Linux and Other free OS's

[Clavin12]

Lately I've been experimenting with Linux and such on my laptop with no HD. The hard drive broke and I had to get a new one but it hasn't come in yet. But I'm not disappointed for the hard drive (and older one) had a infinitesimal 4 GB. Anyway what I'd like to know is if there is anyone an here with experience with Linux and/or BSD. Until then I suppose this can be the thread for talking about Linux (or other free operating systems).

[sabrebattletank]

I have power user experience with Ubuntu.

[sabrebattletank]

I've heard good things about the new ubuntu -- GET IT.

I'm going to get it once I get my hard drive situation set up properly.

[Clavin12]

What hard drive situation might that be?

[sabrebattletank]

I want to boot off of a windows 7/linux drive -- and my drive has some OS backups and such that take a couple of partitions, and since you can't have more than 5 partitions per drive (is that true? that's what i've heard,) i don't want to have my one drive that complicated. It's also for my own purposes in how I want to think about it. Not sure if that makes sense.

[Raven]

My laptop triboots OS X, Windows XP (soon to be 7 when my college gets it) and Ubuntu.
Desktop machine is just Ubuntu (fileserver, proxy server etc etc)
And I love it.

Not ran into any issues with it on my laptop; all drivers working (even the webcam and keyboard lights!,) games run through Wine pretty darn nicely too; Eve @ 80FPS, everything high but with HDR OFF is puuurty damn fine by my standards. Though that was just a test, as Windows is what I use games for. And only games I might add; I can't stand the fail.

As far as aesthetics go, people seem to think that Linux = ugly, 98-like or completely text based. Really, REALLY untrue. If you're like me and you like shiny stuff and don't give a toss about your resource usage, install compiz and emerald. I'm sure you've seen the youtube videos on compiz. If not, do it. Any Linux distro is 100% customisable. Any colours, shapes, whatever - you can have it.
Infact, my aunt kept blowing her XP install up, so I put Ubuntu on it, made it look like XP (you can't actually tell the difference, theres even a start menu clone in the repositories) and she hasn't said a word aside from 'its so fast and I can't believe it hasn't broken again yet.' At least I won't be hearing from her again.

My desktop has a few issues with Ubuntu. It was hard to get ALSA (sound driver) working with my chipset and it hates USB headsets to this day. It also freaks if you pull the mouse out and should I have to do a hard reset it gets grub (boot loader) errors and often cannot see the hard drive. Though that isn't actually Ubuntu's fault; its some funky hardware thing since it isn't even picked up in BIOS.
It freezes now and then, which blows since then I have to hard reset... but thats guaranteed to be my fault as the installation is old and has been messed with to hell since its my 'test subject.'
I should probably start again and leave it nice and clean this time... Only issue is I don't have a spare 500gb hard drive to copy all my junk over to... *sigh*
ANYWAY, rambling there; bottom line is, none of those problems are apparent on my laptop as I haven't gone and screwed with a buttload of system files like I have on the desktop.

I highly recommend Ubuntu for newbies. Hell, I still use it now and I've been on Linux for what, 3 years now?
Arch is also pretty good. I briefly tried Gentoo but I think that hard drive (literally) exploded.

Ubuntu is pretty much all GUI based. However, certain tasks will probably need the terminal (command prompt.)
Grit your teeth and bare it. It isn't often required, and unless you're fixing something that went very wrong - it isn't complicated. 90% of the time that you would need to open the terminal is to open an 'explorer' window with root privileges so that you can screw with your system stuff like sound schemes and themes etc. "gksudo nautilus" isn't hard to remember is it?
Hell, if you're anything like me once you get the hang of it you'll do 90% of tasks in the terminal anyway - but its important to know that it isn't necessary.

Ubuntu - Linux for human beings is their slogan for a reason; its easier than Windows in most cases, 'cause it doesn't scream at you; "YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG, I'M GONNA DIE NOW!"

People always wave their e-dicks around with OSs and I don't know why; Windows vs OS X is the most obvious one.
People that use Linux do the exact same thing with the distros despite it being the same damn OS at heart. Its this generation's nature I guess; being a trolling retard.
Ubuntu is often criticised for 'being nooby' (actual quote.) True I guess, it really is usable for people that are 100% used to Windows - but where's the problem with that since it does what it does very well, and I haven't seen anything that another distro can do that it can't? Save for Redhat.

[sabrebattletank]

Linux Mint is also nice -- based off Ubuntu but made to look "elegant" (I think that was the word they used on their website).

[Zero Angel]

I've been using *buntu linux distros for about 4 years now, and mandriva before that -- and these are pretty decent distros for beginners. My favorite one had to have been Kubuntu 7.10, right before all the KDE linuxes started moving to the experimental and buggy KDE4 interface.

I just got a 1.5TB drive and will be multi-booting Windows XP, Windows 7, Chakra Linux (a fast KDE linux based on arch linux) and some other distro, maybe Fedora.

In ubuntu, you typically have to set a lot of things up like installing audio codecs, flash, 3D video drivers etc. Linux Mint is like ubuntu except they did all that stuff for you, as well it comes with a new theme and some other modifications. Linux Mint is pretty good if you like the GNOME Desktop environment (GNOME is like a customizable version and vastly improved version of windows 2000 environment, whereas KDE4 resembles windows 7 a little more) So if the user interface of Ubuntu or Linux Mint doesnt catch your fancy you might want to try Kubuntu or Linux Mint KDE.

I would suggest you wait awhile before installing ubuntu or Mint, for the very reason that a new version of ubuntu is scheduled to be released on October 29th, which improved bootup speeds and some other modifications which make things easier. The new linux mint will likely be released 1 month after the ubuntu release (Late November/Early December).

Also, check out this article
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/kdegnome

[Clavin12]

This is all very well but when trying to choose one its terribly confusing, although I think I like Linux Mint the best.

[sabrebattletank]

I personally only use Linux Mint or Ubuntu, so that's what I recommend. But you really can't go wrong -- or rather, it's difficult to go wrong with one of the big distros.

[Raven]

Oooo I like the sound of that Chakra. I will admit that I've been slightly swaying towards KDE over Gnome, but it does what I want it to do I guess.

[Clavin12]

Ok, so I've got my hard drive with no partitions or anything and am trying to partition it. I intend to put a minimalist OS on it first and then through that install a bigger one. Any recommendations on minimalist Operating Systems?

[sabrebattletank]

There are a couple minimalist lini -- Damn Small Linux and Puppy Linux jump to the top of my mind. Not sure which to recommend though.

[Zero Angel]

No recommendations on the minimalist OS's, but I do know you can use the gnome partition editor (gparted) on any linux liveCD to partition your drive however you want prior to installing something. I recommend allocating about 40GB for all normal linux installs (30GB to a minimalist linux), 100GB to windows, and the remainder to a shared files partition (NTFS), for your media and some of your programs. The shared media install will allow you to preserve your shared files if your linux or windows installs ever gets wiped.

[Clavin12]

Nvm I found something. Ever seen this?- http://www.linuxlinks.com/Distributions/Mini_Distributions/