The [Main] What Distro should YOU use? - Page 4


View Poll Results: Best Distro for Low resource PC?

Voters
170. You may not vote on this poll
  • Dam Small Linux

    20 11.76%
  • Debian

    42 24.71%
  • Feather Linux

    3 1.76%
  • Gentoo

    13 7.65%
  • Puppy Linux

    9 5.29%
  • Slackware

    38 22.35%
  • SuSE

    9 5.29%
  • Vector

    10 5.88%
  • Yoper

    0 0%
  • Other

    26 15.29%
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Thread: The [Main] What Distro should YOU use?

  1. #46
    Join Date
    Jan 2003
    Location
    Denver, Colorado
    Posts
    1,488
    I voted for Slackware, because in the real world that's what I use on older, slower systems. If the system is moderately slow, then I'll run kde with the eye-candy way down, but if it's really slow, I'll use xfce or no gui at all.

    However, that being said, I have also used Damn Small. It is really resource friendly and is definitely worth looking at for someone with a really old PC like a 486 or something under 200MHz.
    Slackware current (Dell Latitude D610)
    CentOS 5.2 (Servers)
    Registered Linux User # 375030

  2. #47
    Join Date
    Jan 2003
    Location
    Denver, Colorado
    Posts
    1,488
    I just tried out a live CD called Zen Linux and it is very cool. It is a live CD and "100% Debian compatible" installer. I booted it on an IBM Thinkpad and it found all my hardware, including an Atheros wireless card, boasted some serious eye-candy right out of the box, and within seconds I was able to run apt-get to install qtparted and ntfsprogs in order to adjust my NTFS partition. I'm generally not a huge debian fan, but this distro blows my mind as a live CD, and it makes getting up to speed with debian a fairly easy affair. I am almost persuaded to leave Slackware...

    So, even if you're not a live CD junkie like me, it's still definitely worth a look.
    Slackware current (Dell Latitude D610)
    CentOS 5.2 (Servers)
    Registered Linux User # 375030

  3. #48
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    Binghamton NY
    Posts
    2,435

    Changing my answer

    Now that I have got my good computer back, apparently running properly with a new Asus motherboard and Rosewill power supply, Simply Mepis seems almost ideal for me, because it's nothing more or less than my beloved Debian with two of my most persistent installation problems solved for me: the mplayer mozilla plugin, and the proprietary nvidia driver. I don't care how many millions of debian users have found these installations easy; for me they have been frustrating beyond words... and Mepis makes them easy. I don't know how current the nVidia driver is that I installed with a single click into Simply Mepis, but I do know that it works just great.

    As always, there is a fly in the ointment. There seems to be a problem with the unstable repositories that prevent me from apt-getting gnome. When I first got this computer working, and I tried on several distros to see what felt best, I was able to install gnome with no problem and it integrated great-- and then, when I installed Mepis for good, I wasn't able to do it. I get the following message:


    Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
    requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
    distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
    or been moved out of Incoming.

    Since you only requested a single operation it is extremely likely that
    the package is simply not installable and a bug report against
    that package should be filed.
    The following information may help to resolve the situation:

    The following packages have unmet dependencies:
    gnome: Depends: gnome-desktop-environment (= 1:2.10.1.1) but it is not going to be installed
    Depends: gnome-office (= 1:2.10.1.1) but it is not going to be installed
    E: Broken packages
    It worked on Saturday, but on Monday it didn't. Bummer.

    Today may be the day that I make that bug report. In the meantime, I am stuck with KDE... Not my personal favorite desktop environment, but I expect that this is a temporary glitch, and it's more a matter of taste than utility.

    I miss Sarge. Something about the idea of running "real" debian appealled to me. I prefer the look and feel of it. I dislike the Mepis boot screen with that pyramid background . Someday I may solve these two problems... or maybe I'll just get the geeks at my LUG to help me... and then I'll be back with Sarge to stay... but Mepis works for me, now.
    Last edited by blackbelt_jones; 07-16-2005 at 08:38 AM.

