I was teetering on the brink of losing Windows forever until my Linux machine stopped working (hardware problem) - it's about time someone developed a decent universal FS so we wouldn't have these problems.

I'm currently using a Mac and I don't even know what FS they use

Userfriendly & Linux on the A380
 

This is why I like user friendly so much..! :ok:
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20071116

This reminds me of a blog posting I read here, from a guy who woke up during a flight, to what looked like a reboot of the whole plane! :eek:

Linux - Which Distro?
 

Right, I'm done with Vista - it's going. Plan is to partition hard drive and have a dual boot XP/Linux system. I need to keep Windows on for gaming purposes only.

Now then: which distro? My last tinkerings with Linux were very hit and miss, possibly because I was trying to install it on a Sony laptop. Tried the most popular distros but there was almost always an issue with graphics, LAN etc. As a total noob I ended up editing command lines to get things working and it was just horrible. Now I have a home built desktop system (specs below) I've a feeling things might be easier.

Basically I'm looking for something that requires minimal tinkering - "works right out of the box" if you like. I'm leaning towards OpenSuse 10.3 based on a bit of research but every time I think "that's the one" I come across someone who thinks it's crap. Lot's of head scratching here.

If it helps I'd rather stick with a similar destop layout to Windows, so that would be KDE right? Also is 64bit worth a punt?

Any help / thoughts / input would be appreciated!

Merry Christmas all.

--------------------------

AMD64 Dual Core 3800+
2 Gb Ram Nforce4 Ultra mobo
XFX GeForce 7600GT
160 Gb Hd
CD/DVD writer
Onboard LAN, Sound

Ubuntu, or Kubuntu if you want the KDE desktop.

It's a very user-friendly setup.

SD

Squibbler,

I echo the good Saab - I've used Ubuntu for a long time and it pretty much goes out of the box. You can boot it off the CD & give it a testing without commiting to install. Only fly in the ointment is, in common with nearly all Linux distros, support for Wireless.

Batninth

Try Linux Mint.

It's basically Ubuntu redistributed with all the codecs that you will need to play MP3s, DVDs, etc.

RC

For what it's worth, I went for Ubunto and it worked right out of the box as you specified in your post.

I ran it as a live CD for a few weeks until I got some sort of familiarity with it and then installed it dual boot with my XP system. It installed absolutely perfectly and picked up my internet connection, wireless network,printer and all the other peripherals without any problems.

I'm becoming more familiar with it now to the extent that I have not used the XP option for some weeks now.

Highly recommended.

I'd also go for Ubuntu/Kubuntu. Ubuntu uses Gnome which is more Mac like, while Kubuntu uses KDE which is more Windows like. Both have adherents and advantages - Ubuntu/Gnome is certainly cleaner looking.

The incompatibilities and tinkering that used to beset Linux are now fewer than XP and a lot less than Vista:yuk:

Nevertheless, you'll likely find a few things that don't work as expected - be reassured, if you've met 'em so have other people and the solution is always googleable.

Mepis Linux http://www.mepis.org/ is another distro that is worth considering - I like it a lot

:ok:

Edited to add: There's a good summary of distros in the Inquirer today - http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquir...free-operating

I have a "Linux box" with three vintage hard drives and seven different distros, all bootable via Grub. I've been playing with them (and with Knoppix on DVD) for a few years.

Ubuntu/Kubuntu is indeed "easy out of the box" but I've not been impressed with the overall performance. If you want an easy life, it's the one to go for. You might find, six months down the road, that it gets frustrating because of the things it won't do.

Fedora is very clever - if you can put up with a little faffing when you first install it. It's the one I use for normal "work". It's extremely stable, and quite Windows-like in how things behave (double-clicks versus single-clicks and the like). If I had only one distro on the Linux box right now, that would be the one.

Mepis is clever, but has a blind spot over SCSI devices if you use any. I do, so that's the end of Mepis.

SuSe (I'm on 10.1) has not been good. It's OK when it works, but it has a habit of deciding it doesn't like my video card. The X-server then refuses to start and I'm in text-only mode.

Debian is simple, is the "Daddy" of several of the others, and has that superb package called Kpackage - an enormous list of all software available for Debian, with a "click here to install it". Other distros use Apt-Get or such laborious stuff for the same, and I long for a working Kpackage on those. Some claim to offer Kpackage, but it's only a very cut-down version that doesn't do the things the Debian one does. If you don't want to install new software on a regular basis, or browse to see what's new this week, then you won't mind. I find Kpackage compelling.

Slackware is, in my opinion, by far the most capable Linux distro. Sadly, it's also the most pernickety to set up. Once it's working, it's stunningly good. When I finally ditch Windows (probably when Vista becomes compulsory), I'll bite the bullet, do the extra bit of Geekschool, and switch the main machine to Slackware.

