Which Linux Distro Are you?

Yes.

Seablade

Not in the least. My online handle predates that by many years(About 10 years IIRC).

Seablade

Yes.

Seablade

IN other words, throughout my life I have used a wide range of distributions. From Gentoo, to Debian, to Maemo, to eLive, to Ubuntu, to Suse, to... well you get the idea.

I suspect you will find similar of anyone that has used Linux for some time.

Seablade

As usual, you are correct Seablade. Almost anyone who has used Linux for any length of time has tried and switched many Distros over the course of years. I Started with RedHat, then switched to Mandrake (now Mandriva) when RH refused to carry KDE anymore because of the Trolltech QT licensing issue and forked, way back when. Then I switched to PCLOS when Mandrake got too conservative in its release schedule.

Then over the years I've tried SuSe, Storm, Debian and Ubuntu/Kubuntu. But for the last 7 plus years I've been running Gentoo. I've found a home with it and have no desire to run anything else. I made the switch from stable to unstable about a year ago and haven't looked back. I use the latest Sabayon for my arch as a rescue disc should I need one and always keep a recent copy PCLOS around to show others about the joy of Linux.

I still keep a small Windows XP partition and boot into it about once a month for updates. But I've found myself using it less and less, and never actually do any work in it. (I use it just for a few games that I haven't been able to get to work under Linux).

To the OP welcome to Linux, try it (Ubuntu) then try other Distros until you too find your home. Once you do you'll never look back!

Ciao

I used linux a lot back in 01...(SuSe) I need do a reinstall on a machine. I'd like to put it on a notebook and relearn it.

Steve, Linux has come a long way since '01. I think you'll find it more polished and easier to use then it was then. I run KDE as my desktop. It may be more of a resource hog then Gnome, but I love the uniformity and integration between the apps that Gnome has yet to master. You'll be shocked by how far it's come.

Give it a try, you won't regret it.

Ciao

I might just do that. I suspect you'll be around here if I need any help?

Sure I will, plus whatever Distro you decide will have an active forum of it's own.

Since it's been awhile since you last ran Linux I've got a few recommendations for you to try. The first would be PCLOS (PC Linux OS) it's an easily installed almost fool proof distro that resides entirely on a single CDROM. You can try it out there and if you like it and want to install, it takes about 10-20 mins to get up and running. It's based on a fork of Mandriva. It's feature rich and about the easiest Distro I've ever seen to use. It's repo though not as large as some others is growing. But has apps for any purpose you can imagine. And the devs there are real cool about adding things if you find something you want they don't have. It just works right out of the box. I use it as a rescue disc for Linux and Windows boxes (much like how years back we all used Knoppix).

The second would be Ubuntu /Kubuntu depending upon if you'd like to try KDE or Gnome. It's a Debian based distro. It's also easy to use and install and has one of the largest installed base in the world with very active help forums. The downside is that it's a commercial based distro that though based on Debian is not binary compatible with it. So you can't mix and match Debian and Ubuntu repositories. Since it is a business they take a more conservative approach. You aren't going to find the latest greatest there, but you will find stability and comfort in knowing that there is plenty of help available.

Third would be if you like something more daring and experimental. Sabayon, is a binary Distro based on the cutting edge Gentoo unstable (don't let that scare you) tree. No need to compile, as the binaries are already made for different CPU architectures. It comes on a bootable DVD which you can try for awhile, see if you like and if so, it too only takes less than a half hour to fully install. It's available in KDE or Gnome flavors. The beauty of it is its package manger entropy. Sabayon updates often, so you're never too far behind whatever the latest releases out there. With it you have the choice of running only the precompiled binaries from their repo or if you find something you like that's not there, you can grab directly from Gentoo's portage and compile yourself easily. Then later on down the road you can even convert to pure Gentoo if you want to completely customize your setup. I've introduced 2 friends to Linux using this route.

Try it you'll like it!

Ciao

So I could potentially run PCLOS off the CD-ROM? Like how Knoppix works?

Correct. You could also run Sabayon off a DVD, but since it's got a lot more on it, it's considerably slower than PCLOS.

If you just want to try and not install, download the PCLOS CDROM. You'll find a complete basic KDE installation as well as some high quality Multimedia apps and Diagnostic tools and all around troubleshooting utilities. Think of it as Knoppix on steroids with an easy graphical installer, should you decide to add it to your drive.

Edit: The Developer "Texstar" is a genius, he's taken the best tools from many different distros and crammed them on the CD. Example: Mandriva tools (he used to Dev there before he forked PCLOS) and hardware detection from Knoppix. He manages to cram over 2gigs compressed into the 700mb CDROM.

I recommend that you carefully examine the disc you use prior to burning to make sure it has no visible flaws, and burn at a fixed slow speed. I burn his discs no faster than 8x. Otherwise at a faster rate you may just end up with a coaster.

Here's the link: http://www.pclinuxos.com/

I hope this helps.

Ciao

You can't mix/match repositories. But I take it it still uses apt (apt-get/apt-get install) I always like Debian's packaging mechanism. Although it didn't seem as clear as Yum, it seemed like I got more things working out of the box.

I"m like Steve haven't really used any distributions on my primary PC for a while (mainly windows) except all ssh/console stuff for NBF which runs Red Hat now.

I've been seeing Ubuntu everywhere so I might dual boot. Has anybody tried Android on x86?

Android I wouldn't use for a general purpose computer personally. Remember Android is the Linux kernel(Customized) with the Dalvik Java VM, and that is about it. There are no GNU utilities installed, so it will be a very difference experience from a standard GNU distribution.

Seablade

Shaun as far as I know ALL Debian based distros use apt as a package manager. In fact many RPM based Distros are now using it too. For example PCLOS, which I recommended earlier in this thread, uses apt for package management and I believe Fedora now uses it too. Also, as an example of how far things have progressed over the years all of these Distros now incorporate at least one or more high quality GUI front-ends for apt. The most common and best supported being Synaptic.

This makes life a whole lot easier than it used to be. Just fire-up Synaptic and you can add or remove programs or repos, update them, do dist-updates or dist-upgrades without ever having to remember the old arcane apt commands. So it's easier than ever to keep your Linux Distro up to date and keep it rolling without needing to ever reinstall.

Linux, try it you'll like it!

Ciao

Did you mean Chromium OS? Someone has just succeeded in installing it on an ..... iPAD

cheers ...

I didn't know Chrome OS was available for download... where is that?