  4. #49
    Join Date
    Sep 2002
    Posts
    19

    Ubuntu Fan

    Canned MDK 10.1 - trying to install with it's package manager was a pain for me. Easy URPMI helped a little, but I found I had to build from source a lot, and it made finding my dependencies a pain also.

    So I switched to Ubuntu. The support via the community is outstanding. I can google any problem I have and include "ubuntu" in my search, it always takes me to an anwser in the ubuntu forums. I didn't like how GNOME looks, so I installed the KDE desktop. There are TONS more packages in the Ubuntu repository (which is updated often), and apt-get makes it easy to solve dependencies. I can count on 1 hand how many applications I had to install from source because they wouldn't install via apt-get. I've been using it since March. Installation is easy, but don't expect there to be any kind of flashy interface like MDK had.

    If you are new to linux, and want TONS of applications at your disposal to choose from, go with Ubuntu, or any Debian derivative for that matter. I've not used Mepis, Gentoo, Knoppix, or Debian Sarge, but I'm sure they are just as good. My decision was made from using the live CDs, and that Ubuntu was only just on one CD (Mandrake had a few), and from seeing how supported the community was.

    Here's something to make you smile:
    Software and Sex

  5. #50
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Posts
    1

    Another bloody newbie

    First things first, I want to thank the people posting here who have really opened my eyes to Linux, I'm currentlly running Windows but have been looking to get to grips with linux for some time, I finally have a new external hard drive and a bit of space to try things out. So I have a relatively new but low powered PC

    P3 1Ghz
    384mb ram
    64mb Geforce 4 graphics card
    A shiny new 80 gig external hard drive

    So now I just need to get started, I tried a live CD of Knopix (I think?) but it just felt like windows to me, (be gentle I am a newbie). I have never done programming before, and am coming to linux as a clean slate and would really appreciate some advise where to start. What I want is the ability to dual boot so I still have windows until I'm confident with linux. I also use the PC predominantly for backing up DVD's, playing music and surfing the net. But really I just want to learn something new and figure out why stuff works, and what more my PC is capable of. I've been edging towards slackware but it seems but from the feedback I've heard it seems a bit intimidating for an out and out newbie, any recomendations.

    And thanks again, trawling through the forums here has really taught me a lot, I didn't even know what a distro was before coming here.
    Last edited by splutterbug; 08-04-2005 at 08:58 AM.

  6. #51
    Join Date
    Sep 2002
    Posts
    19
    If you are a newbie, I would not recommend slackware. IMO it's not made for people who are "new" to linux. What distro you should use is gonna be based on how much time do you want to spend tweaking your OS. You have to think about installation (some are easier than others) and desktop environment (KDE,GNOME, Fluxbox,etc), and also community support- meaning where you will find anwsers to your questions.

    In your case I would try live CDs of several distros and see what ones you like. Here's a few, MEPIS, Ubuntu\Kubuntu (which I use, comes highly recommended), and Knoppix.

    As far as "best newbie distros" you have:
    Fedora, Mandriva (formerly Mandrake), Ubuntu/Kubuntu, MEPIS, SUSE, and maybe Gentoo.

    my 2 cents.

  7. #52
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Location
    Canberra
    Posts
    1

    ANOTHER nix noob

    Hello nix gurus!

    I am very keen to install and use a linux distro as I'm just starting a career in the IT sector (not certified yet) and of course, if I want to go anywhere I'm going to need to know my nix.

    My home PC is thus:

    AMD64 3800+
    Asus nforce4 mobo
    2gig Corsair ram
    1x200gig SATA hdd
    leadtek 6600GT vc

    net connection: adsl accessed via a wireless AP

    I will be dual booting with xp (i like my games)

    I am a complete and utter noob to linux. I need a recommendation for a distro! I used dos as a child on my 386 and have basic command line knowledge but a GUI would certainly streamline the process.

    Recommendations?

  8. #53
    Join Date
    Mar 2005
    Posts
    183
    I'd go for Gentoo if i had that ammount or RAM.

    But thats only because i love my Gentoo.

  9. #54
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Posts
    1
    New here, first post.

