Recommendations for a secondary distro?

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Foomandoonian

Recommendations for a secondary distro?

Post by Foomandoonian »

After my recent unwelcome shell experience, I realise that having an alternate OS (in that case, Windows) could be invaluable. What other distros do people recommend?

My previous experience has been with Ubuntu 6.06 (and I have a copy of 7.10 here to try). I'm a noob, so it has to be fairly friendly, and I wouldn't mind trying KDE to see what that's all about. Any others :?:
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Husse

Re: Recommendations for a secondary distro?

Post by Husse »

This is much a matter of taste.
But there are distros and there are distros
I would not recommend Gentoo as it is to "complicated" and for this not Ubuntu as it is too similar
Perhaps PClinuxOS, it's a good and newbie friendly distro
And that fsck problem - I know what's up but it could be solved in a better way, but one reason for the behavior is that the disk must not be mounted when fsck is run, but at least a descriptive error message...
But at some time Linux was for geeks by geeks :) Not now!
oh so many but - my butt aches :)
Foomandoonian

Re: Recommendations for a secondary distro?

Post by Foomandoonian »

That was quick! Thanks Husse :)

I kinda disregarded PClinux after visiting their website, which looked a bit shoddy and is broken in places. I'm a very visual person (part of the reason I love Mint!). Still, you're not the only one who's said positive things about it, so maybe I will give that a try. Your point is well taken about Ubuntu being too similar. Maybe I'll have a look at Kubuntu too.

As for butt aches - I empathise. I can only speak to my experiences as a non-programming geek. I can only imagine the complexities of writing an operating system!
Guest

Re: Recommendations for a secondary distro?

Post by Guest »

Husse wrote:But at some time Linux was for geeks by geeks :) Not now!
But Linux goes too far in his *copy of Windows* with craps like 3D-Desktop, Mono, Plasmoid etc... :x

This is unfortunate. Linux slowly emerged as a *clone of Windows*... :(
Fred

Re: Recommendations for a secondary distro?

Post by Fred »

Personal preference... Isn't Linux wonderful! A solution for everybody. :-) (from an ex Gentoo user, back before we even had a stage 1 tarball. We had to make our own.)

Foomandoonian, I'll throw a different twist on the subject. I use a live cd distro called Puppy Linux as a back up. It is a small but full featured distro that can run completely in ram. It is the fastest system with given hardware I have ever seen. It doesn't need a hard drive or even a cd drive after it has booted. Even if my drives are completely trashed I can still use it to get on the net, research, download, and burn iso's etc. It has Gparted and other repair tools in it or available. It is also easily remastered with whatever you wish to include, and burned to a cd or usb stick. You can easily mount any partition or file system, even ntfs, in read/write mode. There is a small utility for that purpose on the desktop. The version I am using now is Puppy shard 3.01. It kind of reminds me of Win98 as far as looks go. You can install it to the hard drive but I wouldn't, as it runs in root. But you really don't need to. I see little advantage in doing so except for a slightly faster boot up.

For what it is worth here is the url for the version I am refering to. It is only about 155 MB.

http://tmxxine.com/Wikka/wikka.php?wakk ... xxineShard

Enjoy,

Fred
Foomandoonian

Re: Recommendations for a secondary distro?

Post by Foomandoonian »

Fred, that makes a lot of sense to me. Thanks :D
Guest

Re: Recommendations for a secondary distro?

Post by Guest »

Fred wrote:Personal preference... Isn't Linux wonderful! A solution for everybody. :-)
Rather I would say: quality down... linux kernel [2.4 better than 2.6], *bad* GPLv3, stability worse than previously, eye-candy for competing with Vista no matter what bugs are hidden therein etc...
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Re: Recommendations for a secondary distro?

Post by kanishka »

I found that SimplyMEPIS is a great KDE Debian-based distro, with everything you need. You can compare it to Linux Mint.
BTW, I have Sidux installed on my HD as a second Linux OS, though it's something quite different (but veeery good!).
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NoClue!
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Re: Recommendations for a secondary distro?

Post by NoClue! »

Why don't you install virtual box, then you can sample as many distros as you like right from your mint desktop.

Pclos or mandriva would be good to check out but I think they still use the ANGRY GRUB INSTALLER, could be bad for a newbie.

Mepis is a safe choice as it will recognize your windows and mint install.
Husse

Re: Recommendations for a secondary distro?

Post by Husse »

Ah yes grub installer
Lots of distros use an installer that does not make other distros bootable - you have to a bit of tweaking
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Re: Recommendations for a secondary distro?

Post by yamawho »

I have been playing with Mandriva 2008 power pack and I chose the gnome install.
I like it and am running it on a system at work.

Mepis is super and I still use it on a system that doesn't run anything else.
Mepis is another that has everything working out of the box like Mint but it's kde.

I have used Puppy I while ago on a duron 900 system. It was good but this distro is very different from the others. Many have stated that what you learn running puppy doesn't apply to running other distros.
You always need to configure your lan and wireless card manually. I was trying this on my EeePc and couldn't get it to work even though I was using the eee version floating around.
Foomandoonian

Re: Recommendations for a secondary distro?

Post by Foomandoonian »

Wow, thanks for this great response! :D

I have downloaded Puppy to write to a CD. I'll have a play with that later, and keep it on hand like you suggest. I'm liking the sound of Debian and/or Mepis the most. I'm edging towards Mepis slightly to start with. Thanks for pointing me to Distro Watch. Ubuntu Studio looks right up my particular alleyway. I can see myself using Studio for work stuff and Mint for recreation. Ain't options great!?

