The Brand New UltraMegaSuper "Which Distro" Thread

Thanks for the lengthy explanation. :} I never got to terms with (t)csh
because of the hoops one has to jump through to get stderr and stdout redirected
to different targets. A major PITA as far as I'm concerned.

sh is indeed unusable as an interactive shell, but I'm very happy with bash,
had a quick glance over zsh and even fish, but the few advantages don't outweigh
the differences for me, and I can't be bothered retraining myself.

For me it's fluxbox and rxvt, using bash :}



Cheers,
Tink



Cheers,
Tink

My favourite is PCLinuxOS but it might not be right for you. I would say, though, try an installable Live CD like PCLinuxOS, Mepis, etc, and see if the live CD can run your hardware without too much fuss. Particularly the wireless support.

Visit the sites and see if there is a solution to any hardware problems that occur.

At the end of the day, one distro may support one set of hardware better, but another distro may be better on another set of hardware.

I have just installed PCLinuxOS to an Acer 1692, I needed to play around a bit to get the video working, most stuff just works. But apart from the brand name, it's a completely different animal to the one you have, and PCLinuxOS may work perfectly, fail miserably, or anything in between on your laptop!

You may also have a problem that crucial parts of the hardware may not work with ANY linux.

Anyway, let people here know how you get on.

Join the megathread.

As a raw newbie, all the distros being suggested to you will be too difficult. Check out Xandros and Linspire. Once you get a feel for how Linux works, you can decide if you'd rather switch to a real Linux distribution.

I have merged this thread in with the megathread where you will find lots of ideas.

Linespire might be a good choice from some things I've heard recently.

Originally Posted by TerryP Linespire might be a good choice from some things I've heard recently.

Linspire is fully commercially. If you want to install some software from the crn warehouse, you'll need to have cash available. (e.g. Openoffice costs you money to install!!)

There is an alternative, called Freespire. Most software is for free (hence the name).

Still, i find *spire versions a bit weird in terms of GPL, and The Linux thought (tm) accepted by billions of Linux users.

Hi Guys,

Debian seems to be quite a popular distro - how does it compare to SLED/Mandriva ? Why would one use debian instead of those two ? I've heard its quite a pain to install.
Ubuntu also seems to be quite popular these days, same questions - how does it compare to SLED/mandriva, and Debian ?

My Background:
I've been using linux for 8 years now (mostly as my main system) - tho I've manged to not get in too deep in configuration and stuff.
I've compiled and installed things from scratch, but usually its just executing ./configure, make, make install; if something goes wrong, I just leave it as it is. I'm not afraid to tweak things, so long as the info is there in mostly one place, I'm not too fond of trying out a zillion combinations.

Would Debian/ubuntu be a good fit for me ?

EDIT (reply to dalek's post) : I dont want to learn something just for the heck of it. Only if it will be of benifit to me. Debian seems to be used in a community where I'm trying to enter, hence my interest.

Why not try Gentoo if you like to learn a little more? I love it myself. I started on Mandrake but after trying to upgrade, I switched. To much headache.

My $0.02 worth.

Gentoo is a very good distro (esp. if you have a not so slow computer). After the install you will know more than before, quite a bit more! you will know how to kompile a kernel, you will know how to configure different basics on the command line...
and there is no reason to be scared of gentoo straight away! The documentation is an absolute step by step walkthrough inc. examples, so most of the time you can copy and past the code from the docs - thought better if you type them and learn a little while doing so.

debian is a nice system (personally i prefer testing, currently aka 'etch') but you will not know as much about the system as you would after installing gentoo and it takes a bit of digging and learning by doing - though also nothing to be afraid of.

a more userfriendly in debian style are ubuntu and kubuntu.

If you want to learn a lot in a short period of time install gentoo - you can always install something else after, but the install by itself will indeed teach you a vast amount of stuff. you will learn a lot in about 2 - 3 days...

I took the test at http://eedok.voidofmind.com/linux/chooser.php?
Ubuntu/debian came in at 90%, while mandriva, suse came in at 81%
Gentoo came in at 54%

If there are clear cut instructions for gentoo, I might try it, albiet on an older computer. Would a 700Mhz 256 ram laptop be bad ?

Originally Posted by dalek Why not try Gentoo if you like to learn a little more? I love it myself. I started on Mandrake but after trying to upgrade, I switched. To much headache.

Same thing I did. I find that I am much happier in Gentoo than I have ever been with any other distro.

I've found, however, that the Fedora Core line is a very friendly environment to begin in.

(To previous poster: I ran Gentoo on a PIII 600MHz machine. Smooth. You can find a very comprehensive(can almost copy/paste from it!) installation guide/manual at
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml
Hope that helps!)

Note to the wary, on a 700mhz machine you will be "installing" gentoo for a while--rather you will be watching it compile itself. (unless they've changed the OS that much install-wise)

It depends on how much he plans to install on it and how often he plans to update it. I've ran it on machines like that before and it is not to bad unless you have very little ram or plan to edit videos.

That said, If you plan to use OOo, get the binary version.

If you want to run Gentoo, the time it takes to upgrade shouldn't be a problem (and if it is, maybe you don't). If you want to use Gentoo only because you think it's cool, understand that you've got to make a bit of a commitment. I think Gentoo is really great, having installed it from stage 1 with dial-up internet not once, but twice (and once upgrading to gcc 4.0 which required re-compiling everything). It is remarkably faster to boot and more responsive to use than anything else I've tried (Mandrake, Slackware, Fedora Core, Debian). But I use Debian because it's really easy to set up, maintain and upgrade. I wish I could have Gentoo performance and 133t-ness with Debian's ease of use and support, but for now I've got to get back to work....

I think this thread has run it's course. Thanks to all who reported posts for merging into the megathread. If you see any more "which distro" threads, feel free to point them at this one.