    I've been a Windows software developer (in the working world) for about 10 years now. My first PC was an Atari 400, and my main PC's today are:

    desktop - 2.8Ghz Intel w/1G of RAM, 320G HD, and a Radeon 9700 Pro
    laptop - 3Ghz Intel w/2G of RAM, 60G 7200RPM HD, 17" widescreen

    The Distros (mostly LiveCD's) I've tried in the last 3 weeks or so have been:
    Code:
    Xandros
    DSL.iso
    dynebolic-1.4.1.iso
    Elive_0.1_nibeta_nialpha.iso
    featherweight-live-v1.2.iso
    freespire.iso
    gentoo livecd packages-x86-2005.1_pre1.iso
    gNOX-2.0-pr2.iso
    GoblinX-1.1.iso
    KANOTIX-2005-03.iso
    KNOPPIX_V4.0-2005-06-08-LINUXTAG2005-DVD-DE.ISO
    KNOPPIX_V4.0DVD-2005-08-16-EN.iso
    KnoppMythR5A16.iso
    kubuntu-5.04-live-i386.iso
    linspire_live_5.0.69-001.iso
    Mandrakelinux-Move.i586.iso
    monowall cdrom-1.11.iso
    mutagenix_kde-2.6.11.8-i486-1.iso
    pclinuxos-p91.iso
    SantaFeCTR3.iso
    Simply Mepis.iso
    SimplyMEPIS-3.3.2.test02.iso
    slax-5.0.6.iso
    slax-killbill-5.0.6.iso
    TheOpenCD-3.0.iso
    ubuntu-5.04-live-i386.iso
    and I'm downloading ZenLinux as I type this.

    I've tried Linux off and on since around Redhat 7 or so. I typically install it, get frustrated w/something, then leave it behind for awhile. It seems to have come a long way since RH7.

    From my admittedly limited experience, I can say this...

    Mepis is the only LiveCD to recognize my laptop's Broadcom wireless NIC and get it working without intervention. It does however take a tweaked XF86Config-4 file to display the laptop's native resolution of 1440x900.

    Slax requires about two commands (and the windows drivers) using ndiswrapper to get wireless working, but I can't get 1440x900 working. Great thing about Slax is you can run it entirely in RAM. You can also build your own "versions" but I haven't tried that yet.

    Ubuntu boots up into 1440x900, but wireless doesn't work and ndiswrapper isn't installed by default. KUbuntu is the same I believe.

    Most of the others boot into 1024x768 and wireless doesn't work. The only two I've gotten wireless working in are Mepis and Slax.

    I currently have Xandros installed on an old box and to be honest, for a Windows user, I think it's probably the easiest to get used to. The community (as was stated previously) is very nice. You won't hear "RTFM" constantly, and you're also unlikely to see "Windoze/Winblows/etc.". Personally, I'll admit as soon as I see those I immediately put the person in the same category as those who type "teh" for "the" all the time.

    Linux has it's positives, it's free, tweakable, open source, techie oriented, etc..

    In my experience however, it has it's negatives as well. Besides not supporting a lot of hardware as well as Windows does, it's not as "crash proof" as many like to tout it as being. In some distros if I play a DivX avi, then double click an MPG it's an instant lockup. Xandros was left running for a few weeks and when I went to use it, the GUI wouldn't respond. The mouse did, but windows weren't movable. A restart of X was required to get it working again. I've had numerous other apps lock up and often times lock the entire OS so tightly that I couldn't even restart X. Note that these have happened with multiple distros and multiple PC's.

    Given that one of the biggest gripes Linux users have about Windows is the need for reboots, I do find it extremely strange that the simplest of changes require a restart of X. If I want to change my clock from a 24hr display to a 12hr display I have to restart X. If I want to change my mousepointers from one set to another I have to restart X. X of course restarts much more quickly than rebooting Windows, but from a users standpoint, having to "restart" just to change the simplest of things makes people often equate Linux's GUI to that of Win 3.11/95.

    I apologize if it sounds as though I'm bashing Linux, that's not at all my intent. I just find some of these things strange and honestly, am curious as to the technical reasons why they are the way they are.

