Easy turn on and go distro?
 

Greetings,

I have been reading a thread concerning distros and have learned quite a bit on what may or may not work for me. I just gave my aspire one win 7 the Dban. I have crunchbang on my eee pc. It is great, but I am looking for the most user friendly, hook up my printer(s) Canon 280 and a brother 5420. without a cloud (I made a cloud printer out of canon mx259, it was generic wireless but I did a work around voila! cloud), turn on,go shopping and download images that can be enlarged to fit the page easily, for my aspire. There are so many distros that I am beginning to lose sight of what I need instead of - wow! that looks great! Any recommendations on parameters given above? Won't hold you to them. Just looking for a direction to what I actually need- not what I think will work and ultimately end up dancing to Distro Inferno. Originally, I stated Sourceforge has great info- then I browsed this site more thoroughly- has absolutely every link I need! when I figure out the right distro- so if anyone has any suggestions, I will greatly appreciate them and whiz over to LinkLand and do the research.

Many thanks in advance for your suggestions!

Xfool.

Mint is offensively simple and easy to get going with. Give it a whirl.

Yep, Linux Mint. I'd say the LTS version (Mint 13) so you won't have to reinstall too often (like, in the next few years).

Fantastic replies from both!! Thank you very much for the direction. I did try the Distro chooser- I still had questions- so I came here for sage advice- which I received. Not having to change distros for years, pure opera to my ears!

Thank you a thousand times over! I am off to research- I learned the hard way- use link before mouth!
(^v^)
<( )>
W W

Health and happiness to you and yours!!!

Xfool

Many people have had great luck with Slacko 5.6 puppy linux and it's walk through and set up with cups. is very simple to me.

Excellent- Thank you ever so much!!!!!! I now have two choices from experts- you have no idea how much I appreciate it. I was looking at fedora, yup never did win playing CLUE!

Thank you again- my digging starts this afternoon!!

Health and happiness to you and yours!

Xfool

Fedora is great for people who like to change the OS frequently. For what I understand you are looking to stay with the Operating System for a while so look away from Fedora. Linux Mint will be a better choice, if your computer meet all the requirements. you can go with Debian too, Mint and Debian are related and both have great community support.

Good luck to you my friend

I believe that the first choice one needs to make when choosing a distribution to use is whether you want to go with a "rolling release" distribution, or not.
I have Gentoo and Arch Linux partitions that are many years old. On the other hand, I also have a Slackware partition that has been upgraded through many releases (in my opinion the only drawback to Slackware,) but it is, in my opinion, the first choice to be made.

Just keep installing what comes out on distrowatch.com. Eventually you will find what suites you best.

Mint is great, but there's a lot to be said for a rolling-release distro, as Andrew Thomas pointed out. The ones which are user-friendly and not bleeding-edge are PCLinuxOS, Manjaro, and Foresight.

Don't forget to read the reviews, both on this site and those linked from Distrowatch.

Tron, my friend, I will definitely check into your suggestion- you have great insight, and seem to know what I need before I do!!!

Thank you ever so much, not only for this advice- you saved my eee pc 900- it was headed for ocean!!

Your kindness, as always, gives me impetus- this time without eating ice cream for breakfast :)

Health and happiness to you and yours,

Xfool.

Andrewthomas,

Thank you for your advice. With a red face, I am still shaky on exactly what a rolling release actually is. I have read conflicting reviews regarding Slackware. It took 7 Linux experts (here) to get me to crunchbang on my eee pc 900. I still experience difficulties with navigation, for some odd reason, I simply can not absorb the base context. I have been around since Pong (still miss it). For some God forsaken reason, I have difficulty grasping Linux- I bought a crhomebook and immediately did a work around to turn my standard wireless printer into a fully functioning cloud device-without a host. I like my chromebook, but there are limitations that do not meet my needs. Now that I have given you my entire life story- I have been looking at Fuduntu-which brings me back to rolling releases. If slackware is the choice of so many, perhaps I should reconsider.

I greatly appreciate your input, even though I check Distrowatch.com The sheer amount of choices is staggering. There is no advice like the advice of those who have actually paved the road.

Thanks a million times over- Health and happiness to you and yours,

I remain,

Xfool.

Jefro,

Many thanks for taking the time to read and answer my post- Your suggestion seems the wisest- try on the shoe before you buy it- but I am incapable of understanding linux as a whole, so for me, changing distros would be the green mile. I applaud your ease with such endeavors- ok, I am a little envious too- But I need the first shoe to fit if possible.

Many thanks for your suggestion, to the adept it would be very logical. Unfortunately, I live up to my moniker.

Health and happiness to you and yours,

I remain,

Xfool

David McCann,

First off, I thank you for taking the time to read and respond to my post- I have looked into the first two of your recommendations, but have missed Foresight along the way- the bleeding edge is the absolute best analogy I have ever heard.

To wit, I am going to research; Mint, Slackware and Foresight.

