Shiniest Distro

[Smiggy]

I just bought a brand new laptop, fairly high-end. I want to find a distro that has the coolest stuff. Shiny things, fancy effects, stuff that will make my friends s**t bricks when they see it, cool tools, etc. I want high tech. Performance, ease of use, and practicality be damned! Does anybody have any suggestions?

PS: I have used Linux before, so I know a bit about using it.

[rokytnji]

Lapis Linux 1.0 - Video

[kopete]

I just bought a brand new laptop, fairly high-end. I want to find a distro that has the coolest stuff. Shiny things, fancy effects, stuff that will make my friends s**t bricks when they see it, cool tools, etc. I want high tech. Performance, ease of use, and practicality be damned! Does anybody have any suggestions?

PS: I have used Linux before, so I know a bit about using it.

I think you should list what laptop you have so people know which video graphics card you have in it.

Most distros can install software that can do the fancy stuff. I think Compiz is the main 3D program. I would suggest looking into Ubuntu, Fedora and Mandriva for 3D-friendly distros. I think you can get the fancy effects in most of them but those ones are probably some of the main ones for finding support on how to do it.

[Chris H]

Sabayon would be a good bet imo.

Bungs everything on straight out of the box.

[Smiggy]

I think you should list what laptop you have so people know which video graphics card you have in it.

I have a Dell Inspiron 1525.

I was looking at the Lapis video, and my jaw just hung there the whole video. I looked it up, and it doesn't seem to be in English. :S

I then saw the Sabayon site, and was also amazed. It has proprietary software, which is actually a plus for me. After talking to some people on their IRC, I thinnk I may just use that. Thanks everyone!

[kopete]

I have a Dell Inspiron 1525.

I was looking at the Lapis video, and my jaw just hung there the whole video. I looked it up, and it doesn't seem to be in English. :S

I then saw the Sabayon site, and was also amazed. It has proprietary software, which is actually a plus for me. After talking to some people on their IRC, I thinnk I may just use that. Thanks everyone!

Is that a pre-configured laptop? The Inspiron 1525 comes in several configurations. I think it could be a really good laptop for Linux depending on what wireless card you got in there. The Intel ones apparently work way better in Linux than the Dell ones. The newer Intel ones work out of the box, I believe.

I read that Sabayon is based on Gentoo. You know that Gentoo usually involves a lot of compiling and command line work?

I recommend Sidux, Fedora 9 or even Ubuntu (Gnome desktop) or Kubuntu (KDE desktop) for your applications. I would suspect doing a lot of fancy graphics would require a lot of compiling in Saybayon but perhaps, they are trying to have it done pre-configured? Anyway, just some ideas.

[Smiggy]

Is that a pre-configured laptop? The Inspiron 1525 comes in several configurations. I think it could be a really good laptop for Linux depending on what wireless card you got in there. The Intel ones apparently work way better in Linux than the Dell ones. The newer Intel ones work out of the box, I believe.

I assume you're talking about graphics cards, not wireless? If so, it has an Intel G3100X. (I don't remember the exact letter combinations, but the number is right.) It also has a 1.88 GHz dual-core processor, and 3 GB of RAM. Quick question: My dad says processor speed really doesn't matter, as opposed to RAM and the graphics card. Does that mean that all of those games that say "2.4 GHz processor required" will actually work on a laptop?

I read that Sabayon is based on Gentoo. You know that Gentoo usually involves a lot of compiling and command line work?

Yes, I know what I'm getting in to. :P I'm just a little scared of the package management.

I recommend Sidux, Fedora 9 or even Ubuntu (Gnome desktop) or Kubuntu (KDE desktop) for your applications. I would suspect doing a lot of fancy graphics would require a lot of compiling in Saybayon but perhaps, they are trying to have it done pre-configured? Anyway, just some ideas.

I'm not a big fan of the Ubuntu distros, and if all else fails, I'm sticking with Fedora anyway. But I'll have to check out Sidux. Also, Sabayon is supposedly all pre-configured. Thanks for everything!

[Chris H]

You shouldn't have any problems using whatever package manager Sabayon uses.

My only issue when I tried it was the long loading from the livecd as it really does try and run all the bells and whistles.

[jmadero]

is that video card an on board video card? I believe that it might be, and if so you'll experience a bit of lag with compiz on higher settings (ie more effects). I have Ubuntu with a Nvidia 256 in my laptop, it runs fairly well even with higher effects but I turn a lot of them off anyways just because they can become annoying.

Your dad is for the most part right about cpu speed. 3 gigs of RAM isn't going to do a whole lot of good as it's DDR ram and that is best used if both sticks are the same size (ie 2 1 gig RAM sticks or 2 2gig RAM sticks), 1 1gig stick and 1 2gig stick will make it so that the plus of DDR is not fully functional. Also, most Linux distro's don't require a whole lot of RAM, I have 2 gigs plus 1 gig of SWAP and rarely use more than 25% of my RAM and 10% of my SWAP. One of the reasons why people like Linux is that it's much much less hateful on resources.

Any major distro will have an easy way to get compiz up (it's the flashy stuff), I have heard a rumor that someone is making a new alternative to Compiz based on OpenGL 2.....but so far I haven't really read anything about that, only a rumor I believe.

[MikJP]

DreamLinux is probably the shiniest one I've tried. Did not stay long in my hard disk though...

What about any distro with KDE4.1 + all the eyecandy you can get. Kubuntu or openSUSE?

Greetings,

mikko