  10. #55
    Join Date
    Dec 2002
    Posts
    226
    I been using fedora core 4 for some weeks now, and have installed it on my main machine, I am very impressed with it.

    I hated redhat based distro's, but this time they appear to have got it right.
    Powered by Fedora Core

  11. #56
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Location
    Alberta, Canada
    Posts
    2
    I'm looking to get into Linux again. I've tried first Debian, then Mandrake and Red Hat. I never got x windows working right with Debian and found it a little too hard, but I really liked the idea of the apt-get. Mandrake never felt right, but Red Hat wasn't too bad.

    I'm thinking from reading the previous posts to get into MEPIS or Ubuntu perhaps, and as another poster said, into Debian and Gentoo afterwards.

    What apps do you use most?
    I use my PC for web browsing, mp3 listening, movie watching and gaming. I'm going back to school now taking a digital media course and I think I'll be using Lightwave, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash and some other programs

    Do you have a broadband connection?
    Yes, a pretty fast Cable modem.

    How familiar are you with computers? / With Linux?
    I am quite experienced on the hardware side of things (just built this rig myself) and I'm quite fluent with Windows. For Linux I'm not a total newb anymore, but I don't feel like I've learned much from my experiences yet.

    How much time are you willing to invest into learning Linux?
    If I can find a good reason to boot into Linux instead of Windows, I'll spend more time learning Linux. For now I'd like to keep it fairly GUI-oriented and windows-like to keep it easier, but I don't mind learning how to get my hands dirty in the OS.

    I find from previous installations, that it was fun setting the OSes up. It seemed a bit too much of a pain to try and get certain programs running though, and I found that whenever I was at the boot prompt, I had little reason to choose Linux over Win XP, so I let it go. That was a couple years ago though and I know the distros and programs have gotten better and I hope I can find some good use in Linux after I have the OS operational.

    What I'm thinking right now is to utilize my 64-bit processor by running Linux instead of my 32-bit WinXP. Maybe get some speedier 3d rendering done on here and anything else that'll run faster than on Windows.

    One of my concerns is this is new hardware and I don't know how well it will work.

    How powerful is your computer?
    Motherboard:
    MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum nForce 4 Ultra
    Processor:
    Athlon 64 3500+ socket 939
    Memory:
    OCZ 2x512MB PC3200 DDR Premier Dual Channel
    Video Card:
    Asus AX800XL 256MB PCI-E
    Sound Card:
    SB Audigy OEM
    Hard Drives:
    2 Samsung 160GB P80SD 7200rpm SATA II w/ 8MB Cache in Raid 0.
    Optical Drive:
    LG GSA-4163B Dual Layer DVD±R/RW Drive

    These are some concerns of mine:
    I couldn't get both my Marvel and nForce LAN adapters to work under WinXP until I installed the drivers, so would I have to find certain drivers for Linux before they would work under Linux too?
    How do I get it to recognize my Raid 0? For WinXP I have a driver disk.
    Does ATI have good drivers for Linux?
    Do these distros utilize my 64-bit processor? Does it do that in the i386 packages or I need the x86_64 or amd64 packages?
    Last edited by Smithboy; 09-01-2005 at 09:16 PM.

  12. #57
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Posts
    1
    Quote Originally Posted by J-Val
    Here's my response...any suggestions will be much appreciated. Keep in mind, I really wanna stop the dual booting completly, and just use linux exclusively, but I doubt it's possible (ITunes).


    All kinds....GIMP when I cant use Photoshop (cause WINE wont work right for some reason) Open Office, K Office, Adobe Acrobat, Firefox, Thunderbird, Amarok, Itunes (kinda need windows for that), Mplayer, K3b, Konsole, vim (cause I havent found a decent C++ IDE I liked).


    Yes- Cable Modem


    Very. 2 years comp sci experience, been around computers since I was 7. Familiar enough to know that Windows sucks, and how to get it to do what I want it to.


    Not as much. Only experience I had was with Red Hat, and Mandrake in college, and even then all I could do was install it. When it came time to update packages, upgrade apps, kernels, etc, I was lost. Still am a little.


