Your thoughts on where to start??

I've just ordered a new laptop which will have Vista pre-installed (of course) on it. I can't stand vista at all, and refuse to upgrade from XP until Windows 7 at earliest. I had planned from the start to duel boot this laptop with a distribution of Linux and probably a fresh install of XP (you never know, i might stick all 3 on there).

I'm a relative newbie to Linux, but when i was back home over the summer i salvaged bits of computer lying around in my mums office and built a small computer to try out Ubuntu after reading around and hearing good things. I loved it and figured it all out pretty quickly - i wish windows had a command line!!

After reading around on Linux distros I'm so lost i can't decide which way to go. They might not all work successfully with the laptop either, you never know, but i don't know which is more likely or which is better for me. I'm thinking either the latest release of Ubuntu, Mandriva or Fedora (at the moment, that's my order of preference)

I'll be using my laptop for Gaming (hence the windows XP/Vista in the dual boot for anything i can't run on Wine or GameOnLinux), GIMPing, Perhaps some video/audio editing, word processing/spreadsheets/powerpoints, net surfing.

I like totally customisable, and i like completely useless but oh-so-stylish desktop effects like burning windows and (very useful!) desktop squares.

Which distribution do you think i should attempt first, and which would be more likely to work on a laptop with the following specs

Refurbed Toshiba P300

Processor Type: Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 (3mb L2 cache 1066 MHz FSB)
Processor Speed: 2.26 GHz
RAM Size: 4 GB (DDR II SDRAM)
Hard Drive Capacity: 2x250 GB
Screen Size: 17"
Optical Drive: DVDRW
Graphics: Radeon HD3650 (Dx 10.1, shader 4.1)


What would you do? Which distro to pick? Keep vista or back to XP? All of the above? I'd love to hear any thoughts or probing questions you have.

 

You might have to do some work to get that ATi card working but beyond that things should work perfectly. I would recommend using XP for gaming as it would give you better performance but some newer games only support vista so it's up to you to decide which games you like playing. I suggest you use Ubuntu 9.04 x64.

 

You could get three CDs, live cd each of them distributions trying to change stuff and keep the one that you get more confortable with and which adapts better to your system.

As for my humble opinion, i take Ubuntu over Fedora. It was easier to me to get used with Ubuntu. I once tried to change it for Fedora: fail.
Haven't tried Mandriva lastest version (i have a small dislike for it as the only version of it i ever tried, 2008 or something, was too gayish with stars everywhere) so i can't talk about it myself.

When you think you are already confortable enough or want some good learning adventure, try Arch Linux! It's unlikely you would want to look back after doing so.

 

I second Enunes comments above in relation to trying your three options, but ultimately I prefer Ubuntu also.

Never tried Arch Linux...might look into that.

 

I like all three you mentioned, but I would start out with Ubuntu 9.04 x64 and just dual boot it with Vista if it were me, but that's up to you for a triple boot.

 

I've tried a ton of distros but I keep coming back to Ubuntu. You can always try Kubuntu if you want something a little different.

You can also wait a few weeks for Mint 7 which is based on Ubuntu 9.04.

 

I've had a good experience with Xubuntu, so far. It was easy to install for me, saw all of my hardware off the bat, and got me up and running in a couple of hours (slow hardware). Ubuntu is similar and it seems to be a good choice for us beginners.

There was a nice article on Techradar.com on Sunday comparing the top distributions. Every Linux distribution I've heard of will run on your specs.

By the way, I don't in any way want to encourage you to use Windows, I think Linux people are more interesting, but there is a command line in Vista. I used it once setting up a wiki on an office computer.

 

base on your hardware info given... although less wireless card details...
i can say that your gear can work well with majority of the distros available out there...
from the minimal puppy to the full sized .deb or .rpm linux

but you may need to decide for yourself, which one do you think maybe good for you? base on the popularity of the distro as well as people you know who can offer you further advise on commands and tricks to bring the best out from your user experience.

by looking again at your gear specs, i would say that the desktop working environment lightweights such as XFCE, FluxBox, OpenBox might be a little too light. your gear should be able to work much well with Gnome or KDE with addition of compiz visual effects.

so i will be neutral here... i wont really direct you to go straight to particular xxx-buntu or fedxxxxras or manxxxvas or any other you will come across.

