I found this... Informative. It's a wizard which asks you a series of questions probably anyone can answer, and recommends a Linux distro. Actually a few.

http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/

The top ones it offered me were Linspire and XandrOS. I am very familiar with Linspire (and have used it) but I'm not so sure about it. I'll have to give it another chance... Last I used was 4.5. 5.0 is out now. I have never even heard of XandrOS... Anyone?

It then offered a few others... Desktop/LX, Ubuntu (actually I have that installed on a partition), Kubuntu, Mandriva (aka Mandrake), MEPIS, SuSE, Debian, Fedora (just got done trying FC4). On these, it tells what one point it "failed" (versus your answers). Looks like I have a few ideas on other distros to try.

Of course, your answers will undoubtedly be different than mine.

Even if you use Linux, try it... it only takes a couple seconds, and I'd be curious to see if the Linux experts here agree with its recommendations for them. At least it didn't recommend me Slackware or Gentoo, which I understand require a more advanced knowledge of Linux than I've got.

I tried it, the questionnaire seems quite comprehensive, but it's no surprise that Gentoo was my distribution of choice

It gave me Gentoo as number 1, and Slackware as the second. Nothing else, really.

Seems pretty intuitive. Nice, clean, fast. I like it!

• Slackware
• Gentoo

Gentoo and Slackware - I run Gentoo. Maybe it's time for me to try out Slackware...

It gave me Mandriva, MEIPOS, and PCLINUXOS as my mains and Kubuntu, Slackware, and Gentoo as my secondary. I was going to decide between Slackware and Ubuntu, because Ubuntu did not have KDE, but now that I have found Kubuntu I might get it.

Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo, Slackware. So fairly close, I use Ubuntu, I used Fedora for about 16 months before that and I've used Gentoo a few times

Debian, Ubuntu, Xanderos.

Not bad. I've used a Debian based distro a while ago (Novell Linux Desktop) and I was *REALLY* pleased with it. It was quite slow though, especially since having tried Gentoo (which was a bit faster, but I didn't do all the optimisations) and Fedora Core 4.

Edit: Actually I was mistaken NLD is based on SuSE.

I think I'll give Ubuntu a try (which is also a Debian-based distro IIRC).

Ubuntu is Debian based, I'm running it and XP Pro dual boot. My complaint with Ubuntu is it has a "special" Firefox 1.0.2 but with the 1.0.4 fixes... I can't get extensions from the Mozilla site. TBH I don't understand what's so special about Debian... What is it? It's still Linux right? Is it just a really good distro others are based on? (Total Linux newb here. ) Ubuntu flies, I have the x86_64 build. I'm still running 32bit Windows, vs. 64bit Linux... Ubuntu is a little more responsive, cleaner... Windows boots 4X faster. Easy. But for just surfing the Net I love it. I'm still looking for one with multimedia support... I may just get a paid Linux one day, just because it makes all the licensing BS a non-issue. Makes Linux more at a level with Windows out of the box. I think that's worth paying for. Heck, it's cheaper than XP, and it's gonna be cheaper than that Longhorn upgrade. That one, Desktop L/X, was beautiful... It looked a lot like Windows XP. XP-ified Linux.

There's always Linspire. I actually have a license to it... when there was that MS settlement, Linspire ran a site that, if you gave them your settlement claim money (which had to be spent on MS competitors anyway, it was like coupons IIRC) they'd give you a license for Linspire and X months of their Click N Run service. It was really nice. It played every kind of audio I threw at it, but couldn't handle video. So the cost to own for me, with Linspire, would pretty much just be Click N Run membership. And if you cancel it, I'm pretty sure you can still access programs you've already downloaded. Download it once, you keep the online access to that program indefinitely. It's very generous from what I read. But it gets a lot of flack from the "Real Linux Gurus" so, because I know a thing or two about hardware (heck, I built a computer and it booted on 1st try, had no problems yet) so I'm giving the others a try, at least the more popular ones. I have a few yet to try before I go back to Linspire.

