Poll: How many distros have you checked out personaly?

[Mystic_Slayer]

Mystic_Slayer, have you checked out "Peanut Linux"?



DrCR

No I didn't try it, why?

Is it that good?

Is designed as a small distro, hense its name and is geared towards noobs.


http://www.linuxiso.org/distro.php?distro=23
"Description: Peanut Linux is designed to be a small distribution, a 160 MB download and a 400 MB install size. Its small download size and choice of packages are geared toward making it easy for someone new to Linux to give it a try."




DrCR



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I'm still using Debian 3.0 r2 and Trustix 2.1. I like these releases. And I won't change for another.

[fingal]

Hi DrCR.

I didn't like College Linux... It was very very basic and everything is just a zipped up binary so installation took ages. Peanut is interesting: it looks very good, but logs you in as root by default which I wasn't happy with. I was still a newbie when I tried it out, so I had some real installation problems. I haven't tried it since, but I might look at it again.

Having said that, Peanut has some cool looking desktops (I want to know how they manage to get 4 individual desktop wallpapers on one distro... I'd love to reproduce that effect on Knoppix 3.3... You would have to check it out to know what I mean) + Realplayer... some fun games and some handy network tools (which you run as Root!!)

I'm more interested in Slackware and Fedora Core at the moment, though Knoppix is still good.

[jbrouhard]

Lets see.. For me..

1) RedHat (6.2 thrugh Fedora Core 1)
2) Caldera Linux (Yes.. Caldera. LONG TIME AGO!)
3) SuSE
4) Mandrake (didn't like this at all)
5) Gentoo Linux (MY favorite for desktop stuff)
6) White Box Enterprise Linux (this one I use for my server stuff at home)

for UNIX:
Just FreeBSD (3.5 and 4.5-4.9)

[DrCR]

Hi DrCR.

I didn't like College Linux... It was very very basic and everything is just a zipped up binary so installation took ages. Peanut is interesting: it looks very good, but logs you in as root by default which I wasn't happy with. I was still a newbie when I tried it out, so I had some real installation problems. I haven't tried it since, but I might look at it again.

Having said that, Peanut has some cool looking desktops (I want to know how they manage to get 4 individual desktop wallpapers on one distro... I'd love to reproduce that effect on Knoppix 3.3... You would have to check it out to know what I mean) + Realplayer... some fun games and some handy network tools (which you run as Root!!)

I'm more interested in Slackware and Fedora Core at the moment, though Knoppix is still good.

Yeah, I was told by many College Linux was not worth the time. I though about checking out Fedora (esp. now that Core2 is out), but the only dude who recommended RH to me was a due who though Gentoo was blah (lol). A friend of mine is burning a copy of SuSE9 onto a DVD for me. This weekend I'm going to try to get Mandrake 9.1 on my 900MHz machine. (I've heard Mandrake is about as noob friendly as they come).


I was able to scrounge up a 4GB HD from all the computer stuff I have lying around my house. I'm going to set it up as a secondary HD to my primary WinME 20GB HD. Will the "Choose Which OS to Boot With" menu pop up or will I have to change the jumper from slave to master and via versa everytime I want to change the bootable OS since the Linux OS/partition in not on the same HD as the Windows OS/partition?


Also, what file system do you use for a swap file partition? FAT or FAT16?

I only want to do about 300MB for my purposes. What's the max for FAT? 1GB? And FAT16 is 16GB right?



Thanks



DrCR



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Why did I want this long to get involved in the Linux community? Well, :blushes:, I only just recently got broadband.

[fingal]

Well, I've never tried to dual boot Windows with Linux. No reason to really. I understand that if you are doing this, though, Windows should go on your main hard drive... Your master! It doesn't like coming second. You might want to learn how to use Grub as a boot manager, as this can handle Linux and Window$ and has a nice menu. You could use Lilo, but I think Grub is probably better in the long run.

