I'd like to ask you, what distrib you think will fit me.


Well here's my OS story of my life

Dos for a long time,
win 95, win 98 then me, 2000, xp.

I've been on SUSE 9.1 for 1 week to understand a bit of linux,
then after a month I changed to Mandrake 10.1, I did well though I had too mant probs with my modem ports and my mouse ports so I had to recompile the Kernel and do more stuff I didn't want to get my hands dirty with, so I changed to Fedora FC4 x86_64, but I got tired from the 64 bit stuff i.e no flash etc...

so, I'm formating my computer so I would like you to suggest what will fit me the most...

Things I want with it :
Boot Loader,
lots of drivers,
x86_32 bit !
GNOME/KDE
Network support with easy DHCP installation (network with xp on other comp)
and very important, DVD installation bootable, only!//.
not much tweaking needed

Maybe Fedora FC4 x86_32? :S


I'd be happy to hear your thoughts.

My personall preference is Mandriva 2006. It has come a long way since 10.1.

Also, unless you have a system and software that can use x86_64, stick with the ia32 installations (i686, x86, 32 bit in general). There is far more available to 32 bit at this time for any OS.

I did dabble with FC2, RH, Slackware and MDK 10.0, 10.1 and 10.2.
Here are quick impressions of those SPECIFIC distros. Thing may have been fixed since then (10 mos. ago)

FC2 - problems with HD geometry w/ dual booting / resolv.conf problems w/'net
RH9.0 similar problems - these are documented on the RH errata site since 1999!

Slackware - very nice - very configurable and 'feels' good, but being new to linux it required too much manual configuration while I was trying to setup a small office. The fact that it comes with about 15 text editors tells you it's more of a hackers distro. I will definitely get back to slack 10.2 in the near future.

Mandrake- 10.0 very solid. Free version missing some commercial plugin apps such as Java, flash, (which are free downloadables) and did not support mailto protocol. Shipped with K3B, both openoffice and Koffice, .pdf readers, games, etc.

Mandrake 10.1 - I found to be buggy

Mandrake 10.2LE (free version)- Also very solid. Java and flash in free version are now autoloaded when using browser, and mailto protocol is now fixed. Ships with most everything you need. Am now using on 2 business and 1 family PC for the past year

Mandrake had the best and most flexible installer by far and I have partitioned and repartitioned numerous Windows/MDK HD drive combinations with very good success. MDK also uses rpm software installation which initially was sketchy in the documentation, but after you setup URPMI, dependency issues are resolved for you. I only had one issue with accidentally loading 2 different versions of Dansguardian which caused dependency conflicts, but since that time, if you are careful to only load software for YOUR SPECIFIC versions, all should be OK. This goes for any distro.

Installed MDK 10.0, 10.1, 10.2 on close to 12 different PCs, all with different hdwr. Have also installed W98, me, 2000 and xp on these same PCs. Guess which OS is easier to install? I was amazed at how much hdwr support the big famous OS DID NOT HAVE and I had to spend hours (overall) hunting down drivers and installing them.

Have come to the realization that playing musical distros will be counterproductive in the long run. If you need to run a business, stick with what you know for now and slowly migrate to GNU/linux via a 2nd PC. Otherwise, pick one distro and stick with it for 6 mos. All distros will do almost everything, and ditching one for the other will just prolong the learning curve.

good luck

I have renamed this thread to give it a better and more descriptive thrread title. I have also moved it to Lonux-Distributions because it fits better there.

And you know, a search would have brought up hundreds of threads just like this, with the following answers:
Fedora, Mandriva, Suse, Mepis, Ubuntu/Kubuntu
"Debian is now easier to install than ever before"
"Slackware is straightforward if you don't mind reading"
Gentoo for a comedy option

XavierP, in same time, can I ask for your personal thoughts?

I agree with the list above. They are the most common responses because they are the "best" ones.

Have you thought of trying a bootable distro like Knoppix? Will let you get your feet wet with little or no pain.

Would also say add Xandros to your list to consider.

Kanotix released a new version on Dec. 31. It is a livecd install. It may be what you are looking for.

When Linux Central publishes the recent bug fix version of Debian on DVD, you might consider that as well.

Jeff

hi there,
LOL....
care to elaborate a bit more?
regards,
slackie1000

Because whenever we see a thread in which the OP says they don't want to do much tweaking or configuration, someone always posts up Gentoo. And then says that "you'll have to do a lot of work to begin with, but then you never have to touch it again".

what about debian?


EDIT : I've started to download Knoppix.... Do you think it's okay and fit me by the first post?


Thanks.

Knoppix is a great distro for someone first checking out Linux - it runs off the cd (you don't have to install it to the hard disk) and they have packaged a huge number of apps with it. It will be a little slow, because it runs off the cd, but it is excellent.

Read over the site for all the things you can do with it.

Changed to Slackware since didn't know Knoppix is only a live-cd :S


Anyways, Do you think Slackware will fit? :]
Which system is it based? Gnome? KDE? XCFE?

Slackware doesn't come with GNOME as of version 10.2. KDE and Xfce are both included, along with Fluxbox, Blackbox and some others.