The Brand New UltraMegaSuper "Which Distro" Thread

muzikb,

http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/

try that link, it is the Linux distro chooser it askes you a series of questions then based on your answers comes up with your ideal Linux distro

A few personal reccomendations:

Kubuntu
http://www.kubuntu.org/

Mandriva
http://frontal2.mandriva.com/en/downloads/mirrors

BeatrIX
http://www.watsky.net/download.html

Blag
http://www.blagblagblag.org/download/

OPENSUSE
http://www.opensuse.org/Download

Mephis
http://www.mepis.org/

PCLinuxOS
http://www.pclinuxonline.com/pclos/html/download.html

This is the distro I use and recommend, Why because it works right out of the box. No need to configure Everything, everything just works. It also comes as a 1 CD install that is a live CD that you can install later if you wish.

hope this Helps,

Jake

Megathread strikes again. Bwahahahaha

and again! Bwahahahaha

Originally Posted by michux And there is one more on PolishLinux.org site: http://polishlinux.org/choose/quiz/

Finally one that works It actually recommends Slackware and FreeBSD!

Hello,

This is a message from a very frustrated owner of two worthless computers.

One is a home-built desktop with the following specs:
Pentium 3, 350 MHz, 192 Ram, 30G HD, currently running Winblows 2000, with a ton of corruptions. We can barely get the stupid thing to turn on.

Second computer is a laptop:
Toshiba Portege, 500 MHz, 64 RAM, 20G HD, currently running Winblows XP, and runs so slow I could run to Beijing and back before the freaking thing even finishes running its login script.

Some background:

We have mutually agreed to use filtering software because one of us has an addiction to naughty pictures. We don’t want to use Microsnots Winblows any more because we’re sick of it breaking on us.

I downloaded UBUNTU and hubby tried installing it on the desktop yesterday. It got as far as the “asking for location” screen before it froze. It kept the CD and hard drives whirring though for an hour or two, but nothing happened. We currently have zero internet access at home, so everything that we use will have to be put onto floppy or CD at work and carried home.

We want Linux on our computers, but we want to use a version that is easy to install, one that a 10-year-old could use without having to call Daddy at work every 5 minutes with questions. He thought UBUNTU would be the system we want, but is not 100% sure since there are so many versions out there.

Is there such a thing as Linux program for dummies, and how would we get it and install it?

Thank you very much,
Ishkabibble’s wife

Have you given Fedora Core 5 a try. The problem with both of these may be that they are a little on the bloated side or another alternative could be Zenwalk. If you mind getting your hands dirty then I would also suggest slackware. Again it could be freezing up due to your computer being so old.

He has worked with Redhat and Slackware and said that he definitely does not want to use Slackware because of the amount of work involved. So this needs to be something that works "out of the box" so to speak.

Thanks!

There is a "Which distro" megathread you should be looking thru. Hopefully, this thread will wind up incorporated into it shortly. This question gets asked dozens of times per week, and the answers are always the same. I recommend Debian.

You can take the two quizes in my signature to help you pick. But since you're fairly new to linux, I would recommend for your older hardware either Xubuntu (which is essentially a lightweight Ubuntu) or Damn Small Linux, both of which should be fairly easy to get up and running. Another one I've heard of but never used is Puppy Linux

Originally Posted by rickh There is a "Which distro" megathread you should be looking thru. Hopefully, this thread will wind up incorporated into it shortly. This question gets asked dozens of times per week, and the answers are always the same. I recommend Debian.

Thanks, I searched before I posted this. I am not familiar with the term "distro" and have never seen it used before so perhaps that is why the "megathread" you're referring to did not come up in my search. I will go take the quizzes recommended, provided I can understand the terms used in them!

yeah, puppy linux is good out of the box and should fly on those machines. It's quite intuitive and for a live distro is quite customisable (you can easily add other programs, save preferences (wallpapers, other mission-critical things like that)) etc. It's only a ~50MB download if my memory serves, so it's not much effort to give it a go. Should pick up most hardware, and there's some handy little gui based apps for some things which can be a nuisance to set up (I'm thinking of setting up network cards (not really an issue for you) and mounting/unmounting drives, inluding usb drives).

Of course it's beauty is that it loads completely into the ram, so you can take the cd out of the drive once it's booted up and running, and use the drive for writing cds, listening to music, accessing other data you've downloaded from work... well, you get the idea.

Most people use the term distro because they don't like spelling out distrobution every time.

Ok I took both tests and they both recommended UBUNTU. Which is good because we already have UBUNTU downloaded onto a CD.

Now all I need to know is why the &%*#$&%@# CD is not working.

That's funny, you'd think distribution would be abbreviated to distri instead of distro.

Again as said it may be that you do not have enough resources to run such disto. However as mentioned, try Xubuntu, it is a lighter version of ubuntu.

Originally Posted by jstephens84 Most people use the term distro because they don't like spelling out distrobution every time.

... distribution?