I have used Mandrake 8.1, 8.2 Sue 8.2 and Vector.
I could never get Mandrake to run at a decent speed on a powerful machine. If you can do that it is worth using it.

However Vector ran fine and Suse is really quick. The bad thing about Suse is that you have less choice of Window managers, no ICE WM etc. Also Suse support is useless !!

i like the look and feel of redhat 9
i also use knoppix off the CD.
and i will try to install it to my HD.

ah the key to learning linux = The Bible redhat 9

sorted, the lot of it. written so clearly. have SuSE 8.2 as i said now. not installed it. might do if no joy with getting winx to run HL any faster. i still think redhat is pretty damn good

am i right in thinking that to get round the whole HL being shit problem i can just have a basic windows partition with it all as normal and it will just access hl from there thru wine when i need to? AND if i do this can i set it all up then trash the boot partition so windows is there but it doesnt nag me on bootup to choose between the 2?

I've used Lycoris, RedHat 9.0 and JAMD. Of all 3 I'm liking (and would reccomend) JAMD the best....hardware actually works, programs install well, etc. (I've only been using Linux for about 3 weeks).

trinity

I have always used mandrake and always had trouble getting things to work straight out the box with out a bit of stuffing around, ie stupid things like themes not installing in usr/kde and the wrong gcc errors when configuring apps, wine not supporting certain apps,etc...and I just took his as normal and a bit of a challenge.

I downloaded SuSE 8.2 and every thing just works like you would expect. even KDE 3.1.3 was downloade and installed within 20 minutes.

I will continue to use SuSE because it seems to be right for me and my limited knowlage.

This is just my experiance and would be interested to hear if anyone else found a distro that sits right with them.

Personally never used it, but read a bit about it, seen quite a few recommendations for it, and would like to 2nd it.

Mandrake is usually what I recommend, but Xandros is definitely up there as well.

Cool

I've actually never used it either (mainly because I didn't want to pony up $100 for it), but it looks really cool and I hear great things about it and ... hey, it's Debian-based, so you know the guys at Xandros all have a decent head on their shoulders

tempting excuse to go with mandrake.. is mandrake 9.1 simple to install next to XP?

Yes, the install is pretty simply next to XP. A nice little GUI to walk you through the install, much the same as you would expect from a Windoze install.

It looks very nice inside as well. Mandrake is becoming a very user friendly OS, i think in my opinion becoming a very close rival for the desktop system , you still have the linux flavour with command lines.

Ive been running linux for nearly 6 months now and i have learnt so much, it's has had it's moments of frustration, but if you persevere with it, you learn so much about it, and get so much back out of it

yeah, your remark that linux taught you a lot describes my primary motive to install it.. i'm looking forward to getting it on (*snicker*) and strengthening my understanding of operating systems.. naturally, as i grow, so will the disgust with microcash!!

I was getting pretty bored with windoze, now with somethng to actually learn, the fun has come back into it again.

Also getting pretty annoyed with lack of stability and security, so many programs are now spying on uses, sending out imformation that you have no idea is being sent. I have run programs that have found hundreds of little spyware trojan's setting in my computer.

The only linux distro which I can honestly say I hate is Red Hat... probably because it was the only distro ever to have costed me 30 hours of just installation from a CD and when all of that is done, it didn't work well (mind you, this was RH5, I heard that they improved a lot since then) and recently, for stupid anti-community incidents such as this and a few others. And I think many are not particularly wrong by labelling them the Microsoft of Linux.

I was put off by Linux due to Red Hat and somehow I have no inclination to try it again any time soon due to the sheer number of independent distros available nowadays. But I see that you're happy with it, good for you.

Lindows to me is not and never was a Linux distro... it's just that former MP3.com boss plaything that he uses to irritate Microsoft. And if that was his main target, then congrats to him, I think it at least cause some soreness to the mighty beast of redmond. But as a distro... it sucks ass, you might as well use Windows and be happy with it.

I got a more pleasant intro to Linux by Mandrake... I've used it on and off since version 7.x (can't really remember), and even more frequent from version 8.1 onwards, and almost on a daily basis as a primary OS from version 9 to 9.1. I loved it then, but I find it too GUI-centric and honestly speaking, I didn't learn much about Linux administration from it.

Then I discovered Slackware... and wondered why the hell didn't I start with this nice distro earlier! I would have been a Linux guru by now if I started using Slack since day 1.