    As much as it takes, since I want to make this my primary OS


    Decent.
    1 GB RAM
    Athlon XP 2700 CPU
    Asus A7N8X-E Motherboard
    ~100 GB HD Space
    64 MB GeForce4 TI 4800
    CD/CDR Drives
    Philipps Seismic Edge PCI Card (32 MB)
    About 6 USB ports and 3-4 Firewire ones (2 dont work cause Antec screwed up the wiring)
    Antec Sonata Case.

    Now Im on MDK 10.1 Download now and it's running fine. There are some annoyances that I dont like, upgrading some apps are a pain depeding on whether I have to build from source or not, but most of my issues are with the window managers- not the OS itsself. I'm a believer that anyone can use rpm to install packages, and URPMI is great in mandrake, but not everything has rpms released, but I also believe that anyone should be able to build/configure/install any program from source. Mandrake has only got easier to install and detect my hardware. My biggest issue is just upgrading packages. Should I only be using RPMS because I'm running mandrake, or should I switch to an OS where I can use both?

    Thanks
    Dude,

    You can run iTunes under CodeWeaver's Crossover Office 3.0

  13. #58
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Posts
    10
    First Post... User that wants to abandon windows once and for all.

    PC:
    3 GHz intel P4
    512 MB DDR
    fast internet connection

    Laptop:
    1.6 GHz centrino
    512 MB ram
    bluetooth + wifi

    Prgorams i use:
    Visual C#(most important)
    3Ds Max 7
    internet/mail from mozilla
    some games
    Open Office 2.0 Beta

    My issue:
    Hello,
    I'm 19 years old and about to start uni. my windows system has been pissing me off since i was a kid(started using computers with 5) and I would really prefer to leave windows completly behind me, and all it's cursed microsoft programs.

    My problem is, that I don't know anything about writing programs for Linux, I've got a good experience in C(no C++ mind you), VB(yes the devil, but that's where i started) and C#.
    Also I'd like to go on with my hobby 3d stuff, it's not anything serious, but it's more fun than photoshop/gimp for me.

    I used Fedora and Slackware-lifeCD and got along with them pretty well, however, if anybody got some good guide how to setup Linux stuff without the need to get into command line modification(don't get me wrong, I like command lines, but a system SHOULD have a GUI setup pannel) or any other linux guide I'd be glad to hear from you.



    Thanks in advance

  14. #59
    Join Date
    Jan 2003
    Location
    Denver, Colorado
    Posts
    1,488
    For a completely GUI experience, you might check out the recently released OpenSuSE. You can read my thoughts about trying it here .

    It's a really smooth package, and lets you choose between a laptop, server, or workstation install. It has some really nice features like automounting/unmounting of USB drives, etc.

    That being said, however, I use Slackware on my laptop and desktop and am very happy with it!

    Good luck!
    Slackware current (Dell Latitude D610)
    CentOS 5.2 (Servers)
    Registered Linux User # 375030

  15. #60
    Join Date
    Jul 2004
    Location
    /home/earth/usa/south-carolina/charleston
    Posts
    22
    For most machines I would probably use Slack or a Slack variation, such as Vector if I want stability and performance within limited resources. I really like Vector. My main unit runs on Kanotix/Debian Sid, but I'm fixing to install Vec as my workhorse. Somehow using Sid for mission-critical stuff (especially while the Debian repositories are still screwed up) is not the way to go here.

    For one of my test units, however, it runs best on Puppy. This test unit, a Pentium 1, has 48MB RAM, 267mHz, and a 3-gig HD. Even the standard low-resource specialists such as Vector run haltingly on this one, if at all. Tried Slax with Flux; even that was slow. DamnSmall worked pretty well. But Puppy is much more complete a system as far as apps go, and it runs like this is a new computer or something. If you're using EXTREME low resources, it will be definitely worth your while to set aside a swap partition. Even in this 48MB unit, with a swap partition, Puppy will load into memory and you can kick the CD out.

    Been using Linux exclusively for about 18 months. W***ows 98 is on my hard drive. It's there, and I use it only to convert documents for the benefit of these folks who live and die by Microsoft.

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