I will suggest that you should try out the different distros available without further making any change to your pre-installed o.s...then decide on the final one...

 

Ubuntu 9.04 for the win!! I'm dual-booting Windows Xp Pro with it and so far it is working out great!

 

Wait... Windows does have a command line, doesn't it?

 

Your hard drive is big enough to have more than one distro so it's not unreasonable to try more than one distro. I would partition so you have 4 operating systems or use VirtualBox.

I would install:
XP
Debian Testing or Sid
K/Ubuntu
Fedora

The reason of using both Debian and K/Ubuntu is that Ubuntu is based on Debian so there will be many crossover or similarities although it is claimed that Ubuntu is a major fork of Debian but there is enough similar that you can apply knowledge of one towards the other. Ubuntu makes some rather irritating changes to root (sudo) but one can adjust.

I tend not to advocate other 'different' distros like Arch or other rpm-based distros as much because then you are then required to re-learn a totally different system and if you go to rpm distros, you might as well just use Fedora but that's just me.

Debian is good because although it might not be noob-oriented, it forces you to learn Liinux and it is straightforward and gives you a wide variety of packages and software. You can read solutions from Debian forums as well as Ubuntu ones.

I have the above distros installed on my main machine. I'm not using Sid though but I have sidux installed on another partition. So, you see, you can apply knowledge of one towards others as they're all based on Debian (except for Fedora). You're not able to do that to the same extent with Arch, for e.g., although Linux knowledge in general helps of course. Just my two cents...

 

Yes. In some obsolete case, you may need to use the "Windows Terminal" for command line input. But if you check/ask around, very few Windows users you know will actually bother to use that command input in tweaking system performance.

Linux is a little different, and i mean very little.
If you're(no get mistaken... this does not mean directly to you...pixelot) the kind of person who is quite comfortable of what have been pre-packed in the distro which later installed to your system, you'll most probably find that you don't really need to access the Linux Terminal too often to tweak your system that much.

This is also a reason why, when you try to tell/share your experience with non-Linux/Unix users, misconception is already brewing in their mind that "Linux is so troublesome...commands and conquers? what's that?"

 

haha yes indeed winblows does have a command line but try an rm -rf command and it will surely bark at you!

to the less than novice avid linux users, i suggest Gentoo, bleeding edge, but extremely reliable and a real joy to install. and portage is simply amazing =D

i ALWAYS install from a minimal disk which installs a kernel nothing more nothing less, then you 'emerge' (install) what packages you wish from there.

it is the ultimate 'build it yourself' linux, but you can download liveCDs of whichever arch you prefer and install a complete system as well.

i deploy many servers a day with gentoo which is why i only use a minimal CD. its faster and it gives NO bloatware =D

happy nixing =D

 

3D will not work out of the box with the 3650 (or any 6xx/7xx ATI cards), but the open source radeon driver that comes with Ubuntu is actually much better than fglrx (the proprietary driver) when it comes to video playback and other 2D operations. Much less tearing when I play HD video with that than with fglrx. The only reason you want to use fglrx is for 3D.

 

Yep, you don't have to use the Linux command line any more than the Windows command line, or at least there is not a whole lot of variance. But I find that I do use the Windows command line frequently, especially for system tools that are otherwise buried or perhaps even only accessible via command line. In Linux, it may be the same way, but I actually use the terminal for more than I have to ... it makes me feel more powerful and geeky.

 

I'd go with fedora. I see its mostly *buntu fans here, but I prefer fedora over *buntu anytime . Not flaming, just MHO .

 

The command line isn't all THAT handy. It really only comes in handy when running scripts.

I agree with much of the consensus. Ubuntu is by far the easiest to start with. Argueably, the Debian distros like Ubuntu are easier to use. That being said, I prefer Fedora. Most of my friends run it, so it's more of a "everyone I know uses it."

 

Well, I use it for messing around with windows commands like ipconfig options, netsh, adjusting system restore space size, hibernation configuration ... just tweaking.