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Choosing A Linux Distro for Me
By Skip
Created: Friday, January 09, 2004, 16:00:31 MST
I'm in search of a better Linux distribution for home use. I've been encouraged by some things I've read recently. A handful of recent articles about Debian-based distributions has piqued my curiosity.
My first experience with a Debian-based distro was with Knoppix. Talk about an eye-opening experience. Knoppix is THE BEST Linux distro that I've tried thus far on my home system. The automatic hardware detection is unsurpassed and the program selection is great. My only real beef has been with being able to use my CDRW after Knoppix loads. But things like office software, utilities, networking, modem, and niceties like menu transparency all work 'out-of-the-box'. My jaw literally dropped to the floor when I saw it come up for the first time. And it's non-intrusive, so I feel comfortable taking it anywhere to show to friends and family. I have never taken the plunge, however, of installing it to the harddrive, for fear that I would lose my personal data.
Some other distros that I've seen reviews of lately are Lindows 4.5 (1,2) and Libranet (1). Over the Christmas holiday, Lindows was offering a free version of their LindowsCD, a live-cd version of their OS. I've ordered a copy of it and look forward to trying it out to see if it will properly detect and setup on my hardware. Libranet has a pay-for version, 2.8.1, and free download version, 2.7 (distrowatch). I'm toying with the idea of trying the download version because the reviews report that you can use apt-get to update and upgrade the installation. I'm also excited to try the adminmenu that comes with Libranet.
Anyway, what got me started on this is that I don't feel like RH 9 is doing everything for me. I'd like to try and find a distro that is a bit more friendly, usable, upgradable, modifiable, basically, easier to use and maintain. My goals are to have it do the basics: OpenOffice, abiword, gnumeric, gnucash, mozilla*bird, KDE, Gnome, internet connection using my modem, CDRW, and programming. In addition, I'd like it to also sync with my palm in a useful fashion, scan using my parallel connected mustek scanner (not likely without community support), detect my GF2 GTS card and use gl capable drivers (which is painfully slow to start using the nvidia drivers), and just work without excessive tweaking being necessary.
Red Hat 9 came close, closer than any other distro I've installed before. Maybe I'll give Mandrake 10 a try when it's finalized and been out long enough to smooth out the rough spots.
I'm very excited about trying LindowsCD when it comes. And I'm going to give Libranet a try one of these days too. Now, if I only had about 10 GB free somewhere to save a backup of all my data before trying a new installation... Maybe I can get a harddrive from someone...
