Well that was fun...

[elija]

My desk-top's hard disk died yesterday. Probably as the result of the cheap components that are in the thing (it's a HP) but to be fair, it is well out of warranty!

I considered an SSD but they are just to expensive for what they are so ended up with a 1TB Seagate. Rolled a D100 to choose my distro from Distrowatch and landed on Mageia. I've never tried it and have no real idea how to pronounce it

It's not bad (in the LXDE edition).

Now all I have to do is restore my data from my backup disk and get the backup running again!

[Roxoff]

What a cool idea - random distro selection. Perhaps we should recommend this method to new users asking which to choose? Most wouldn't know what a D100 is, I suspect.

[elija]

I'm kind of glad that it didn't land on Gentoo Still. I would have to have gone for it...

[hazel]

What a cool idea - random distro selection. Perhaps we should recommend this method to new users asking which to choose? Most wouldn't know what a D100 is, I suspect.

I don't! Care to elucidate?

[elija]

I don't! Care to elucidate?

It's a 100 sided dice - or more commonly 2x10 sided dice. In RPGs such as Advanced Dungeons and Dragons there are many different dice used to determine the outcome of actions by the characters or chance.

[jayd512]

It's a 100 sided dice - or more commonly 2x10 sided dice. In RPGs such as Advanced Dungeons and Dragons there are many different dice used to determine the outcome of actions by the characters or chance.

Better yet... two d10. DistroWatch list.
There's 100 ready for ya!!


*EDIT*
Sorry... I just repeated your idea, elija.
Guess I liked it enough to love it!


...
Plus, I'm half asleep!

[gruven]

Should have stepped up to the ssd. Night and day difference. I have a 128gb ssd for my os files and a 750gb hybrid as my /home

[arespi]

. I've never tried it and have no real idea how to pronounce it

It's not bad (in the LXDE edition).

I pronounce it Mah-Hey-ya, with a soft "g". Anyway .. I have using it for a couple of months and I like it, using the standar gnome with the aid of Cairo-Dock is very usable to me.

Good luck

[Trek186]

Give HP/Compaq some credit. If you take care of it, their laptops can last a hell of a long time. I have an old Compaq which at least still boots after nearly 10 years (and after 3 years of no use), though the DVD drive is fried... And I had a three year old post-HP merger Compaq laptop which I was able to sell for a decent amount on eBay... And then there was my HP desktop from college. That thing lasted a good six years (with minor upgrades) with heavy use. I suspect that the real problem was the HD and DVD drives failing more than anything else. If I slapped some new RAM (I took out and disposed of the OEM RAM for some reason...) and a new HD into it, I am reasonably sure it would still run!

Here's an equally geeky way of choosing a Linux distro: Assign each distro in a set of N distros a unique number ranging from 1 to N in a spreadsheet. Then have the spreadsheet run a Monte Carlo simulation to pick a number between 1 and N at random. And there you go!

[oz]

I considered an SSD but they are just to expensive for what they are so ended up with a 1TB Seagate.

Nothing wrong with that option! I have three very fast, quiet, and heat free SSDs that I run daily, but I actually still enjoy using regular hard drives a bit more than SSDs. In fact, I'm typing this from one of my HDD boxes. Things may change in the future where I'll favor SSDs, but we aren't there yet, especially when considering price per GB of storage.