well, after having stepped away from the pc for a few years, i am back and ready to install lol. i ran through quite a few distros years ago, like xandros, fedora, suse, mandrake/mandriva, simplymepis, vector, pcbsd, desktopbsd, and who knows how many more. i especially liked simplymepis and vector, but vector hasnt had a real update it appears in 2 years. too bad, as i recall it being the fastest distro i had used.

before i came here hitting people up for opinions, i looked around. linux mint debian edition looks entertaining, but otherwise i just dont know enough currently.

im using it to play media and surf the web. no programming, haxing, secpen. i am looking for speed and stability, and have had exp with only kde and gnome. i have played with the command line quite a bit.

my pc: 2ghz amd processor, 2gb ram, cd/dvd drive w dvd burner. havent got a hd for it but its looking at 500gb-1tb range.

i appreciate any and all suggestions.

Your hardware will run anything, of course.

On the GUI front, Gnome is a problem at the moment. You have a choice between Fedora with an unfinished Gnome 3, or something else with the prospect of a switch to Gnome 3 next year. If your Linux days were when KDE was version 3, you'll find KDE 4 very different. Xfce is nice, and collecting a lot of refugees from the others, like Linus himself.

If you want stability, Mint Debian version is rolling release and may spring the occasional surprise. The frequently released distros like Fedora and Ubuntu can do the same, of course. On the other hand, you don't like the fact that Vector comes out every two years!

For an annual-release distro that's nice to use, I'd suggest Mepis (KDE) or ZevenOS (Xfce).

Since you are familiar with and liked MEPIS, why not check out its lighter 'younger brother' called antiX? or its offspring, Swift Linux? I think you'll like either one. go to the University of Crete mirror under /mepis/releases/antix/ here to download antix-m11-696.iso. Or you could back up and choose from a bucketload of distros at this site!

Have fun! Welcome back!

EDIT: as far as HDDs go, I'd stay away from WD (personal pref), and here's a page to look at.

my only source of concern with vector is how good of a long term bet are they? i guess theyre dropping a new version soon but im cautious of stepping right in. my days of the sega dreamcast and saturn left me with abandonment issues.

whats different between kde 3 and 4?

thanks for the suggestions, ill look into them right now.

if you want stability the only way to go is centos

i disagree. i use both gentoo and centos and they both have their bugs. since they both have their bugs, might as well use gentoo and acutally learn linux.

my inner geek would like to try out a full on debian/slack/gentoo install but i dont think i have the chops for it. for a standard pc, how difficult is it?

Installing Slackware should be far faster and easier than Gentoo. Iirc you still have to compile Gentoo from source which should take a bit of time unless you have an amazingly fast computer. Slackware took me less than an hour on my old, beat up, dual core laptop (that doesn't include encrypting the partition etc.). Slackware is very solid. The latest release, 13.37, is fantastic and wonderfully fast. Slackware-current is already getting some good reviews from people in ##slackware on freenode from what I've seen. Patrick releases frequently enough to allow people to stay up-to-date and yet doesn't rush anything.

Debian's ok. The net install on my 1MB/s DSL connection takes forever when it comes to downloading a DM but I think that's because it defaults to either KDE or Gnome which are bloated beyond belief. Apparently the first (of six or eight) DVDs is enough to run the core debian distribution (where Slackware only has one DVD, ah the simplicity). My friends love Debian because of apt-get so you're not REALLY learning linux but that's just my opinion.

Fedora also has it's on net install iso but that's repackaged RHEL and doesn't even include a version of GCC so you can't start building your own packages which it's package manager doesn't have (my wm of choice: wmii).

There are plenty of reasons to go Slackware or any other distribution. Slackware also has KDE4 rolled into it as well as XFCE and Blackbox and a few others (Fluxbox iirc).

And to answer your question about KDE4, KDE3 looked similar to XFCE and was reasonably fast. KDE4 has tried to copy recent Vista/7 UI "improvements" like their menuing system. It's a lot of candy-ish graphics and some un-necessary processes like neopunk (or whatever it's called) which attempts to index your /home/$USER director so it can do whatever.

IMO KDE3 was far better than KDE4 since it was simpler. I haven't used Gnome 3 though.

Of course, you can try all of the above distributions on VirtualBox, see which DM or WM you like best. Which installation you think is easiest, etc.

Debian can install a full desktop - Gnome or KDE or Xfce or LXDE - from a single CD. Pick the appropriate CD1 from the list.

Not sure why you consider apt-get not really learning linux. It is the right tool for the job of resolving dependencies.

Because I clearly can dispossessed an entire ISO with ease :P. (actually have been planning on downloading one of them but would rather just prefer one with X and no dm.) That aside, apt-get hides a portion of the build process from new users without a doubt, ergo it makes a part of it "magic" and if there is no package for it, then some are left stranded. Admittedly, debian is released so infrequently that the repos are generally teeming with packages but the same doesn't go for every distro with a package manager.

because with apt-get you're learning to use a tool specific to just a few distros. With apt-get you're learning Debian-based Linux, not generic Linux.

so elsewhere use slapt-get or yum. I don't see any merit in doing things the hard way. Oh and 'a few distributions'?

Each distribution has a slightly different tool with the exception of children of other distro's. And if you're a sysadmin working with Unix or AIX I doubt your apt-get skills will go very far. Better to learn it for when you need it than to sit there like an idiot who doesn't know how to fix it.

Oh and guess what. Most programs give you instructions on compiling and installing from source. It isn't hard if you know how to read.

Now now children, calm down, lets not forget that this young man is still waiting to get into linux i think.
It's funny you say this as that's my exact consideration for myself at the moment too. I already have slack and Debian, and am just trying to get the courage to go Gentoo. You weren't really specific of when you used to be into linux so it's hard to give you an idea of what's changed. If you're after stability, then Debian (stable) and Slackware are great choices. I don't see much difference on my machine, but to my understanding, when software is compiled for your system, it's supposed to be faster, and in Slackware you can use slackbuilds, most notably from slackbuilds.org which will compile software for you. They compile and install pretty fast. Both Debian and Slackware are stable, but ultimately software on Slack should run faster.

You can use ubuntu.
Try with live CD.

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