My Linux distro history
I started using Linux in October 2006 after having read E. Raymond's book 'The Cathedral and The Bazaar'. I started with Mandrake 7.0 (on sale at Best Buy). It was OK and I upgraded when the next release became available. I found that Mandrake was not as stable as I wanted and there were not many books available so eventually I switched to Red Hat and stayed with it for several years.
When Red Hat pulled out of the consumer market I switched to Fedora and this worked fine for me.
As time went by, I became concerned about the increasingly large memory foot print that Fedora was taking since my main computer had a max of 256 meg of main memory. I did try other distros such as Knoppix and Puppy Linux on spare computers I had, but since I was not having any problems with Fedora, I stuck with it.
In 2006 I got a Toshiba laptop and started looking for a distro that would work well with it. The Fedora hardware detection was not too good so I tried some other distros.
Knoppix worked well but the process for updating was a bit hazy. Puppy Linux worked very well but was a bit sparse for my tasts. Vector Linux worked really well, but since it is Slackware based it is a bit ouside of the mainsteam. I then tried Simply Mepis (pre its switch to being Ubuntu based) and it worked really well also. With all of these distros I had to use ndiswrapper to get my wifi card working - not a hard thing to do but a bit of a pain.
I then tried Ubuntu (dapper Drake ) and it detected all my hardware, set up my wifi card and worked without a flaw - I was hooked. I had been a KDE user from the start so I installed KDE (i.e. made of it into Kubuntu). Because of all the commentary on GNOME, I gave it a try for a while, but I found it buggy compared to KDE. A few months ago I decided to try XFCE because of an article I had read and I really liked it as a desktop manager. It is much more light weight than KDE or GNOME and requires only 128 meg v.s. the 256 meg KDE and GNOME need. It does not have all the wiz-bang features that GNOME and KDE have, bu has everything I need or want. Since I have KDE and GNOME also installed (as well as Windows XP - dual boot) I can run my favorite GNOME and KDE programs such as korganizer), but I like the simplicity of XFCE.
If I were asked to recommend a Linux distro I would recommend:
1) UBUNTU - easiest to work with. Debian based with good support and a first rate repository system. There are good books and a lot of on line information.
2 Mepis or Vector Linux work nearly as well as UBUNTU and should be given a try.
3) Freespire/linspire - good multi-media support but a bit sluggish.
4 Knoppix - easy to install and maintain. Everyone should have a copy of Knoppix to use as a rescue disk. It's the 'gold standard' of Live cd's and has great hardware detection.
5) Puppy Linux for older, under powered machines. Has a good set of desktop, personal productivity software and a very active community.
When Red Hat pulled out of the consumer market I switched to Fedora and this worked fine for me.
As time went by, I became concerned about the increasingly large memory foot print that Fedora was taking since my main computer had a max of 256 meg of main memory. I did try other distros such as Knoppix and Puppy Linux on spare computers I had, but since I was not having any problems with Fedora, I stuck with it.
In 2006 I got a Toshiba laptop and started looking for a distro that would work well with it. The Fedora hardware detection was not too good so I tried some other distros.
Knoppix worked well but the process for updating was a bit hazy. Puppy Linux worked very well but was a bit sparse for my tasts. Vector Linux worked really well, but since it is Slackware based it is a bit ouside of the mainsteam. I then tried Simply Mepis (pre its switch to being Ubuntu based) and it worked really well also. With all of these distros I had to use ndiswrapper to get my wifi card working - not a hard thing to do but a bit of a pain.
I then tried Ubuntu (dapper Drake ) and it detected all my hardware, set up my wifi card and worked without a flaw - I was hooked. I had been a KDE user from the start so I installed KDE (i.e. made of it into Kubuntu). Because of all the commentary on GNOME, I gave it a try for a while, but I found it buggy compared to KDE. A few months ago I decided to try XFCE because of an article I had read and I really liked it as a desktop manager. It is much more light weight than KDE or GNOME and requires only 128 meg v.s. the 256 meg KDE and GNOME need. It does not have all the wiz-bang features that GNOME and KDE have, bu has everything I need or want. Since I have KDE and GNOME also installed (as well as Windows XP - dual boot) I can run my favorite GNOME and KDE programs such as korganizer), but I like the simplicity of XFCE.
If I were asked to recommend a Linux distro I would recommend:
1) UBUNTU - easiest to work with. Debian based with good support and a first rate repository system. There are good books and a lot of on line information.
2 Mepis or Vector Linux work nearly as well as UBUNTU and should be given a try.
3) Freespire/linspire - good multi-media support but a bit sluggish.
4 Knoppix - easy to install and maintain. Everyone should have a copy of Knoppix to use as a rescue disk. It's the 'gold standard' of Live cd's and has great hardware detection.
5) Puppy Linux for older, under powered machines. Has a good set of desktop, personal productivity software and a very active community.
posted by konstantine at 10:23 AM
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