Newbie searching for the right distro

[nbob]

Hello.

I have a Gateway PC with a 2GHz processor, 1.25GB of RAM, and a 30 GB Harddrive. My video driver is an onboard Intel 82845G/GL (Brookdale). I am running a dual boot with Windows XP and Ubuntu/Debian.

I would like to try a dual boot with XP and Open Suse.

What are the strengths, weaknesses of this Distro vs. Ubuntu and Debian? I have had problems with both Ubuntu and Debian which I think are caused by my Intel Video driver. Debian gets flaky when I have several things open at the same time and eventually freezes and forces me to kill a process. With Ubuntu, I got random freezes without warning and which couldn't be recovered from without pulling the plug on the computer.

In short, I'm looking for a stable, safe, fast Distro.

take care.

[nujinini]

Hi gribbsy,

Have you given Mint 7 a try? openSUSE is also a very stable distro but I personally find Mint 7 to give me the least of my post installation issues.

Very light to operate and also a stable one I should say. By the way, Mint is based on Ubuntu (if i'm not mistaken)

You might want to check the Linux Mint Wiki if you have time.

Main Page - Linux Mint

Hope you find the distro that would serve your purpose, best wishes!

Edit: By the way, you might also want to try Puppy Linux

Puppy Linux

[D-cat]

OpenSuSE's strength is the YaST interface. Unlike Ubuntu, SuSE puts all the system setup tools in one control panel. Certain tools like Sax2 are far more thorough for setting up video drivers and such. YaST gives the most control over admin functions I've seen from any distro without manually editing config files. Yast works equally well in text mode as it does in a gui.

On occasion, YaST does fail and you still have to go manual or alternate, but I find this to be a rare event. Some people find it too bloated, I feel that it is not unnecessary bloat though (no dancing clowns, just a lot of feature access controls).

One of the Yast features is a double edge sword - the community repository is divided into this huge organizational bush. The plus is you can find just about any possible open source software made already compiled somewhere in the repository, and the one-click install will add any repository link for you easily. The negative is you can easily have over 10 or 20 repository links listed in Yast in order to acquire and update all the software you want. This can have a very obvious impact on load speed when you enter the software manager.

You might also find a 30 GB HDD is small for dual booting SuSE and XP. Though I have the excuse that I run alot of software, some with large or numerous data files, I have a 20 GB root partition... 15 is used (and the other 5 makes a good buffer for (/var)/tmp).

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1              20G   14G  5.4G  72% /
/dev/sda3             163G  115G   49G  71% /home

AFA Intel Video, the bugs are in the driver, which source wise is the same one you'd find in Ubuntu or any other modern distro. Like Karmic, OpenSuSE 11.2 should have fixed a bunch of the graphics issues, but if you're graphics circuit is like mine (defective, I have 4 known bad caps), random lockups just might be part of you computing experience with no regard to OS.

OpenSuSE is my distro of choice, but that's me. The best I can suggest for you is to just try it and see it it's something you want to stick with or move on. You're also welcome to come back to it later if you like.

[codexamurai]

Back when Red Hat was free or if you have the cash it was great distro lots of documentation and community around it. Fedora was also easy to install and again large community available to help.

Suse Linux Enterprise is a bit of a moody blond at times but boy once you get her working sit back and relax. I work with Drupal a lot and have gotten good support from Drupal and the Linux Forums here. The only problem with Suse Linux Enterprise is its on a 30 or 15 day free updates trial. After that the updates stop loading and you sit on old copy for me its no big deal cause my box sits behind a firewall not even anywhere near the outside network.

Obviously, for a public website this can pose a huge problem. Thats my two peso worth.

[Chris H]

Zenwalk!

Works a treat on my creaky old laptop. No unexplained freezes, system hangs, just works.