stevenjl619

Greetings! I'm trying to set up a dual boot for my tx2. I have to keep Vista (for school programs, they only support Windows), and would like to have a secondary OS the boot into. I had Ubuntu installed on here, but it took just as long as Vista to load.

Here's what I'm looking for:

- FREE (I saw a new program "Presto," but I just can't afford or allow myself to pay for linux...)
- Hardware support (Wifi, Sound, Webcam and Touchscreen[if possible])
- Fast Boot (>10 Seconds)
- Ease of install (Don't tell me the old "ANY Distro can be made to boot fast" - I was "out of the box speed")
- Streamline GUI
- Programs (Really, all I need is a browser [firefox] and an instant messenger [pidgin])
- Plugins (I don't want to have to search for all audio/video codecs and plugins)

I know that I'm asking for everything, but I felt: "If I can't find it on Linux Forums, then it doesn't exist..."

Thanks!

Dougal

Hi man, I guess you haven't had any replies to the Thread looking at the page. Shame as I am looking for similar for work. Something that will dual boot with Vista on either a Netbook or perhaps an Acer laptop (budget £300 max). I have to be able to interface with and download data from data acquisition cards into a National Instruments program. I think I will try the National Instruments site as they support Linux solutions to a degree. Perhaps you might find suitable hardware suggestions there. A lot of their equipment has to have a computer that is capable of fast data collection and I would imagine if a laptop can do what their higher spec interface cards demand then video shouldn't be too much of a problem. There are a lot of touchscreen type applications used in process control too and again National Instruments engineers will be familiar with what will and what won't work. Good hunting.

MikeTbob

Have a look at Linux Mint, it ain't the fastest, it ain't the slowest, but I like it the mostest among the major distros.
Main Page - Linux Mint
And yes, if you know what you are doing, you can make any version of Linux boot faster.

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coopstah13

I don't think such a distro exists. You will have to take a distro and fully customize it, there will be no distro that comes out of the box with all those things you need and is fast.

L4Linux

Give antiX a try.
From USB, it booted in 30" in a Core Duo(single core).
Once installed it will probably take less than 20".

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zomigawd

Sorry about the tardy reply, been looking for a quick boot OS myself for a netbook, and I can understand your need for windoze, I need it too.

IF, and that's a big IF, you can tolerate a somewhat non-standard linux, I would say, give Presto a try.

It really does boot very fast. It is very usable, to me, on a 1024x600 screen. It comes with most things you need, browser, OO for simple computing chores, including what I consider luxury - skype with video. And did I say it boots very fast? Wow, my wifi came up very quickly. Shuts down also very fast. You also get 5 machine licenses for $20. (My own verdict is it's an ok-ish buy But you might say otherwise, everyone's point of view, circumstances and budget is going to be different).

There are only a few significant problems with it I should mention:

1. No login - and superuser privileges are only one 'sudo' away. Fine if you know what you're doing I suppose-ish... but caveat emptor.

2. Heh, you have FULL access to your windows drives. And that includes WRITE. And... they are mounted by default. See (1) above. Be careful.

3. It boots from the windows boot-up (your linux partition exists as a file on your windows NTFS drive). May be an acceptable thing, as you don't have to repart your HD. Make sure you defrag it first. But, if your windows breaks, your linux breaks too.

4. THIS IS THE MOST SIGNIFICANT ISSUE FOR ME:
It's a Xandros linux. They basically have a Debian 5.0 heart inside this thing but it's cut down and some closed sourced components are in it, some of it in house. If you've used Debian or Ubuntu before you know how easy it is to apt-get something.

Not so for this presto OS. I managed to get away by installing some debian 5 stuff by pointing my sources file to my local Debian repository (I'm a Debian guy at heart) and I can confirm that build-essential (ie the core gcc chain) can install and run on this thing.

But other packages which may overwrite some of the proprietary installed libraries (apt-get may warn you) may break this Xandros. Sort of like the old 701 Eee PC Xandros problem, as a direct analogy if you will, if you are familiar with that story.

Of course, backing up really makes this risk bearable, if you can afford the inconvenience, should you want to experiment.

So you got to be very careful...

5. Other limitations: No scsi, no raid, dunno if you can vmware it... not interested in these. It's for a netbook in my case.

You can try it out though, download the nigh 500mb download, it'll be worth your while trying it at least I believe. But if you are really unfamiliar with linux and actually want to learn its innards, this may be a frustrating way to start.

For me, however, tt was worth my time. Gave me an idea or two on trimming stuff down even more.

I also actually USE the damn thing on my netbook to do my browsing, word proc etc... cos it's so quick to boot and run etc.

BUT WAIT...

I have heard that Ubuntu has a similar but free (but I understand more sedately booting) put-your-linux-partion-in-an-NTFS-file system where you can try out.. wubi something. I'm not a real ubuntu person but check this out. You're likely to get a FULL linux system this way and it's gonna be free and you won't likely have to repart your HD for it. Might be worth trying, might not. Dunno, can't say. Won't try it myself. CBF tbh, got my own slowbooting linuxes already

Or as others have suggested one of the many liveCDs you can get out there. Some of them support booting up from CD rom and saving your files on USB flash, so you don't ever actually touch your HD. Or booting up from your USB flash and saving back there. I personally use MEPIS as a recovery live CD. seemed decent enough.

Other suggestions: At present I'm kind of messing around with Gentoo to see how small and fast I can get it to boot. Paring it down. Recompilations are painful lol.

My 2 cents, and inaugural post on this forum actually

Dougal

We All I tried Linux Mint and it didn't install properly - seemed to be a graphics conflict. I'm afraid if the system don't work out of the box it ain't no good to me...
PRESTO sounds like it depends upon Windows so that's out.
AntiX - haven't tried this yet, maybe soon though.
For the meantime I keep coming back to CrunchBang Linux. It is neat, installs quickly and works without fault.
I have it with VirtualBox booting my trial systems and using Guest Additions Add-on from Sun makes passing from one system to the other a doddle. It worked fine before this as well.
I'm going to download AntiX, CrunchEee, Moblin and whatever else to see how they compare for speed and usability.