Which Linux Distribution Should I use?
Which Linux Distribution Should I use?
I have a 2001 Sony Vaio Desktop which came with Windows XP installed. The main hard drive crashed and I replaced it with a new hard drive. This happened during a move to a new place. Something else that happened during the move is this. I lost one of the system restore CD's. I called Sony and they told me that every option I had would cost a lot of money. They no longer distribute the CD's for such an old system and taking it to the local Sony store would cost a minimum 100 dollars for them to even look at it. Another option is to go buy a retail version of XP Home edition but the local store told me that that would cost 120 dollars.
I would rather NOT go the illegal route and get and use a torrent version of XP. In the long run, that would be even more expensive.
So I have decided to look into a linux distribution. What Linux distribution would work for a Sony Vaio Desktop PCV-RX540? I especially want it such that I can have a print driver for my Lexmark X125 (which, by the way, is why I have not upgrated this system to Vista or Windows 7 because this printer does not have drivers for later versions of Windows).
Many good Live-evaluation CD's
I agree that trying many live-evaluation CD's would be a good idea. Many of the most popular ones at distrowatch.com (popularity rating in terms of hits/day along the right hand side) have live-evaluation versions. If you don't need the hugest selection of applications, any would be fine. In terms of user-friendliness coupled with a huge repository of available applications, ubuntu or linux mint (ubuntu based with proprietary multimedia drivers and applications installed by default) are both great. Installing necessary multimedia stuff in ubuntu is still very simple (prompted to point and click to install if file extensions needing something proprietary are encountered), if not there by default.
Ubuntu, Linux mint, Opensuse, pclinuxOS, mepis, and the most recent mandriva release are all great for beginners. Fedora might require a little more work getting proprietary stuff working, and is more bleeding edge and perhaps a bit less stable. Puppy seems to have less stuff available out of the box in terms of applications (the file management system, using "pet" files doesn't seem to have many applications), and I don't know how well it works with the debian repositories. Ubuntu is debian-based, but has its own universe of repositories (28,000+ packages tweaked to behave with ubuntu), and Linux Mint tweaks ubuntu's packages even less to be compatible with their OS. Mepis used to be ubuntu-based, but is now debian-based.