The Brand New UltraMegaSuper "Which Distro" Thread

Originally Posted by hengler Hi, I'm looking for a distro, nothing too specific, but I want it to be using KDE, speed's not too important although obviously faster is better. Just for general home use, will be dual-booted with Windows XP. I'm not an expert but I know enough to get by. ATM I'm looking at Slackware but would like to know if it's quite suitable or if there are better choices. I've been using Ubuntu/Kubuntu, and basically just fancy a change. I'm not entirely sure of my computer specs but it's pretty good (not great, but easily good enough to handle any distro I've seen so far) so that shouldn't be a problem.

Be warned of two things with Slackware. It will force you to know more than "enough to get by" and it will also (most likely) force you to learn a bit more about your hardware.

It's not one of those "bells & whistles" distros but you can most certainly make it that way. If you know a lot about linux (or really want to) you can do pretty much anything you want with it. There's nothing that's really "proprietary" like you'll find with other distros.

Oh yeah... one other thing... if you got really used to apt-get and like having your dependencies resolved automatically, you'll have some extra work to do once Slackware is installed. There are certainly options available for this, no question. The "default" package manager for Slackware is /dev/user (basically you). I love it that way. When I go to get a piece of software I find the website, download the source code, compile it myself, and set it up so the package tools can uninstall it for me.

For me, I started with Ubuntu but I very much dislike GNOME. I installed KDE over it (this was literally weeks before Kubuntu came out ) and it was fugly. So I switched to Fedora Core 4. I loved Fedora. I used it much longer than Ubuntu and I learned a lot of linux with it... but I also learned a lot of Fedora, too. I broke that setup at least 4 times just playing around. I wanted something a bit less "proprietary"... something I could customize myself and understand what I was doing so I switched to Slackware. It runs faster than Windows, Ubuntu, or Fedora. All my software that I add myself is customized to my computer. And I learned more about linux than ever before...

I suggest multi-booting a few distros just to give it a try if you have the time and the resources. You are the only judge of which distro is good for you. Good luck.

I'm brand new to this site and in the process of deciding which Linux os to use. My associate has Suse but I have been thinking about Ubuntu. Are the word processing programs on each os compatible with each other? Thanks. Chris

A better subject may help

A good place to start would be http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/ which goes through step by step to help you pick a distro.

Are the word processing programs on each os compatible with each other?

Generally, yes.

Even more generally, it doesn't matter; choosing one distribution doesn't mean you're stuck with a word processor that only runs on that distribution. Linux is Linux, and what runs on one distribution will run on the other.

If you're given a file from a word processor that you cannot read with the word processor that came with your distribution, the distribution probably already provides a package containing the software necessary to read it or you could compile and install it from source if it doesn't (which is not hard).

http://distrowatch.com/
You will see that Ubuntu is the most often asked about (not the same as most popular, by a long shot)

One very good choice is Fedora Core 5.

I have tried maybe 10 distros so far---none of them has any issues with OpenOffice, Abiword, etc. I use Open Office for everything --even on Windows.

An important thing to keep in mind when choosing an OS is what you will be using it for. I started with Fedora Core 5 a few weeks ago and got rid of it for Suse 10.1 after only a few days. Fedora doesn't play well with any type of file that has digital rights (i.e. .pdf, .mp3, DVD, etc. . .). That's not to say it's not capable of supporting those formats, just that it takes a good deal of extra work that Suse and others are capable of doing "out of the box".

Greetings.

I've found (yep, found) a Toshiba Satellite 225CDS (Pentium 133 MHz, 16 MB of memory) and I'm willing to install Linux on it.

Why? Cause as it is, running Windows 2000, I can't get much from it, but a light Linux distro might turn it into an useful machine.

The good new is that I've purchased a 128 MB memory chip, so now I've a 144 MB Satellite 225CDS.

I've already read some articles about light distros and old laptops, but none of them gave me the answers that I needed.

Here are the questions:

- what is the best distro to a machine like that?

- could I run the latest version of OOo and Firefox on it?

- will I need some drivers to keep things working?

Thanks for reading and sorry for my bad english.

Hi,

Just bought the OCZ Rally 2Gb USB-memory and I thought to install linux on it. I'm planning to put something small and fast in there but I have no experience on the distros which would be good for such.

What I want:
-Small and fast distro which wouldn't take too much space
-XFCE or KDE or other ( I don't like Gnome)
-Basic desktop utilities, with addition security tools and system restore tools.

Do you have any suggestions?

small... ok, fast... ok, KDE.... WTF??!?! no way KDE and small and fast live in the same sentence ever... persaonlly i'd suggest dsl for a memory stick, base install just 65mb, and exandable with extra modules as yo want to. nice and lightweight and easy to use.

Originally Posted by Zmyrgel Hi, Just bought the OCZ Rally 2Gb USB-memory and I thought to install linux on it. I'm planning to put something small and fast in there but I have no experience on the distros which would be good for such. What I want: -Small and fast distro which wouldn't take too much space -XFCE or KDE or other ( I don't like Gnome) -Basic desktop utilities, with addition security tools and system restore tools. Do you have any suggestions?

Try DamnSmallLinux. It was made for exactly this purpose. It also has a slightly more robust sister, DSL-N (still in release canidate stage).

If those don't suit your fancy, try PuppyLinux or Feather Linux.

There's more of them out there as well... but these should get you started.

Hello everybody!
I need your opinion. Which distribution is the best for remstering (it must have an installer). I remastered (K)ubuntu Dapper successfuly, but the only thing I thing I hate ist that I don't know is how to run X in chroot environment or how to connect to the running X from chroot.

I'm looking for a decent, RPM based distro that has good drivers for my WiFi card (it's a TrendNet 421PC [preferred] or a Linksys WUSB54G) and uses the Xfce desktop.
It will also need to adjust to RAM changes as I'm planning to buy a 128 MB stick but that probably won't be for a while.

And I'm also planning to install it to a USB drive as the 10 GB hdd is filled with Windows ME, which I may overwrite, but that won't be until I find a good distro.

And I also have another queston: my current BIOS don't support booting from USB. Would installing the bootloader to /dev/hda let me boot from an installed Linux system on /dev/sda?


I'm also trying to avoid Slackware and Ubuntu distros. And having KDE as an option would be nice, but I'm looking to save as much space as possible.

Try Mandriva, but if you only have 64MB, use Icewm or XFCE4. You *could* run KDE, but it will be sssllloooowwwww.

You should be able to overwrite the MBR on /dev/hda to allow you to boot linux on /dev/sda. I recommend GRUB for this.

Reported for megathread ... Debian would, of course be the best distro for that machine, but you want an rpm based distro. Ignorance is bliss, I guess.

I recently installed Puppy Linux 2.0.2 and found it very easy to install on a USB. It can be installed on a 256 MB USB stick.
You will have to download the .iso file, burn it onto a CD, boot form the CD.
Then using the "Puppy Universal Install" (under Utilities) program, you can write it onto a USB stick.