observation w/ three 'live' distros...

[HiJolly]

Um, this doesn't HAVE to be a Q, does it? I'm just kinda fishing for comments, I guess. I'm a newbie to Linux but not computers. My first was an IBM clone 8088 and I've built my own (hardware only) since then (1986). But I've never ventured into the Unix/Linux world, 'til now.

Anyway, I burned 3 'live' distros,

A) Mandriva-One 2007 KDE1
B) Ubuntu 6.10 GNOME desktop and
C) Musix GNU 0.79b19 (spanish, anyone?)

and then inserted them into my Compaq EVO N620c laptop. (1.4ghz Centrino, 30GB HDD, 512M RAM).

A) caught an error on the first boot, but otherwise looked OK. Second boot it came up clean. WOULD NOT SHUT DOWN THE POWER ON MY LAPTOP. Had to pull the battery to get my laptop to power off. Wierd.

B) This was the only one to actually say something nice to me after I burned it on my XP machine; the others did nothing (actually, Mandriva opened a command-line box for about .75 second, then it went away...) The first boot went swimmingly, and was quite interesting. Felt 'friendly'. Shutdown went smoothly.

C) No errors, I guess, but it was interesting to figure out the initial bootup. 'real time'? huh? Command line input required? Still, I realize it's not mainstream. Nice audio track demo on first boot... Also WOULD NOT SHUT DOWN THE POWER ON MY LAPTOP. Pulled the battery again...

Interesting first day. Next I'll be trying openSUSE 10.2 live. Any thoughts?

HiJolly

[Juan Pablo]

Hi,

Problem shutting down are usually due to a buggy BIOS, some distros have implemented some work arounds in the kernel but not all.

You should also stick with popular distros like Fedora, Ubuntu, openSuSE or even PCLinuxOS (basically DistroWatch top ten) which are tested more carefully and with more different hardware but these ones can also fail like Mandriva fot you

[HiJolly]

Hi,

Problem shutting down are usually due to a buggy BIOS, some distros have implemented some work arounds in the kernel but not all.

<snip>

Ah, so that's it. Interesting. Thanks!


HiJolly

[MikeTbob]

I recommend that you give SimplyMepis a try, and/or Knoppix.

[HiJolly]

Thanks, MikeTbob! Don't mess w/ TX! - (former citizen of Allen, TX)

I have now tried:

openSUSE: Very nice, though it took a bit to load. I like the look & feel, but what I've read about (1) YaST and (2) MS agreements has me reluctant to pursue, though I really like the feel.

simplyMEPIS: Very nice, fast, good RAM left when loaded, works with my hardware very well, I like! Maybe I'll go with MEPIS, except, what's this about $$? $30 cost? ??

Still lookin' around, readin' and thinkin'.


HiJolly

[techieMoe]

simplyMEPIS: Very nice, fast, good RAM left when loaded, works with my hardware very well, I like! Maybe I'll go with MEPIS, except, what's this about $$? $30 cost? ??

MEPIS (along with 99% of all other Linux distributions) is completely free to download and use. They do offer the option for you to donate some money to them and use a faster mirror for your download. It's not compulsory.

[flebber]

I find Suse too "heavy" for me. I would as Juan Pablo suggested urge you to give PClinuxOS a try it is fast, easy to configure and has excellent hardware detection.

If you are however looking for a live distro only Slax would be an excellent choice or maybe one of its spin offs such as wolvix could be worth a try.