move to some other distro due to the problems i have with mandriva. those problems are that firefox crashes almost 30 times a day. sometimes even when it's just loaded and i'm over in chrome.

anyways

to give a better idea what my system is like.

athlon xp 2800+
1.2gb 333mhz ram
7200rpm hd
nvidia - GeForce4 MX Integrated GPU - 32mb - AGP 4X

as you can see, its no power house.
i don't pay for the mandriva power pack updates and maybe that could fix some of my bugs in this system. i'm not willing to pay for the "chance" it could work stable.
wanting something that has somewhat of an easy install. work on my crappy computer, and be pretty much bug free.

if it cost money thats fine. i'm not expecting to get an OS that is golden for free.

before anyone says ubuntu or mint. i cant do those, the install screen looks like 1990s scrambled spice channel. not sure why but most of the installs i have tried are like that on this computer and the other, both are amd and video is nvidia, figure thats the issue. mandriva was the only one that wasn't all messed up.
oh and the other computer is 64bit, this one is 32. maybe you can advise something for that computer also.

A good place to start is with anything in the Distrowatch Top 10:

http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

Hello,

bugfree and running on older Hardware, easy to install....
Slackware!
... and you're not a newbie, how about Arch?

Markus

any advantage of arch over slack?
lot of these distro places just give a general description and no type of comparison list of info.

Then may be you want to look here.

By the way, I also have and had computers with AMD-CPU and nVidia-GPU, never had an issue with that. Maybe you have a hardware issue if you have frequent crashes and not fully working installers? I would recommend at least a memory test.

Well, Arch can be easyly configured as multilib whereas with Slackware one has to install Alien Bobs packages. This surely only comes into play if you'll use a 64bit distro.
Slackware is known for being very stable (most distros are!), it has a great and helpful community here http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/
Arch on the other hand is excellently documented whereas Slackware is an excellent distro for learning purposes.
Both come with an easy installer, while installation one always knows whats going on (for example partitioning is done manually).

Markus

Your computer is much the same as mine, although I don't have a graphics card. It should run any distro easily.

Slackware easy to install? LOL

As for Arch, look at their forum; in the "what changes would you like to see in Arch" thread, the commonest reply is "more stability". I tried Arch: running Firefox from the CLI (always a good way to check stability) gave over 20 warnings, some marked critical.

Gnome-based distros that I've seen running well are Debian, Fedora, and Sabayon. Good distros with Gnome as an option are Dreamlinux and PCLinuxOS.

A dependency-handling package manager like all good major distros have.

Are you implying that Slack is not a good major distro?

Yes, I known what you are talking about. My previous computer had a GeForce4 MX and I remember that I had a LOT of problems with video configuration. I don't known why, but opensource drivers never were good for this old card.

Anyway, I will insist with you ! Take Ubuntu 10.10 a try. It painless ! Use it as a live distro. In the case the live ubuntu managed to work for your system I am almost sure it will work after a hard disk install too. You don't even need to burn a CD. Install the live image in a USB stick.

I donate my old computer to a public school with Edubuntu installed (an educational version based on ubuntu). It is not the regular ubuntu that I am suggesting but I don't had any problems to install or to configure the display. It worked at the first attempt. So I am confident you will not have problems too.

And I am very happy with ubuntu. I switched from solaris to opensuse to fedora (for several releases)to ubuntu. I am in a stage that I want to work, play, study, enjoy, communicate and socialize using the computer, not fixing and tweaking the computer all the time. And ubuntu is delivering that. I hope it keep that way !

YES Slackware is easy to install. I suspect that a lot of people claiming otherwise haven't used it. But it's not an ideal choice for a GNOME user.

Hello dugan,

I've installed Gnome on Slackware. there are Slackware packages, it was very easy to install and runs properly (I mean Gnome on Slackware). In fact I've changed from KDE to Gnome on most of my computers due to stability.

Markus

It depends on how you want it to be installed. I personally don't like systems that install 5 GB of software, which is to 75% never used by me, I want my systems lean. And I don't want to fiddle with dependencies, I just don't see the point in handling dependencies manually. So for me it would be not easy to install, because I would never choose a standard installation.

Slackware is much easier than people make it out to be.
It is not difficult at all to install a base system and whatever packages you want.
You don't need to install everything.
Dependency hell is way overblown as well and I hope Slackware never goes the route of the other "good major distros."
I run Slackware 13 on a Athalon Xp 1.6ghz with 512mb ram.
However, I don't use kde or gnome on any of my computers, even the more powerful ones.

But exactly that is the point, how can I install a base system, without knowing the dependencies, since the installer will not help me with that?

Same here, Openbox for the win.