Which distro should i choose?

FrostedNipple

FrostedNipple

FrostedNipple

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Now i know if i ask what the best distro is, there will be uproar! So what are the main contenders.

Also, how much disk space should i be allowing for it, i will only be using to play about with and maybe do some coding if i get round to it!

Must be sata compatible, I've had issues with this in versions of fedora core 4, so quite a while ago
 
5 gigs should be plenty of space for most distros. Some people go overboard on the sizes of swap partitions they create. If you have 2 GiB RAM then 512-1024 MiB swap should be plenty since it almost never gets used. You should try a few and see what you like best. The short list of contenders IMO is:
Ubuntu
Open SuSE
Fedora 8

For the more adventurous:
Gentoo
Arch
Debian Stable
 
I swear I am gonna write a post for the sticky on this over Christmas- just something going through the 10 or so most popular distros and who/ what they are most suited to... Might stop us seeing these questions over and over again :)
 
Gentoo. Anything else is just too easy. Get the small CD, download and compile what you need using the package tools.

Brilliant, fast and stable and you only get what you need rather than 4GB of crap that you get with the big distros.
 
Bear in mind you have to compile everything manually for Gentoo (Not always easy and can be painful if it goes wrong). Arch is very similar to Gentoo- tiny, and no bloat, but is precompiled for x86. A tiny bit slower, and a lot less painful.
 
Bes said:
Bear in mind you have to compile everything manually for Gentoo (Not always easy and can be painful if it goes wrong). Arch is very similar to Gentoo- tiny, and no bloat, but is precompiled for x86. A tiny bit slower, and a lot less painful.
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But Gentoo will help you learn Linux! Fixing stuff is how you figure out how it works... ;)
 
LordSplodge said:
But Gentoo will help you learn Linux! Fixing stuff is how you figure out how it works... ;)
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That might be true, but he may never get to the stage of fixing anything if he has to do every little thing himself.

Gentoo is fine if you are already comfortable with the command line.
 
Yeah Gentoo is not one to jump into if you are not already au fait with Linux, as if it goes wrong, the experience will probably put you off for a fair while.

By all means, it's a great choice for the Linux buffs out there, but only when you really know what you're doing ;)
 
Suggesting new users use Gentoo is pure craziness and bad for the wider acceptance of linux. As Bes says, it's only likely to scare new users off linux completely.

Install ubuntu. Once you feel familiar with it, if you want to experiment with other distro's then go ahead but expect days of frustration when 'nothing just works' (tm). Honestly, ubuntu is the best thing to ever happen to linux. It's easy to use, has a fair amount of polish, wide compatability. New users do not want to spend days on the command line trying to get their first linux distro to work.

Computer geeks always want to be counter culture and that's fine, but let's not inadvertantly damage linux acceptance through your own preferences.
 
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Right, well I'm running a live version of Ubuntu, its different! I wouldn't ditch xp for it, so it definitely going to be dual-booting! Other than just mucking about in Linux, what else can i utilize it for?

edit - back on windows, found a program called disk director, it has re-partitioned my c-drive, so now i have another 2 5Gb drives, of which one will house Ubuntu, and the other Suse :) they are both gnome variants, am i able to download the kde as well as? i assume i can, being it Linux and unstoppable by nothing :p
 
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5gb per operating system is really too little and there's really no point in installing two distros at the same time.
 
FrostedNillpe said:
one will house Ubuntu, and the other Suse :) they are both gnome variants, am i able to download the kde as well as?
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Ubuntu is gnome; but openSuSE is KDE by default.

Even if it was, you can easily install any other DE / WM from the distro repositories.... but if you want kde and not gnome, use kubuntu, not ubuntu.

personally, i prefer kde, fluxbox and enlightenment.
 
likwid said:
5gb per operating system is really too little and there's really no point in installing two distros at the same time.
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for a / partition it's not (well maybe not for SuSE and ubuntu)

If he has a third partition; he can then mount it as root in both distros... or... have a home drive which he can keep (albeit a very small home drive - but it will have all his dot files) when/if he decides to change to a different distro.
 
=walls= said:
for a / partition it's not (well maybe not for SuSE and ubuntu)

If he has a third partition; he can then mount it as root in both distros... or... have a home drive which he can keep (albeit a very small home drive - but it will have all his dot files) when/if he decides to change to a different distro.
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Arrgh :mad:
Mounting a single partition as root for two different distros is an extremely bad idea to say the least.
You can probably get away with using a partition as /home for two different distros, but again I'd strongly advise against it. If you're using two different distros, its better to have a nominal /home in each distro (For config files only basically) & store anything useful elsewhere, otherwise you can and will get conflicts between the different distros config files. Its not so bad if you're simply migrating between distros, but with two installed and booting I'd avoid this setup.

5gb per distro will do, but don't expect to fit huge amounts of stuff in, but different distros install different amounts of bloat.

-Leezer-
 
Ok, where is Firefox installed in suse, so i can install the flash plug in, also, I'm trying to install my gfx card drivers and i have not a clue what I'm doing, help there would be nice then i can get out of this ghastly 1024x768 res and back to a decent 1600x1200 :p :)
 
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