Semi-Newbie seeks fun loving distro for a Xp dual boot system. Must include a good package manager, and a love of pets and long walks on beach. Long Term/Non-smoker.


Perhaps I had too much to put into this post, but finding a distro is a lot like finding a mate, so why shouldnt the ads be similiar?

I already have an Xp3200 Mandrake 10 system, but my 1.1ghz XP box looks lonely and could use a dual boot, I've already set aside a 5 gig ext3 parition for linux. I already have a dedicated mandrake box, so I'm looking for something differnt to put on this dual boot system.

1.1 ghz
512mb
geforce3

I can only think of redhat/fedora/debian when it comes to package managers. I'm not confortable in compiling the kernel or progams, I use rpms for everything, easy to install, easy to uninstall. Redhat and Mandrake seem pretty much the same, I havent noticed much of a differce. Debian I havent used. What else is out there that has a good package manager and is faily easy to set up?

debian... you're looking for easy PM, i recommend debian --

http://www.linuxquestions.org/reviews/showcat.php/cat/5

ditto

Though I hate to recommend specific distros, SimplyMepis is currently the 'best' debian-based desktop distro IMO.

And in general debian/apt is the way to go, even easier than rpms and much neater too.

I am a

I suggest Ubuntu . It is a pretty good Debian-based distro that just gets it right and also features an easy text-based installer. I was in a similar situation. I chose to try Vidalinux , which is a Gentoo-based distro with the Anaconda GUI installer. It is easy to set up and as probably the best package management system in my opinion, Portage, which is compiled from source instead of binaries.

Vidalinux looks cute, I espcially like the OSX style menu bar in the middle.

Does anyone know what that is called and know if I can get it in a debian distro?

The OSX style menu bar that is

I'd vote for Ubuntu. It just fits the description perfectly.

This Unbunto is too buggy, and comes with this nasty chocolate theme, which you can't change because the program to change it crashes every time

Also there is no cd burning program in this, or Vidalinux.

I will try straight Debian. In this Gnome WM what do you guys use for cdburning?
KDE has K3b, Gnome has??

And thanks for all the reccomendations.

I read in some threads here on LQ and also elsewhere about how slick SimplyMepis was, so I downloaded the ISO this evening and burned it to CD-R and ran Mepis from that.

It wouldn't detect my ethernet card; the time was wrong and I couldn't fix it by specifying the right time zone; and when I installed to a spare hard drive, hoping I could fix those things later after I had it on the hard drive, I found that it wouldn't boot from the hard drive, because it couldn't find the kernel (I guess). I specified putting the bootloader on the MBR of the hard drive in question, and got no error messages during installation.

So I dunno...sometimes I think I live in an alternate universe from the one other Linux users live in. Things don't work for me that work for, seemingly, everybody else.

I was really hoping I could use Mepis and get away from Mandrake. I'll play with it some more but don't see what chance I have, since I just followed the instructions and it didn't work.

I seem to have run out of debian based distros, can someone suggest a single or 2 cd set rpm based distro? I already have a mandrake box, so something other than mandrake. Debians install was too much of a hassel, and once it was finished, i didnt even have an x system.