Computers Alternative OSes for the PC

I'm a big linux fan (as saberj2k knows). I have 4 flavours of linux on my HD right now, so I am actually hex booting, choosing at start up whether I want to run win98SE, win2k3, Debian Sarge, Mandrake 9.2, Gentoo or Debian Sid

A few others have been on there at one time or another. The easiest one to install I found to be Xandros. I've wanted to try Xandros 2.0 for a while now, it's a really good first distro if you want to cough up a little cash (far far less than for windows) Mandrake is also good for beginners, and free (though you will learn the meaning of a stuffed and bloated start menu).

Debian is my favourite right now for the ease with which you can upgrade or update individual packages. Gentoo's nice, as it stays a bit more current than Debian, but I miss the control that debian's package management gives you. (example: I don't want all of KDE multimedia but with gentoo's portage you get it all as one lump. in Debian, I can pick and choose which programs I want) Actually, Gentoo is pretty good that way for everything but KDE lol

I would use FreeBSD, but I don't like it when an OS will only run on a primary partition. I guess I could kick win98 off of it lol. (just changed that sentence from "could boot win98 off it" because that's what I already do )

 

I don't use Linux meself, cause, well, I don't have the skillz. I'd love to, but just looking at linux makes my head spin at the moment. But I have seen 1 or 2 in operation that aren't mentioned on that list. The 2 that I can think of are specialised to only 1 or 2 purposes.

Knoppix STD: This one is geared toward watching network traffic, and seeing what people are up to on their pc's on whatever network your plugged into. You can have it set up so that when whatever pc your checking on opens up a webpage, it comes up on your screen as well. It comes with programs like etherape and I have to say, seeing etherape react to ms blastor is scary as ****.

Fluxbox: This one is basically just an entertainment distro. You can load the whole OS onto a credit card cd. You pop it into the pc when you turn it on, and it boots from cd. You can then access your hard disk or any network your on from the OS on the disk, change backgrounds, the whole lot. If you need to get a file of a disk, you can take out the disc fluxbox is on, and put in any other disc after wards, as the OS loads into the RAM.

All I can remember at the moment.

 

ah yes, I forgot. Good old regular Knoppix is nice to check out linux. It runs off the CD and makes no changes to your drive so you can see if you like it. Just keep in mind that it runs a bit slower as everything needs to be loaded from the CD. it can be installed to the hard drive if you like it though.

And Fluxbox is a window manager, not a distro.. It can be used with just about any distro, I think I have it as a choice on my Mandrake install, so I can go for KDE, or Fluxbox if I want a few more resources available. I wonder which distro Son of Battls is referring to.. sounds a bit like Knoppix too hehe. I think Knoppix has an option to use Fluxbox

 

You'd be the expert here mate, not me. I thought they were both distro's. If they're not, sorry, like I said, no skillz in linux at all. Mac and Windows are about as much as i'm good at.

 

I dual-boot with RedHat Linux and Windows 2000 Pro (by far the best Windows OS. If you disagree with me, you're wrong). The only reason why I dual-boot is because I don't feel like going through the trouble of using Wine and WineX to get my programs and games to work. If it weren't for that, I'd switch over to RedHat Linux, simply because RedHat owns Windows 2000 Pro.

If you ever want to try Linux, but are afraid of getting a difficult distro, try Mandrake Linux. I consider it the Windows-version of Linux, as it's very simple to use.

 

And I'd take win2003 over XP.. One particular game I play always got higher framerates in 98 than in XP, but when I tried it out in 2003, it got higher framerates than 98. Whee! Haven't tried it in 2000 though so I can't really compare. That's only framerate in one game of course, but I like 2003. Trimmed down and works with XP drivers most of the time, so I don't have to be one of those poor win2000 owners with horrid Creative driver support.

I forgot to mention Mandrake as a recommendation. Xandros is dead easy, but costs money. Mandrake is probably the easiest first time distro that you can pick up (legally) for free.

Dependency hell isn't so bad with debian (apt-get is lovely). Mandrake is moving that way with URPMI or even apt-rpm, though I'm not as familiar with it. Bottom line: as long as someone has made a package for debian or mandrake, installing it should be pretty easy. Things get a little harder when no one has though, then you get to try out ./configure, make, make install
I actually replace that last line with "make checkinstall" though. This lets you make a package out of your compiled binaries that you can then install, store, and uninstall much easier than hunting around for all the places "make install" dumps stuff Check it out.