Going Back to Linux

[Distorted Humor]

Hi all!

I am a experinced computer user who has decided that he needs to go back to slowly converting over to Linux. I had some horrible computer problems about a year ago (hardware) and bought a computer that came with Vista (XP was not bad for what it is, but vista is dreadful) but I did not want to mess around with my comptuer software as I had finally had most of it working, but I relized that I have 100+ GB of harddrive space, and it might be time for me to go back to using Linux on a regular basis. There are a few programs (mostly games really, as I am a flight sim hobbiest) that are must windows, but even in windows I am using open office, GIMP, and other such software.


Now, I have been out of the Linux market for some time, and was just wondering what was out there for a Desktop market. I have used SUSE and KDE in the past, but I am just wondering what distributions are out there and what can be recommended, I know that a lot of it is personal experince, but for example, Ubuntu, Gentoo, SUSE, Slackware, Debian, I know are still maintained, and I know some of the details of them, exp. the ones that have been around for a while, but I was wondering what is recommended and such...

[oz]

The majority of active distributions are listed at DistroWatch.com and lots of details about them can be found by clicking on the distro name.

Hope you have fun with your return to Linux.

[Distorted Humor]

And I almost forgot, For Ubuntu and OpenSUSE, I have a AMD64 processor, am I better off getting the 64 or the 32 versons? And secondly, what is the DVD support these days with these two programs?

[MikeTbob]

Linux has come a long way in the past year. All Distros that you mention are worth re-trying. Suse is a good one, I just tried it the other day for the first time and it detected everything including the wireless and Video cards.

[oz]

I've been happily running 64bit for the last 6 months and without any problems, so have never looked back. Otherwise, it's a personal choice that each user has to make for him/herself. If your processor can handle it, I'd say go for it because you can always revert to 32bit should you need to do so for any reason.

[techieMoe]

And I almost forgot, For Ubuntu and OpenSUSE, I have a AMD64 processor, am I better off getting the 64 or the 32 versons? And secondly, what is the DVD support these days with these two programs?

You won't notice any appreciable difference in performance or stability either way, but there's no real reason not to use the 64-bit version if you have a processor that supports it.

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/lin...bit-linux.html

In the past I would have recommended 32-bit hands down. Now, it's more of a personal preference than anything.

[MikeTbob]

I've been happily running 64bit for the last 6 months and without any problems, so have never looked back. Otherwise, it's a personal choice that each user has to make for him/herself. If your processor can handle it, I'd say go for it because you can always revert to 32bit should you need to do so for any reason.

You won't notice any appreciable difference in performance or stability either way, but there's no real reason not to use the 64-bit version if you have a processor that supports it.

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/lin...bit-linux.html

In the past I would have recommended 32-bit hands down. Now, it's more of a personal preference than anything.

Nice to know guys, thanks. My new MOBO is 64bit but I had been putting off making it 64Bit for obvious reasons but now I just may do it.

[Distorted Humor]

You won't notice any appreciable difference in performance or stability either way, but there's no real reason not to use the 64-bit version if you have a processor that supports it.

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/lin...bit-linux.html

In the past I would have recommended 32-bit hands down. Now, it's more of a personal preference than anything.

Ok, thanks, last time I was installing Linux it was recommended to go 32 bit as the 64 bit was still not as devleoped. I see that as Time goes on, as always with Linux, it improves.

While Gentoo is a cool idea, I am leaning towards OpenSuse or Ubuntu (as most likely, a lot of people do)

So basicly Ubuntu is based off Debian and uses GNOME, while OpenSuse uses KDE

How is DVD playback support for these two?

I assume there is "LiveCD" for both of these?

[MikeTbob]

OpenSuse was/is based on Redhat/Fedora and it uses Gnome or KDE, your choice. DVD playback is about the same on almost all distros but you'll need to install a few things like libdvd, libdvdcss, dvd+rw-tools.
I'm not sure if Suse has a LiveCD, but you'd think they do.

[techieMoe]

So basicly Ubuntu is based off Debian and uses GNOME, while OpenSuse uses KDE

Pretty much, but openSuSE was originally based on Redhat rather than Debian. It's RPM-based.

How is DVD playback support for these two?

I honestly couldn't tell you. I tend to not watch DVDs on my computer. However I'm pretty sure DVD decryption packages are available for all major Linux distributions.

I assume there is "LiveCD" for both of these?

The regular Ubuntu CD is both the Live CD and the install CD. You can use it as either. The same is true for the openSuSE DVD I'm pretty sure, but don't quote me on that.