On 05/12/05, John Summerfield <suse@herakles.homelinux.org> wrote:

On Mon, 5 Dec 2005, cbeerse@gmail.com wrote:

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Steve Jacobs wrote:

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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.

Including the KDE if you want. Or, you could download Kubuntu which is just Ubuntu with KDE instead of Gnome. Kubuntu should be available as a 'Shipit' option (which is what the free CD option is called including free shipping) for the next release. -- ============================================== I am only human, please forgive me if I make a mistake it is not deliberate. ============================================== Take care. Kevan Farmer Linux user #373362 34 Hill Street Cheslyn Hay Staffordshire WS6 7HR

On Mon, 5 Dec 2005, Kevanf1 wrote:

Thinking along the lines of this thread and bringing it back on track to SuSE :-) Wouldn't it be a good idea for Novell to set up a SuSE Lite version? Lightweight desktop, one office suite, no development tools etc. Just the very basics of SuSE. It could be called SLite Linux. There's an opportunity for it with open SuSE as a derivative even.

Doesn't have to be SUSE, of course; Anyone can bend, fold, spike SUSE to their own taste. Help from the masters is needed: I'm one one of the Ubuntu lists )sounder), and recenly somone pointed out screenshots from a wannabe-derivitave. "Hmpf," someone said, "looks like "Ubuntu!" "Oh no!," said a wig. We stuffed up, it should be easier than that for them to rebrand it. Another question is who's the intended audience. If you want converts from other distros, then migration has to be easier. SUSE10 looks enough like Red Hat variets I'm consistently being caught out by things that "should" work but don't. eg I want gpm to run in runlevel 5. On RHL I'd use chkconfig to make it so. On SUSE chkconfig is present and appears to work. I listed the status quo, I ran it to change it, I ran it to see what I'd changed it to. All seemed good, it just didn't actually work. It seems to me that Red Hat and Debian are closer than Red Hat and SUSE: in the former the differences are pretty obvious.