But here I would advise you to try Calculate Linux. It's also a quite good distro, flexible, stable... And it has wireless firmware on DVD, see [url=ftp://ftp.chg.ru/pub/Linux/calculate/CLDX/10.4/i686/cldx-10.4-i686.list]the i686 package list[/url].
The last version is Calculate Linux 10.4What is... Calculate Linux?
Calculate Linux is designed for small and medium businesses that prefer to use open-source instead of proprietary solutions. Calculate Directory Server can successfully replace Windows NT ® domain controller (Windows clients supported) and provides additional services that can be deployed in a matter of minutes: LDAP, Mail, Jabber and many others.
Calculate Linux Desktop is a complimentary solution for the Server and in concert they provide the important features like roaming profiles and centralized software deployment.
Calculate Linux is based on Gentoo that is well known for it's stability and great performance on a broad range of hardware: from Pentium Pro to modern CPUs.
Why make another distribution?
Most of the modern Linux distributions are intended for enthusiasts, except Novell SLES/SLED, Ubuntu and RedHat EL. But even using these solutions setting up a client/server environment could be tricky (especially when you need to use Windows and Linux clients). We created our own distribution to help other people who want to use GNU/Linux instead of proprietary OS for their business needs.
For the documentation, see the Calculate Linux Desktop Manuals. They advise an interesting general scheme of Disk partitioning:
Calculate Linux 10.4 XFCE (CLDX) runs very fine. Why are so few people using it? Cause it's Gentoo?General scheme
You can reinstall Calculate Linux without any parameters if your hard disk is partitioned in this way:
Code: Select all
/dev/sda1 swap /dev/sda2 10-20Gb Linux (/root) /dev/sda3 10-20Gb Linux (/root) /dev/sda4 Extended /dev/sda5 Linux (/home) ... (other disks and partitions)
If the system is booted from the sda2 partition then installer offers ''sda3'' and vice versa. Installer stores number of the partition which was used for installation and hereinafter it offers to perform the update in previous partition.
At desktop version of system the ''swap'' partition may be absent altogether at enough of operative memory (2 Gb and above). In this case the kernel will not use swap, intensive freeing memory.
Benefits of the general scheme
protectedness - user data being located on separate partition and never will be lost when system reinstalling;
free space - you always have free space on disk because the probability of space lack on the partition (at example /boot) minimized;
update of the system - you can update the system just from the system;
reliability - you always can boot previous system if newest works unstable.
CLDX (Calculate Linux Desktop) XFCE seems a flexible solution. Flash + codecs on the DVD.
P.S.= There are also two other versions with KDE and Gnome. All three are the same with just different desktops, I guess. But personally, I'm just interested with XFCE because I hate Gnome 3 and KDE 4.
P.S. 2= Before someone mention Sabayon as a possible Gentoo distro, I make just a quote:
P.S. 3= I forgot. You don't need to re-install at every new release as some:"slow like molasses" is a perfect description of Sabayon's Entropy/Spritz. But Sabayon's DVD is bloated, Calculate's is not.
(Quote from the Calculate site)Update
You can upgrade previous version of Calculate Linux in two ways:
1. Download ISO-image into directory /usr/calculate/share/linux and execute command calculate -d /dev/sdaX, with indicating installation partition. In this case, the installation will take 5-7 minutes, most settings will be transferred.
2. Update packages with emerge utility.
