Linux! Which One?


sbreckling posted on Dec 1 2005 at 05:34 PM said:
screw every build except for GENTOO!

www.gentoo.org

it's my personal favorite... and thus far, from my use, has proved to be the most stable...

get the limited install file (40 megs) and then download the OS from the server as you install it. The server scans your system to only install the software for the exact hardware in your system.

You're not stuck with a ridiculous amount of driver libraries.
Thats pretty sweet.
 
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if you've never used linux before why not try one of the distros that runs from cd, that way you'll be able toget a taster and not have to actually install the damn thing. Not that its particularly hard mind.
 
my advice: use MEPIS. its a very well-maintained, fresh distribution; and there are many such things, but the point is, choose one and move with it, or move to other distributions as you start to understand their pro's and con's.

if you're new to linux, the most interesting ones are the 'edgy' dists .. MEPIS, gobo, ARCH, ROCK, heck .. you could roll your own too, and be in good shape to be able to roll fresh .img's for the gp2x, if you wanted to/felt like it ... but always the point is with linux, don't just focus on one thing, be prepared to move .. things do change, and well ..
 
torpor posted on Dec 1 2005 at 09:44 PM said:
my advice: use MEPIS. its a very well-maintained, fresh distribution; and there are many such things, but the point is, choose one and move with it, or move to other distributions as you start to understand their pro's and con's.

if you're new to linux, the most interesting ones are the 'edgy' dists .. MEPIS, gobo, ARCH, ROCK, heck .. you could roll your own too, and be in good shape to be able to roll fresh .img's for the gp2x, if you wanted to/felt like it ... but always the point is with linux, don't just focus on one thing, be prepared to move .. things do change, and well ..
I think the opposite. If you are new, go with a newbie friendly distro, that has great user support, has a good GUI (Has either KDE or Gnome), and is rather simple. Ubuntu, Fedora, and SuSe would be good choices for that.
 
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Hmm... Whilst on the topic of Linux distros, can anyone recommend me one?

I got ubuntu, after quite a lot of research and looking at different things, and it's a pretty nice distro as far as I'm concerned (installed first time nice and easy, most hardware was automatically set up. I had to modify a couple of configuration files to get my mouse working and stuff, but aside from that no worries). problem is that it uses GNOME, which is, as far as I can tell, not particularly light in terms of the resources it needs. I'm running it on an old computer that chugged along back when it ran Win95, and, well, it's painful... slow to respond to all input, and just plain sluggish.

So, what I'm looking for is a lightweight desktop installation. I already have Feather Linux, booting from a USB pen, and that might be a good option (I'd have to burn the newest CD image to CD-R instead though- no USB pen- and run the HD install script). It uses Fluxbox by default... but I don't get it- is fluxbox a WM(window manager) or a Desktop environment or is it both? Also, is the environment of Feather Linux as a whole likely to be very much lighter and faster than that of Ubuntu (GNOME environment)?

The specs of my computer are like this:

Cyrix M-II 300 processor (a 300MHz processor)
128MB RAM
CD-ROM drive and floppy drive, both working

I think that's all the really relevant specs... I have no idea what the motherboard is, which is a shame. I've run several diagnostics on it, come back with a massive string identifying it as some obscure old AMI board, can't find any really specific info on it...

Anyway, I did my research beforehand (as much as I could stomach anyway) into hardware, and it seems my machine is pretty (if not totally) Linux friendly, except perhaps the modem, but I won't be using that anyway. Ubuntu works fine, like I say.

So, any recommendations for this? I would like a desktop/WM environment of some sort, because whilst I do appreciate the command line as a useful and powerful tool, I just don't want to always use it, and since I would like to use it mostly for word processing and other menial tasks (though mainly as something to play with, to learn more about Linux and computers in general) and whilst I'm aware there are plenty of good text editors available for console mode (like nano and less), I do prefer to use stuff like OOo (yeah, OK, that's also a bit too heavy for my box to run smoothly, but there are lighter ones around I'm sure) and other graphical programs.

Any help with this would be appreciated :)
 
sbreckling posted on Dec 1 2005 at 03:34 PM said:
screw every build except for GENTOO!

www.gentoo.org

it's my personal favorite... and thus far, from my use, has proved to be the most stable...

get the limited install file (40 megs) and then download the OS from the server as you install it. The server scans your system to only install the software for the exact hardware in your system.

You're not stuck with a ridiculous amount of driver libraries.

that sounds nice... but i'm sure many distros have that feature... i'm doing a lot of reasearch into mandriva, and it looks really nice. on this page they mention how the mandriva control center has something not many other distros have apparently, and that is the configuration options for many programs and utilities in one place... that's something really subtle, but incredibly useful, and it didn't occur to me that this idea wasn't really explored at all in linux. the same review gave mandriva's performance a 'bad' though... so i'm going to start there and possibly move on after i've grown out of it (like a sweater).
 
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Ferentix, I would suggest Slackware for a computer of that caliber. It is for slightly-more-advanced users, but it certainly isn't a pain to use. It's very fast on even old computers, and more BSD-like than other linux distributions.

Another one I recommend is Arch, if your processor type meets the standard (I can't recall off hand).
 
Thanks :) I'll give Slackware a try.

I have a question about the whole graphical software thing... what is the relationship between X servers, Desktop environments, and the software that can be run?

What I understand at the moment in a simple hierachy:


Xserver-provides the basic ability to draw graphics instead of console mode text
|
V
Engine like GTK providing components of a GUI
|
V
Desktop environment and WM
|
V
Individual software


My problem here is that surely this cannot be right? Wouldn't this mean that you could run certain software only under specific environments? The thing that has brought me to this current view is the number of apps which say that they are "for" GNOME or are "KDE software". Does this just mean they will "fit", in terms of looks, only with that environment, or will they only work under that environment?
 
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