The first two of your suggested distros seemed to require a bit more navigation than I am comfortable with. Perhaps I misunderstood the data- I will do the work to ensure that I am viewing the big picture instead of a microcosm.

All of you have certainly pointed me in the right direction, and for everything else there is Mastercard.

DavidMcCann, I cannot adequately express my thanks for your advice, time and kindness-

Health, happiness and the winning Lotto number to you and yours,

I remain,

Xfool.

To all that have helped me in my quest for point and shoot, I am down to the final 3:

Mint
PCLinuxOs
Zorin (on the fence with Manjaro)

Zorin sounds almost too good to be true-straight out of the box! Has anyone tried it??


My gratitude for all your help!

I sold my eeepc 900 with this on it.

I prefer AntiX but figured a Desktop Environment vs a Window manager would be simpler on a new user.

On my 701SD which I had for sale but no takers, I threw one of this guys respins on it, Slack0, and it works OK.

http://extonlinux.wordpress.com/

Lots of live version respins to choose from.

I'm hardly a printer expert, but you'll probably need to d/l and install the linux drivers for both printers.

http://www.canon-europe.com/Support/...XMA_MP280.aspx

http://welcome.solutions.brother.com...l&c=us&lang=en

In which case, it wont matter much what distro you use.

The main reason why people go looking for 'easy' distros is becaue they cant figure out how to install video and other drivers.

EEE PCs mostly use intel video. Wireless could work 'out of the box', or it might not, depending on what wireless chip you have.

The aspire one could have any number of hardware setups.

If you've got 'open source friendly hardware' the distro wont matter much.

Mint- just a ubuntu based distro. It does have easier driver installation with whatever 'jockey' (ubuntu hardware drivers tool) or whatever its rebranded to (and that which wont help with the printers as far as I know).

Manjaro- no! dont! Arch based, rolling release, and if you dont have much experience it more than likely you _will_ break it when updating.

Zorin- I've tried it, ages ago, and wont try it again. I'm totally off ubuntu based distros, dotn like the 'pay to d/l the full version' model, and dont think that a windows look-a-like desktop is a good or even sensible idea.

To add to Cascade9 info. If going with Puppy based. http://www.google.com/cse?cx=0159956...ers&gsc.page=1

You might as well say "Ubuntu will break because it's based on Debian Unstable." Neither statement would be true because they both have their own repositories.

That answers that! Ubuntu it is. I just checked to see if printing requires cloud. I love my new Chromebook- Rok- I just kept breaking my 900- so off I went to best buy- I have a regular wireless printer. I also have Brother. Buying yet another printer was a no go with me

, I did the following: I remoted into a friends Chromebook, she added me as a +g user. I sent her my drives, she add them to her google cloud giving me access- then I had her delete my +g account from her side and I was stand alone cloud ready. I much prefer plug and play.I respect everyone's suggestions, but if David and Rok agree on the same distro- I am reading and downloading tomorrow.

Thank you all- your consideration and willingness to help is appreciated 1000 times over!


Health and happiness to you and yours!

I remain, Xfool

Umm.....totally different situation. Manjaro is a rolling relase, ubuntu isnt.

In my experience rolling release distros have a higher level of risk than normal distros when updating, and more updates.

*edit-

Maybe I'm blind, but from what I can see neither DavidMcCann or rokytnji suggested ubuntu.

If you do go for ubuntu, be awre that the lastest versions (13.04 and the upcoming 13.10) only have 9 months supoport.

You might be better off with 12.04 LTS if you dont like reinstalling ever few months.

BTW, ubuntu has created its own dekstop- unity. Some people like it, most dont. You can have other desktops apart from 'unity', but the other dekstops have varing support lengths- lubuntu 12.04 (lxde desktop) only has 18 months, xubuntu 12.04 (xfce desktop) has 3 years, kubuntu 12.04 LTS (KDE dekstop) has 5 years.

Well, if going with Ubuntu based. Here ya go when it comes time to figure out the printer or any thing else involving Ubuntu.

I like to cheat when it comes to searching. It keeps me from asking questions most of the time.

Cascade9, I am the blind one, not you- I am a twit. I did not mean to say Ubuntu- I am going for PCLinuxOS. I also meant to say that I think that David and Rok were heading in the same direction, instead of agreement. Good Lord, no more coffee after midnight. I value your knowledge- which is obviously extensive- but I have been helped by Rok and David before and if either or both said "put tinfoil on your head, stand on one leg, hold your netbook as high as possible and then you will have wifi" I wouldn't hesitate. I would grumble, but I wouldn't hesitate. (plus Rok always has the best links-I search and search then come in here and he just chucks the very one I was looking for at my head-) I have followed David around the forum. His explanations and step by step help is always dead on and done in a manner that makes one feel informed, not an idiot, and lends confidence.

I apologize if I have been helped by you previously and don't have you on my wish list to answer my posts. Given your excellent advice here, I may have to stock up on tin foil :)

The xfool.

Ok. For PCLOS forum searching pay attention to how I did this

Paying Attention!! Thank you

+1 for Mint