On Mon, 5 Dec 2005, cbeerse@gmail.com wrote:
Steve Jacobs wrote:
Over the past few years I've tried TurboLinux (long time ago), several Rad Hats, a couple of Mandrakes, and over the last couple of years, I've used Suse 8, 9, and now 10.
I like Suse a lot, and have had more success getting things working the way I like than I experienced previously.
A couple of weeks ago, a client asked me to install Knoppix on an old Thinkpad for his 13 year-old daughter. The Thinkpad was a P2-400, with 64Mb RAM, and seemed to be surprisingly responsive with Knoppix (v3.9).
I installed a full GUI, and the machine seemed comparable to my Pentium 4 laptop with 512Mb, running Suse 10.
Prior to the Knoppix install, I'd only ever used RPM distros, and only ever used Knoppix booting from CD.
Is Knoppix's speed due to it's Debian-ness? Is it using a different, lighter desktop mgr (ie, not Gnome or KDE) ?
Recently I peeked at Ubuntu. It comes (for free as in free-beer!:) on a CD. If you politely ask for it on the website http://www.ubuntu.com/. There are 2 disks in the box, a live image and an installer. Specially for stuff like the little girls pc and such I see it as a verry nice combination.
The major difference between knoppix, ubuntu (linspire?) on one side and SuSE, Redhat/Fedora and such on the other side is that the latter set is just providing everything for the nerds new machine, including server side stuff. Where the other ones just provide what's needed for the desktop for others.
In fact, Ubuntu has way more than SUSE and is for serious geeks. Enable "universe" and see what you get. Mostly, it's not supported in any formal way, there's only so much free beer they can give aways:-) but it's enormous. It has the well-thought-out CD everyone sees, but basically it's all of Debian, with polish.