To many distros to choose from.

Nikolai

Nikolai

Nikolai

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Joined
21 Apr 2012
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82
Location
West Midlands
I have obtained an old laptop from my parents. I am going to give it a full format and I would like to install Linux on it.

I understand that Ubuntu is rather bloated?
There is Kubuntu which looks alright from what I can see.
There is Fedora and Mint and well I've had a look at distrowatch.com that makes things a little more confusing, there are so many of the things.

My biggest problem is I am not sure what I would like to do with it other then I would like to experience a different OS. I have just installed Win8 on my own laptop... that is an experience that I am currently getting used to, its not quite as bad as expected.

Another thing I would like is possibly a decent IDE, I use Visual Studio as I mainly do C# though I am considering having a look into Java and do a bit more C++ once I get around to it. I am not sure if C# works on non-Microsoft stuff. But I know C and C++ work just fine.

I will not be doing gaming on the laptop.

It looks like it has 2GB RAM, 1.8GHz Duo Core Intel CPU (no idea what) and an ATI Radeon Xpress 200M Series (I think).

So it should run just about any OS with out to many issues. I has Win7 at the mo.

Thanks.
 
How about Mint which is ubuntu/debian based with either cinnamon or mate and for development either eclipse (java and c) or for c# try wine with visual studio or mono.
 
Mint 14 with Cinnamon looks really slick. I gave Kubuntu a go last night, it does what is needed, but it feels like it is missing something that I can't quite put my finger on.

Ubuntu it self does not look that bad, slightly over the top, but looks nice enough. I looked at it via the online tour on the website.

Eclipse does look like a good option, now to pick a package to go with it and it should be alright, but a fair bit more exploring to do.

I saw on another forum that some people get rather annoyed when this "what distro is asked", when I started looking into this and saw that list on distrowatch my head went into a spin that there was actually so much choice out there. From the looks of it, there are many that look very similar with just about the same features. Is there something that I am missing here?

I think I'll give the 64bit a go, though since that laptop has only 2GB RAM would it make much diff? I know for dev stuff 64 is supposed to be better over all.
 
Just been playing around with some distro's as well today, really like Mint 14 with Cinnamon so I'm going to play with it in vmware for a few days.

This guy has some really good distro reviews on his account, maybe worth watching some to get a feel for the differences.

Youtube InfinitelyGalactic
 
Thanks DanF, that link is rather helpful.

I downloaded Mint 14 with Cinnamon 64 bit, but the processor in that laptop does not support it. So I am going to have try again with a new download. going to see if I can get away without having to put it onto disk.
 
im the opposite way about. i game on my laptop and just have my pc as a sort of media center. Last year before i had the laptop, i had a go with ubuntu. i loved it! But found it annoying switching between OS's when gaming on windows and using ubuntu for everything else. So i came back to windows and even went as far as getting windows 8. But im not too keen on windows 8. But with ubuntu coming out for phones shortly and the fact i game on the lappy, Ubuntu will be going back on it. In a sad way im quite excited haha.

I bounce back and forth from windows and linux and its always great seeing how much it changes. Its come a very long way since i first seen it. With steam muscling its way in, we have some very exciting times ahead.
 
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