To many distros to choose from.

[Nikolai]

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.

 

[Nikolai]

Thanks, I'll give those links a look and see how things go.

Maybe I'll find something that is a bit more like Win7 in UI.

 

[Nikolai]

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.

 

[Nikolai]

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.