8 replies to this topic

[Roman Y]

Hi CodeCallers... for the future university purpuses I probably need to have a linux partition on my PC, so I thought I'd ask you which distribution I should get. I have earlier experience with Ubuntu, but I didn't much care for it, thought it was dull and I always had to crash soundcard and force reload it to make it work properly (it was still a bit slow though). I thought about Archlinux as well. It looked sufficient enough but he said it was hard to get it working if you're beginner in linux. So... back to the question which linux distribution do you recommend and why?

[WingedPanther]

I like Ubuntu, and my wife is very fond of Mint. We've also had good experiences with Redhat and Mandriva. Really, it's a matter of taste. I'm looking at trying out Puppy and DSL soon.

[Roman Y]

ok. Do you know anything about ArchLinux? Is it really that hard to use? as I understood it you had to do all by yourself but you could modify it exactly how you'd like...

[Alexander]

Roman Y. said:

ok. Do you know anything about ArchLinux? Is it really that hard to use?

You need not do anything but configure a few things (do a pacman -Syu, set up network like normal) and install your favourite windows manager. Ubuntu includes a somewhat bloated Gnome windows manager, that is why I dislike it. You can install what you want on Arch.

I'd recommend to read briskly through the beginner's guide to see how the setup is, it's thorough and will make it easier for you.

[Roman Y]

Ok thanks... remembered that I had a book on linux and GNU read a bit of it and I'm thinking now to get a debian since it was focused on stability... Although one more thing about linux I've heard that it could have problems with networkcards on laptops. Have you experienced anything similar?

[WingedPanther]

If the laptop model is a little older, and the distro is fresh, it'll probably work. The wifi vendors are starting to provide linux drivers.

[Alexander]

Worst case for network driver issues you only need to use NDISwrapper (for all distros), which will accept any Windows driver that has a .inf, the standard format they come in which will work out of the box 95% of the time.

[Roman Y]

well I'm gonna go with Debian and hope for the best))) I'm going to create another partition for it so I can always come back to windows. btw (in case I won't be happy) is it hard to remove the linux partition afterwards to have more space for Windows (or some other linux distribution)?

[Roman Y]

lol it seems that everytime something stops me from installing linux... now that I've got debian and want to install it... I've got trouble with partitioning mainly because I don't get what they are talking about... (wasn't as simple as it was when I was installin Ubuntu where they give you a bar representing space on your disc and make you choose the limit for windows/linux partition) so I was afraid to install Debian because of I might eraise windows / from computer which wouldn't be a problem if HP sent the DVD-disc with installation program... but they didn't and it was already in the laptop... so in case I erase W7 I don't know how to get it back nuying new seems stupid since I have the product key for this one, and the installation program alone is nowhere to be found... so... if anybody had earlier experience installing debian, could you tell me how do I do to keep Windows 7 and make a new partition for debian?