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Drift
03-16-2010, 09:48 PM
So currently at work I'm using openSUSE 11.2 which I find quite nice, does what I need it to do. And I want to start using it at home (dual-booting win7 and linux) but question is do I stick with openSUSE or is Ubuntu better? Or do you recommend some other unix build (I'd prefer if it was simple and I dont need to do manual updates - YAST tells me when important updates needs to be done).

Although I'll probably dual-boot my home PC I'll probably stick linux on a laptop as well so laptop friendly would be nice.

o_O
03-17-2010, 11:46 PM
If you want the most hardware-friendly distro, Ubuntu is your best choice. Pretty much your main choices are Debian, Ubuntu, SuSE and Fedora. There are also a range of smaller distributions like Arch and Puppy, etc. Then if you wanted to get your hands dirty with a bit more of a hands-on distro you have choices like Gentoo and Slackware.

Since you're after ease of use, the only one I'd recommend is Ubuntu, 'cos it's a lot more user-friendly than any of the others. It's good to use a bunch of different distributions though; it'll teach you about the underlying structure of Linux a lot more thoroughly than just sticking to one.

As for laptop-friendly distros, Ubuntu is definitely your best bet there, 'cos of the excellent hardware support. I also have a feeling Ubuntu has gotten rid of HAL in favour of udev + DeviceKit, which should lead to better hardware support.

Flying Mullet
03-18-2010, 01:27 PM
Last year I was running an XP/Ubuntu dual boot on my laptop so I could do school work on Ubuntu and I was very pleased with it.

bipper
03-18-2010, 05:02 PM
I started with slackware, and love it to this day. I never seen it as elitist, or more hands on. It took me a while to get more into 'package mangers' but now, I just cannot put the ubuntu down. As crappy as the documentation on so many packages is, they still do the trick - quickly, and easily.

If I was starting fresh, it would be with Ubunutu for sure. I also <3 KDE.

Drift
03-18-2010, 10:42 PM
Never tried KDE, I've just left it to GNOME, what about xfce?

bipper
03-19-2010, 12:08 AM
XFCE is just as well. Something about gnome pisses me off in the nether regions. The general look and feel of KDE are just <3 though.

I believe Kubuntu installs with KDE, amirite? Never did get it installed anywhere.

o_O
03-19-2010, 12:27 AM
Slackware's very transparent as far as distros go, which I like and used for a year or so. There's no package manager (well, I don't reckon it can be called one), so you have to do a lot of dependency resolution but you have so much control over pretty much everything in the system. System files (initscripts, etc.) are all intuitively named and located, unlike some of the more user-friendly distros (like Ubuntu :p) so you can quickly learn a very large amount about *nix from it.

I used XFCE for about 3 years and I still really enjoy it, but my favourite window manager by far is Fluxbox. The reason I used XFCE for so long is because it's the most similar desktop environment to Fluxbox which can still be used with AIGLX/XGL/Compiz/Compiz-fusion/whatever they're calling it these days.

KDE looks nice and comes with a huge library of apps, but over the years I've gotten more fond of things which make better use or system resources, and let's face it, KDE does not. Plus, sitting there on a single core CPU running Gentoo, you do NOT want to have to compile KDE. :p I like the simplicity of Gnome, but there's something about it that I get bored of very quickly. It's easy on the CPU and memory though, which I like. The cool thing about Linux is that if you don't like one WM/DE, then you can easily change to another. I recommend checking out e17, ratpoison, Fluxbox/[whatever]box, XFCE, KDE and Gnome and choosing the one you like best. Then you can always consider Compiz-fusion, which won't run with a window manager like ratpoison/flux; and needs a desktop environment like XFCE/KDE.

And Kubuntu = KDE; Ubuntu = Gnome; Xubuntu = XFCE; Fluxbuntu = Fluxbox (this last one was unofficial for many years; may still be).

bipper
03-22-2010, 11:49 PM
Your insights and user experience is awesome o_0

b1o
03-23-2010, 03:30 AM
I recomend the same, start with ubuntu, try different distros download a server version without desktop environments to get the feel of the shell commands, and stick with the distro you like best after that, personally i hate KDE to windowslike for me (might be what you're searching for). gnome's fast and reliable, i use ubuntu myself propably gonna change to gentoo(stage 1 install) but it crashes with my IT/IS Studies at school.

Would be a lot easier if i could compress time like i can with files :)

Drift
04-08-2010, 09:58 AM
So I bought a netbook a couple days back an Asus 1001HA.

Has anyone tried moblin? i've tried UNR with a XFCE interface and its ok but ubuntu doesnt really have root. So my fallback is openSUSE, however it seems moblin is built on openSUSE and it looks nice but has anyone used it?

kotora
04-08-2010, 12:44 PM
I didn't really like openSUSE. The whole settings menu thing was too vague for me, reminded me of Windows. So that's ubuntu for me.

Couldn't get moblin to work in my mom's netbook. The ubuntu netbook remix was way too slow, and so was xubuntu so I installed puppy linux on it. It's only like 100 mb and it's super fast.