As for partitions, if you mean the Linux partition I would use the ext3 file system and learn how to use cfdisk to set up partitions (this can create FAT32 stuff as well). It all depends on which tools you want to use.

[Pain]

I tried Mandrake 10.0 , Fedora core 1, Knoppix, and PC Linux OS. They are alll pretty close really, with the exception of Fedora which is too rough to get working as a newbie. the mp3 and other multimedia support is disabled and the update basically broken. I finally did get Fedora update working, but it took a week to figure it out and 14 hours to complete the update and that is unacceptable imo.

Pretty hard to go wrong with Mandrake since it works without alot of fuss, can do everything all the other distro can do, plus the community is huge which means lots of support which is very important to a newb like me. I really like way the install walks even the newest of newbs thru everything. If you got broadband the update is blazing fast too.

PC Linus OS is very nice too and would be my second choice only cause it does not have the huge community support and some minor bugs being a beta. It does have a easy install to the hard drive and with the NVIDIA video drivers included I certainly will keep my eye on any new releases of this distro.

Knoppix is too hard to get installed on the hard drive for a newb to concider it anything more than a way to see what a live CD of Linux looks like right now. It also did not support one of my computers onboard NIC. I bet they will add easy install to the hard drive soon.

Fedora, well it has too many update problems at this time and even when you finally figure it out it is also very slow to update. Add the fact I can't play mp3's I rate this one last. There is supposed to be a way around the multimedia bocks outs but damned if I can figure out how to get around it.

[big_k105]

jst to let you know to get mp3's working in redhat or fedora all you have to do is download a simple patch for it. redhat has it disabled for legal reasons they dont want to get sued over having mp3 capable players built it. i think its pretty stupid but thats the facts

[fingal]

I tried Mandrake 9.1 to start with and thought it was really buggy. I can't comment about later versions of Mandrake because I haven't used those. It has a great installer, but my version kept crashing and I couldn't sort out the issues I had. Knoppix can be hard for newbies, but once it's installed you have a Debian system which rarely crashes (I managed to crash mine a few times ). I think I prefer Knoppix 3.2 to 3.3, but that's just me!

I won't run you through a Knoppix installation 'cos that's a long post and I might get something wrong, but you basically boot the live cd, hit Ctrl+Alt+F1 then type knx-hdinstall and follow the instructions. You would need to know about partitioning tools like cfdisk, and it wouldn't hurt to learn about mkefs either. It's not hard to install, but a pain to configure afterwards

[bonedaddy]

One's I've tried and my 2 cents;

RadHat9 - great as a server (mail, apache, ftp,etc)
Fedora - tried it as a desktop OS and was disappointed-RPM Hell!
Xandros - for a company workstation/server to replace windows ~ AWESOME! It's debian, it has to be good.
jAMD - was fast and I really enjoyed it, Ares now but still RPM hell for desktop OS
Suse - I didn't like it but that's just my opinion, probably just as good as RH
Lindows - believe it or not, I thought is was pretty good. (no flames please)
Knoppix - these guys/gals did one heck of a job - nice for troubleshooting

Gentoo - my FAVORITE! It has to be the best desktop OS, NO rpm hell, but Portage sweetness.

I see no reason to try any more when I have Gentoo.

bd

[DrCR]

What does "bonedaddy" mean when he says 'RPM'. Not Rate/min. right?


"cfdisk". Ah, thanks! I was wondering what the Linux equivalent for FDISK was.


"mkefs". I have no clue, but thanks for the advice. I'll have to look into it.


"Grub" and "Lilo". Will have to look into as well.


"ext3 FS" Yeah, a programmer friend of mine said to go for this or, if ext3 was not an option, go for... I forget.



"fingal", Mandrake 9.1 is buggy?! Bummer, I just burned the isos. Should I bother to get 9.2? Isn't 10 to immature?




Thanks to all!



DrCR



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Side note: Anyone else played the Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomarrow single player demo? It's awsome!