Possible to try other distributions than ubuntu w/o fuss?

iHaresh · 12-07-2009, 05:44 PM

Hello friends,

As you can see, I'm new to this forum.

Firstly, I want to say 'hi' to everyone

Secondly, I've just started using Ubuntu. I still have Windows XP too. I want to know whether it's possible that I can try some other distro of Linux (Fedora, RedHat or any other) without much fuss i.e. easy installation and all (the way I've tried Ubuntu with Wubi

)

Please excuse me if I've posted in wrong thread

Thanks in advance for the reply

Jerre Cope · 12-08-2009, 12:55 AM

You can try any version with a Live CD. OpenSUSE, Knoppix, and probably most others. Often you can boot these from a flash drive.

Alternately, if your CPU supports virtualization, you're host OS may have to tools to build Virtual Machines. If not, QEMU might be good enough for experiments.

linuxlover.chaitanya · 12-08-2009, 01:27 AM

There are a lot distributions that ship as Live cd or dvd media. Ubuntu is one of the most common distribution used by newbies trying out Linux for the first time. But Live distributions are not limited to it and you can try Linux Mint, Dream Linux, Fedora, CentOS5, Open Suse, Debian, and over hundreds of others.
Just go to distrowatch and any of top 5 should be good for you. And most of the distributions mentioned over are EASY.
Mint Linux has something called Lin4win, similar to Wubi where you can install Mint inside windows. But this installation hampers performance and you should remember this not rate the performance of the distribution until you actually install it on its own partition. Even Live distributions are slower and lower in performance as they run directly off the optical media.

JZL240I-U · 12-08-2009, 01:49 AM

Well, if you have enough free space on your drive (5 - 10 GB per distribution) you might as well install as many as you want. Usually the boot loader (GRUB) of the last install detects all previously installed OSs and automatically includes them in the boot menu. Backup of valuable data and then have a go.

brianL · 12-08-2009, 05:40 AM

If you want something like Wubi but for other distros, to install Linux within a Windows partition, the nearest thing is coLinux. But it's not as easy as Wubi.

http://colinux.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

Try dual-booting.

catkin · 12-08-2009, 05:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jerre Cope

Alternately, if your CPU supports virtualization, you're host OS may have to tools to build Virtual Machines.

AFAIK VirtualBox does not require virtualisation support from the CPU; more than that, until version 3.0 they recommended against using it.

brianL · 12-08-2009, 06:15 AM

(P.S. to my previous post)
Yeah, VirtualBox.

~sHyLoCk~ · 12-08-2009, 06:55 AM

I triple boot on this PC, slack, centos and XP.

I let slack lilo take over the MBR and then pass control to whichever OS I want to boot into. I install CentOS grub on /dev/hda2 which the CentOS partition. So, make sure you install the grub of the new linux system on it's /boot or / partition and modify the main grub accordingly to chainload it.

brianL · 12-08-2009, 07:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by iHaresh

Hello friends,

As you can see, I'm new to this forum.

Firstly, I want to say 'hi' to everyone

Secondly, I've just started using Ubuntu. I still have Windows XP too. I want to know whether it's possible that I can try some other distro of Linux (Fedora, RedHat or any other) without much fuss i.e. easy installation and all (the way I've tried Ubuntu with Wubi )

Please excuse me if I've posted in wrong thread

Thanks in advance for the reply

He really wants something easy like Wubi, but there's nothing else. So it's a choice between VirtualBox and dual-booting.

MTK358 · 12-08-2009, 07:45 AM

Another option is to have a separate HDD for each distro. Just unplug the current one, put in a new one, and install on there. If you want the old distro, just unplug the new HDD and plug in the old one.

puppyite · 12-09-2009, 04:31 PM

Easy is spelled Puppy Linux. The best place to learn about it is the Puppy Linux FAQ. Easy install is spelled automated save file install. No install is easier or safer!

iHaresh · 07-28-2012, 11:54 AM

Thank you all for the reply. I'll try both of them :-)

TroN-0074 · 07-28-2012, 12:31 PM

I dont think there is anything easier than Ubuntu.So my advice will be try to learn Ubuntu really well and once you think there is not much of a challenge for you then move in to a different distro. Perhaps go with straight Debian or if you want to go with something really different go with an RPM base distro like Fedora or OpenSuse.

Good luck to you yo!

suicidaleggroll · 07-28-2012, 03:55 PM

If you have enough RAM, VirtualBox would be my first choice.

RockDoctor · 07-28-2012, 04:25 PM

If you're new to Linux, rather than distro-hopping, I recommend installing some of the other available desktop environments (including, but not limited to KDE, GNOME-3, XFCE, LXDE, Cinnamon, and Mate [the latter two if available]) available in Ubuntu to see how you like them. Once you've found your preferred DE, then, if you're so-inclined, you can do the distro shuffle to see which distro you prefer.

Just my $0.02.