Virtualizing interests me, but at the moment the point is to have a redundant OS to hand. If I screw up and Mint goes down again, I need to get to Google somehow for a fix!

Grub is something I could use some help with. My understanding is that each distro may install its own custom grub, like Mint. Both made themselves the default and applied their branding. Is it easy to make my own grub, or determine which I prefer?

And since yamawho mentioned the eee pc... I'm planning to get the 8GB model as soon as it hits over here. Has anyone tried eeexubuntu, or found any other ideal distros for it? I can't wait to get my hands on one! :)

One last question:
muskratmx wrote:One last tidbit, in anther thread there was a hint that linuxmint is thinking about a debian based version.
My understanding was that Mint is an offshoot of Ubuntu, which is itself based on Debian. Doesn't that make Mint Debian based? :?
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clem
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Re: Recommendations for a secondary distro?

Post by clem »

Yes it does. As for the secondary distro try them all and enjoy having so much choice! :) My personal favorites are Slackware (best distro if you want to learn more about Linux), Debian testing (a must-try), Fedora (best "je ne sais quoi" on the market), and PCBSD (very convivial desktop with a bit of BSD exotism). If you're using Mint as your main OS, you may as well opt for a bit of learning curve with the secondary one ;)

Clem.
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Foomandoonian

Re: Recommendations for a secondary distro?

Post by Foomandoonian »

Thanks clem... on many levels. :D
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NoClue!
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Re: Recommendations for a secondary distro?

Post by NoClue! »

WOW that was bold. hehehe I think he just wanted to try kde with least amount of grief. If you do try any of those "super geek" distros they will soundly confirm your decision to use linux mint as your main os.
Foomandoonian

Re: Recommendations for a secondary distro?

Post by Foomandoonian »

NoClue! wrote:WOW that was bold. hehehe I think he just wanted to try kde with least amount of grief. If you do try any of those "super geek" distros they will soundly confirm your decision to use linux mint as your main os.
You're probably right! The OS for me is less important than what I can do with the OS. I could learn to use terminal until I'm a tenth level Jedi, or whatever, but it's still not going to help me make graphics. Mostly, I just want the OS to look pretty and shut the hell up - the latter being a big reason in wanting to leave Windows behind! My energies are better spent learning Gimp and Inkscape...
Fred

Re: Recommendations for a secondary distro?

Post by Fred »

Foomandoonian,

Wow! Looks like you got a lot of suggestions and food for thought. :-)

In light of your last post I have one more off the wall idea for you.

I am retired and actually do very little real work on the computer any more. I enjoy playing with and learning about the various Linux distros. If I were in your shoes and needed a solid tool to do a job that put food on the table I would approach the problem a little differently.

If I were you I would pay a local Linux guru to come in and set up a conservative, stable system, not cutting edge, and configure all the programs that you might need for your work. Remove all the stuff that you didn't want or need and set up a good firewall properly for your needs. It really doesn't matter what distro he uses. All the splash screens, backgrounds, desk tops, etc can be customized to your liking. Unless somebody tells you, you won't know whether it is Debian, slackware, Gentoo, or Red hat. It will be solid as a rock. Let him come back every six months and do any necessary, non security updates and re evaluate your needs.

Over a period of 5 years this will be a whole lot cheaper than Microsoft's way and there is the added health benefits. Your blood pressure will be much lower this way. :-)

Enjoy Life,

Fred
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Re: Recommendations for a secondary distro?

Post by yamawho »

Gave Fedora 8 live cd a go today ... very nice.
Was able to adjust my screen res without having to edit the xorg.conf and after a quick codec download, I was able to play MP3's. There was an issue installing Adobe flash but this is a documented issue which just requires a manual download of the rpm. It reminded me of Mandriva for some reason ... however most apps are not the same.

My Mandriva 2008 system is humming along nicely, I will continue to use it at work.

Mint 4 is the main os I use at home and is installed on my kitchen pc. I use it for email, internet, bit torrent with deluge and burn cd's and dvd's with brasero.

I will continue to use Xandros on my EeePc until an alternate distro becomes final. I need this system to be operational since we are leaving for a holiday in Australia at the end of next month and I plan to use it while we are traveling.
Husse

Re: Recommendations for a secondary distro?

Post by Husse »

Somewhere along the road you wrote
Grub is something I could use some help with. My understanding is that each distro may install its own custom grub, like Mint. Both made themselves the default and applied their branding. Is it easy to make my own grub, or determine which I prefer?
About right (BTW don't use a separate boot partition if you intend to have a few distros - you can't share it)
Each distro installs its own /boot and thus grub. A well behaved distro (and in my experience there are not many outside the Ubuntu family in this respect) lists all the other distros too.
Now, you can use, say, Min's grub and have a default boot into Fedora or PCLOS or....
To understand this you need to know a bit about grub
It's divided into stage 1, 1.5 and 2
Stage one must (well you could chainload from something else) be in the MBR and can refer to any grub you find on the disk... (and chainload Windows)
And MBR is just the first 512 bytes of the disk...
This is what you choose when you repair grub
http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php ... _your_grub
Then you can edit menu.lst to your liking and get the Mint grub booting something else by default
Foomandoonian

Re: Recommendations for a secondary distro?

Post by Foomandoonian »

Thanks for the Grub info Husse. That's just what I need to get started :)
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