A Neowin Guide to Linux Distributions

[Mike Douglas]

>_< dewy's in trouble

[dewy]

dewy: It would have been nice had you contacted me before "publishing" my guide on your personal webspace. I am flattered that you found it to your tastes but I do not appreciate you claiming part-authorship of my work. I have noted in the below passage that you have removed Configures name and replaced it with your own email address.

This was a guide I put together for neowin members to aid them in getting started with Linux. You were not involved in its creation and I would very much appreciate it if my guide remains exclusive to neowin unless permission is otherwise given.

Thankyou.

it was just there as a way of sumbmission and i would PM it to u

[techquilla]

i have a suggestion.., many new linux users who come in the forum will ask "help..!! i'm a linux newbie.., which distro should i install?". The Distro guide is very well written, but they would also like to know which distro is used more widely among neowin members, so they might want to choose the mostly used one, and will be able to get more feedback that way.... so i suggest to add a poll to this thread if its possible....

[Iguana]

A lot of people here use Gentoo, I think that is the most popular distro. RedHat follows; Slackware and Mandrake are somewhere behind...

[kemical]

i pimp the gentoo bandwagon

[KeR]

wow this is awesome I just found out about Knoppix Linux and I am running it from my CD no installation what so ever.

[MrStaticVoid]

Knoppix is cool, but PCLinuxOS is better. PCLinuxOS is a Mandrake based distro that runs off of a CD. It is very good looking and easy to configure. PCLinuxOS has a Control Center which allows you to configure most settings. It has Mozilla Firebird, Java, Flash, and nVidia drivers all by default. It also doesn't have more than one program to do one task, so it is cleaner to navigate. I use it whenever I install Gentoo so that at least I can listen to music and surf the web while everything is compiling. By the way, it uses ALSA, unlike Knoppix. It is the most advanced, yet easy to use live-cd that I have ever used.

http://www.pclinuxonline.com/

[KeR]

Knoppix is cool, but PCLinuxOS is better. PCLinuxOS is a Mandrake based distro that runs off of a CD. It is very good looking and easy to configure. PCLinuxOS has a Control Center which allows you to configure most settings. It has Mozilla Firebird, Java, Flash, and nVidia drivers all by default. It also doesn't have more than one program to do one task, so it is cleaner to navigate. I use it whenever I install Gentoo so that at least I can listen to music and surf the web while everything is compiling. By the way, it uses ALSA, unlike Knoppix. It is the most advanced, yet easy to use live-cd that I have ever used.

http://www.pclinuxonline.com/

I will try it.

[Keldyn]

Looks very promising. I have added it to the list.

[KeR]

ok I searched and could not find a download link for it anywhere.

[thetman]

which one(s) of the live distros support ntfs (even if it is an addin after boot)

[MrStaticVoid]

ok I searched and could not find a download link for it anywhere.

Sorry...here is a better link: http://www.pclinuxonline.com/pclos/index.html

[p3ngu1n]

eh... dont forget FreeBSD :D

Http://www.freebsd.org

BSD is not Linux!!!!! :ninja:

[Fred Derf Veteran]

which one(s) of the live distros support ntfs (even if it is an addin after boot)

Reading AND writing to NTFS? Don't go there.

[Fred Derf Veteran]

Linux Live Systems (Knoppix, Gentoo LiveCD)

http://www.knoppix.net , http://www.gentoo.org

This kind of distro will completely run from CD, so you don't need to install it and maybe waste your partitions or something. It's a great way to see linux running on your system. There are many different distros, each with different goals. If you just want to "see linux in action", i'd suggest you go for a full-featured distro like Knoppix.

Many people also use these distros for recovering data from PCs or repairing their Linux/Windows installation.

The key point that is missing here is that Knoppix is based on Debian. That's its number one strength. Once you install Knoppix on the HD (with the provided install script) then you essentially have Debian.

Another interesting Debian-based Live CD system is Morphix but v0.5 is still pending. The advantage here is that you get download ISO's preconfigured for GNOME 2.4 (HeavyGUI), KDE 3.1, XFCE4 (LightGUI) or gaming.

[dewy]

which one(s) of the live distros support ntfs (even if it is an addin after boot)

dunno 'bout rite but this is the BEST LiveCD around (Built on Slackware and only 180MB) - http://slax.linux-live.org/ -

[mad_scientist]

i have an old win95 laptop, Pentuim 1 , 133 mhz, 32 MB of ram , it runs fine with win 95 .. its my mobile word processor .. to cheap to buy a new laptop .. i was wondering if there is a linux disrto lite enuf to run on it bu still as engouh features to use as a word processor/web surfer/msn/neowin poster/downloader

anybody can help me??

[edit] damn i cant type tired [/edit]

[markwolfe Veteran]

i have an old win95 laptop, Pentuim 1 , 133 mhz, 32 MB of ram , it runs fine with win 95 .. its my mobile word processor .. to cheap to buy a new laptop .. i was wondering if there is a linux distro lite enuf to run on it bu still as engouh features to use as a word processor/web surfer/msn/neowin poster/downloader

anybody can help me??

Sounds a bit stingy on RAM to go with a full-blown Desktop Environment such as Gnome or KDE. You could go something like TWM for a Window Manager on it and be OK, I think. Or maybe iceWM. Perhaps someone else will have suggestions for preferred Window Managers.

Any distro will work on it, you just need to pick what to install, and what will consume too much resources. For example, don't install OpenOffice on this machine. Use something like kedit for basic word processing. Firefox should be runnable, but there are probably lighter-weight browsers if it is too slow on that PC.

Give it a try and see what is acceptable to you and what is not. Not sure if you might want to consider an older version of Linux. I would recommend against it, but again, it is ultimately your choice.

[MrStaticVoid]

i have an old win95 laptop, Pentuim 1 , 133 mhz, 32 MB of ram , it runs fine with win 95 .. its my mobile word processor .. to cheap to buy a new laptop .. i was wondering if there is a linux disrto lite enuf to run on it bu still as engouh features to use as a word processor/web surfer/msn/neowin poster/downloader

anybody can help me??

You might want to consider Damn Small Linux. It is very lightweight, running Kdrive as an X server, Fluxbox as a window manager, and various lightweight apps like Dillo for browsing the web. It has a word processor and media players. It'll fit on a business card sized CD. It has Naim for the AIM and IRC networks, but it doesn't support MSN out of the box. Check it out.

[mad_scientist]

well thanks ppl .. i like damnsmall ( downloaded it) am gonna try some other distros

[EnderDX]

SuSE 9.1 will be the best.

Kernel 2.6.3 (or whatever the latest is at release)

KDE 3.2

reiser4? hopefully.

[markwolfe Veteran]

SuSE 9.1 will be the best.

Kernel 2.6.3 (or whatever the latest is at release)

KDE 3.2

reiser4? hopefully.

:o

I think you may have not seen the poster's hardware specs:

i have an old win95 laptop,

Pentuim 1 ,

133 mhz,

32 MB of ram

Me thinks that KDE would CRUSH the poor PC :(

[kongit]

yeah it would. I run fluxbox and it usually uses 68 megs of ram....more than twice that guys. And that is with a lightweight windowmanage.

[EnderDX]

Ohhhh I wasn't replying to him. It was just a random "Suse owns" thing.

For his old system i would say its good enough to run Enlightenment :)

[mad_scientist]

haha i know most of everything would crush my laptop .. i just want something with a bit more support than what win 95 has :)

Me thinks that KDE would CRUSH the poor PC