Well I've tried quite a few distros and still would like to try some such as, Crux, Archlinux, LRs to name a few and none of them would install correctly. Also I tried installing RH 8, MDK 9 when they first came out and same thing, wouldn't install without kernel panic errors.

To my surprise, the only distros that installed completely for me without any problems are Debian 3.0 and Slackware 8.0 & 9.0!

These are suppose to be the hard distro's to use/learn, well I can say I don't use nothing but both of these now days. I don't leave home without them...

BittaBrother, give Arch another chance man...

I have been running it for about six months now, and I have sworn off all other distros because I think it is perfect. The pacman package manager is the easiest to use by far, and it is just as easy to submit your own packages to Arch's FTP server so everyone can use them...they have almost everything.

I know it can be a bitch to get installed, I ended up having to install only the base packages, then once I was up and running I installed the rest using pacman, but I have never looked back since.

I would be more than happy to help you get Arch up and running, because Arch needs more users, and I would hate to see such a good product fall by the wayside.

Also, version 0.5 should be released soon, hopefully it will install a little smoother though...

PS: I double what Acid said about not speaking for others, I prefer to speak for myself about what I do and do not care about.

It has video, but it's disabled in BIOS. And onboard sound may or may not be good. It's not hooked up to speakers, so it really makes no differnce. The reason for this computer is to be a storage facility for a bunch of files, and to get on the internet once in a while. That's it. If I want to do anything more than that, I'll use the XP2200+ 512 MB DDR computer sitting beside it.

Yeah, I'm hoping to try arch again with 0.5. I really started to like it with one of my computers I used to have it installed on (0.4), but arch REALLY hates this computer. Can't even boot the install, as soon as it starts, kernel panics, and it ejects the cd and tells you to restart.

Sorry for speaking for other people and sounding rash, its just that we've been getting lots of these threads, and they always end up the same way. What do you want to happen when you post this? Do you want us to beg you to stay?

If you want to tell your friends, pm them.

And most replys to these threads are "not again...", so it was a fair judgement, even though 100% of the people may not agree.


Slackware is easy to install, though it may not set everything up during the install process. Obviously people will disagree, but I find it almost perfect, except for dependancy checking.

I agree, Slackware & Debian is pretty easy to install if nothing else. As I mention in earlier post, some of the so-called easy distros wouldn't install on my lastest system, which is an AMD xp1700, 256mb of ram, and a Shuttle via chipset mobo, so it's pretty up to date.

I may give the lastest version of Archlinux a try when it's released.

take a look at evil entity. this is a veeeeeery simple install. is made without rpms and is very very lite. only thing i dissagree with them on the the windowmanager. check it out here
http://undeadlinux.com
this is mainly for multimedia/desktop so no development or web stuff (i think) been a while since i used it.

Hey! You don't have to leave entirely, simply take a holiday (it's summer after all, atleast here in the northern hemisphere).

As for not getting Arch to run on that machine: I wonder if it's because the C3 processor. There seems to be some confusion if it is i586 or i686 (Arch requiring i686). I googled quickly and it appears that C3 is a i686 that lacks one instruction present in most i686 and that this causes problems/confusion. If the Arch 0.5 (nova) realease doesn't fix the problem there is a i586 version being developed..

Intreresting that all these distros fails on your system. Sometimes one does have one or more components that really bug linux, don't they?

I stuck to RedHat most of the time and installed it on any system I had, AMD, Intel and it worked. Sometimes there was trouble and waiting a realease more, it was solved too (mostly automatic when installing)

Did you give SuSe a try? I have the feeling they they are the easiest (most automatic) Distro around. Yast does a lot of stuff for you.

I tried Debian once, but have to admit that this is too professional (too little automatic) for me.
(It does have the installer in all the language though, even ESPERANTO!!! What amazement! I was looking for this without help on any other distro)

Anyway, I always considered RPM to be easy. Sure, it takes some fiddling around with it, but it generally works much more reliably than the windows installer.

rpm -e packagename-withouth-the-rpm-ending-and-version [to remove a package]

rpm -ivh packagename-with-everything
[to install a package]

fairly simple, isn't it?
Well, there are conflicts, of course, but go http://rpmfind.net and choose the rpm for your distribution.

Linux is a bitch in the beginning, especially for somebody "that does not have time to invest into it"
I remember refusing to learn it saying: "That is way too much stuff to learn".
Then, when I started, I was amazed that it was not so though then. It's all documented straight, standardized and, unlike windows, Linux want's you to understand it.

I hope you are not giving completely up, would be a shame for all the time you invested so far.
Maybe it could be a momentary frustration.

The only thing I can say is that you got yourself a special machine there. I installed RedHat in many many different systems, some custom built, some bought from the shop and even laptops and it always worked (95%).
So maybe try it on another machine, to get a success feeling.

Well, Tim, you really ought to give the Knoppix disk a chance to do a hard disk install.

That will install Debian Sid (without the "unfriendly) Debian installer), and also give you apt-get ... Hence, a machine which runs and doesn't use RPMs...

That is exactly what I'm running right now... The Knoppix 3.2 Harddisk install, and I'm very happy with it. I'm recompiling the Kernel as I post this.

So, you may want to give that a try before you truly give up.

Just some advice from someone who went through a bit of it myself...
Ps- I'm also on an Intel MOBO and an ATI Radeon 9000 Pro.
I don't have 3d working yet on the Radeon, but that's why I'm recompiling the Kernel... to get it working once and for all!
For your reference, the "radeon" module that comes on knoppix runs my card fine with 2d acceleration, but I haven't been successful with 3d yet... However this is a pretty common problem with the 9000 in linux, and shouldn't be considered a distro-specific problem.

Give knoppix a try. When you do the HD install, it'll default to using the VESA driver for video. you can safely change that to Radeon and have things work, like changing between resolutions with ctrl-alt +/-, and a decent speedy 2d display.

-Shade
Good luck! Don't leave us yet

I don't have so much experience with Knoppix, but heard from several people that Knoppix will run on ANY hardware and "that I should show them a piece where it does not run". So I guess Knoppix is specialized in this, having all this crazy number of device drivers available.

Hope it works for you.

I bought Suse 8.2 after lots of problems using Mandrake and a few with Vecotr and it seems fine so far(I have only had it 2 days).
I can browse the internet a lot faster than with WinXP.
I also have Gimp and other great software.
Only 2 problems I can not get music CDs to play (but all other CD are good), and I do not have 3d graphics but I don't think I do with WinXP either. But Suse have support so hopefully these will be fixed soon.
Try Suse !!
David

Linux popularity has grown every year, especially this last year where masses of people are choosing Linux rather than MS Windows. Naturally this is happening in places other than North America.

I think that Linux is much more fun for a developer than any closed source platform. For example, here are some interesting open soruce projects and websites:
< http://www.blender.org/ >
< http://www.mesa3d.org/ >
< http://sourceforge.net/ >
< http://www.gtk.org >
< http://developer.gnome.org/ >
< http://anjuta.sourceforge.net/ >

If you can't get lost in all that Linux has to offer, than you must be searching for the end user experience. At this time MS Windows has an edge in that department, but the gap is closing. Linux will conqueror in all markets, as soon as it offers the best of everything to everyone. Right now it is a developers platform that is making it's way into businesses and the home, especially with the advent of nicer desktop environments (KDE and GNOME) and office tools. I think that Linux is already the winner with the software research and development audience. There is nothing better on the planet if you want to be a part of a large development effort.