Several of the above play the "KDE or Gnome?" game. If you're going for dual-boot Windows and Linux, and have the hard drive space, why not set up two Linux distros - say, Ubuntu and Fedora, with KDE on Fedora and Gnome on Ubuntu. If you've been using Windows for years, I'd bet you'll find KDE easier. I don't get on at all with Gnome - must be the way my brain doesn't work.

You might need some "debugging" advice - particularly around Samba if you network your PC, and maybe also with file access permissions.

If you have a colour inkjet printer, you may have serious difficulty finding a decent driver for it (if at all). My Canon Pixma won't print from the Linux machine. It's a known "issue" - there may be a driver "any time now" but that's been the word on the street for about 18 months.

Oh - and if you are going to have more than one distro and also use the machine for e-mail, you can persuade Linux Thunderbird to use a common folder for mail regardless of which distro you're running at the time. I have a separate partition for mail, and all distros use the same one. You do have to install the Thunderbird programme in each distro, but then point it at the mail partition.

Gnome? KDE?

Pah. Gentoo and Blackbox. :}

Good analysis Keef

but, "quite Windows-like in how things behave (double-clicks versus single-clicks and the like)...."

ALL the distros I've tried allow you do decide whether you want single or double clicks - admittedly, on some the GUI setting for this is a bit tucked away.

Happy Christmas to one and all!

Mac

PS: Gentoo is for masochists. I certainly don't want to recompile all my apps everytime I run 'em! ;)

Linux/Linux Dual Boot
 

I have a Ubuntu Linux PC and wondered if it is possible to dual boot it with another Linux OS on a second hard drive.

I've had Windows/Linux dual boot systems in the past, but never had a dedicated Linux box before. Boot managers are something of a mystery to me and not something I tangle with lightly.

Any ideas, Gentlemen, please?

Thanks,

N o t a

Easily done, but there may be other ways to achieve the same ends.

Why do you want to do this?

You can run another Linux kernel/distro within Ubuntu without needing to reboot if you just want to explore another setup.

Yes you can dual boot.

You might also want to explore a VM or try working off an instance that boots off a CD.

As Miraz says - what do you want to achieve?

SD

Thank you, Gentlemen,

What do I want to achieve?
Well, the box is an experimental only PC and I wanted one stable system and the option to try various other Linux distros, hence a dual boot set up.
I'm not sure if it is a case of my intense scientific curiosity at work:O, or simply an inability to follow the old principle of 'working well, leave it alone!'

As suggested, probably best to try alternatives that boot off a CD.

Thanks chaps,

N o t a

Yes, it's easy.

There are two ways to do it. One's Grub, and one isn't ;)

I use Grub. Most of the Linux installers will allow you the option of adding Grub at the same time as you install the distro. It will then find your other installations and set itself up to boot them when wanted.

You can edit the Grub "menu.lst" file to add/delete individual boot options, change the sequence, or start a particular one after a certain time interval. That's handy if it's also a remote server or some such - after a power cut, it will come back up in the default distro.

My "Linux experimentation" PC has seven different versions of Linux at the moment - all listed for 10 seconds at start. Pick the one wanted, or after 10 seconds it's Fedora 7.

If you go for Grub, make a "boot floppy" too, just in case you edit the menu.lst and get it wrong ;) When the first hard drive in the Linux PC died (the one with the Grub config), I could boot from floppy and run Fedora, which happened to be on hard drive 2.

I agree (mostly) with Keef, although I only have 5 flavours of Linux installed at the moment.

Unfortunately, not all Linux distributions will put all of the available Linux instances into the Grub menu, in particular, Mepis doesn't - it just puts itself and Windows (if there is a windows OS installed) into the /boot/grub/menu.lst file.

It is simple enough to use a live CD such as Knoppix to update the grub menu.lst after a mepis install so that you can see all of the Linux distributions though.

Thanks Keef and Izod.

Dedication above and beyond the call of duty.
Seven and five different versions, respectively?
My word. I think I'll settle for two - max!

N o t a:ok:

Izod speaks sooth.

You will need to learn how to set up a menu.lst file. The good news is that it's not hard.

Some of the distros insisted on setting up their own new Grub folder - Mepis was one of those. In the end I sorted it by putting a menu.lst on each partition with a Linux distro on it. The knack lay in finding out which partition was the real Grub boot one. With the same menu.lst in all of them, it doesn't matter.

If a new distro changed the one already there, I could edit the relevant bits of it and put that into the "common" one.

The format of the instructions in menu.lst is slightly different for different distros - if you want a copy of mine, say the word and I'll post it here or e-mail it. It covers Debian (stable and unstable), Fedora 7, Mepis, Kubuntu, SuSe 10, Slackware, and Windows XP.