Thats not a special version of Firefox thats a bug introduced by whoever built Firefox for Ubuntu, update.mozilla.org tells you how to fix it at the bottom of the page.

It gave me Gentoo and Slackware. I have no idea why it recommended Slackware, I hate it... The reason it must have gave me Gentoo was because I chose portage for package manager.

Gentoo, Slackware.

Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo, and Slackware. I use Ubuntu.

Wow, it's right. Debian is a perfect match, and I use Debian everywhere.

It gave me Ubuntu, Fedora and Linspire. I must say of the distros I've tried Ubuntu has been the least nasty, but in general I just don't like Linux (please don't hurt me)

I got Gentoo as 1st and Slackware as 2nd. I use Ubuntu.

We found 1 perfect match(es):
Fedora

In addition, we found these matches, sorted by how well they match:
Mandriva
MEPIS

Found Fedora for me, so I went on to eBay and ordered the 64-bit edition of it
I really couldn't be bothered downloading it myself

Mandriva, MEPIS, Fedora and SuSE. I used SuSE a few years back and I mucked about with Fedora Core 3 on my older PC. Hmm, I feel like changing to dual boot now

Never used Linux in my life, but apparently "Desktop/LX" is the best for me

Linux has made some important leaps and bounds. Windows has a few important advantages (namely application compatibility and multimedia support), but those are both pretty much out of their hands. Judging it as an Internet/Office/Server OS, it's pretty good. If all I wanted to do was surf the Web and type up an occasional memo, I wouldn't think to use Windows. For someone with those needs, Windows is too expensive -- several Linux distros will do the job better, and for free. When I move, I'm leaving my laptop, and though it's got a license for XP Home on it, and I have a Home+SP2 OEM CD I could legally put on it, I can't in good conscience install Windows on a computer that will be used for nothing but Email and the Web. Spyware and viruses are a problem that only exists on Windows, for the most part. Linux's obscurity is also part of its protection.

I could never run Linux as a single-boot system on my computer. I need my games. Though if I ever get a SECOND desktop computer, I'll cheap out on the specs and make it a Linux box. I see no reason to have two gaming computers, and if it's not a gaming computer, it should be running Linux. Even though it doesn't have the application compatibility, it has many applications which do the same thing as the Windows counterpart. Some games work for both -- namely Unreal Tournament 2004 has a Linux installer. Some programs, like VideoLAN and Firefox, are available for both, and (I think) the same on each platform, aside from differences in the GUI, of course. (And in Firefox, Tools>Options in Windows (just like IE) is Edit>Preferences in Linux (just like Netscape). I don't understand the discrepancy, but it's there.)

For anyone who hasn't used Linux, I recommend it, if you can install an OS. Partitioning really is the hardest part. Once you've done that properly, the rest is no harder than installing any program in Windows. Linux has a lot of features Windows does not, but it lacks some Windows features as well. The desktop and the panels are light-years ahead of Windows, but the file system is extremely confusing -- every drive must be "Mounted". The hard disk (actually, the filesystem) is mounted at startup, and when you put in a CD or connect an external hard disk, it must be mounted. (This is automatic in some, probably all, modern distros.) The hard drive's filesystem and filenames are not as intuitive as they are on Windows. But like Windows, you only need concern yourself with the Application menu and the programs therein. Unless you want to dig...

I have the x86_64 DVD edition of Fedora Core 4 if anyone wants it for just shipping ($5 USD would buy an envelope and cover shipping to anywhere in the US... don't bother if you're outside the US, you'll wind up paying too much) as I no longer have use for it. I have the i386 version as well.

Gentoo and Slackware. My dad owns alot of the linux OS' including Fedora, RedHat, Linspire, Mandrake, and Xandros. So far he likes Xandros the best because of its ability to run windows based programs. Personally I think I like Fedora and Linspire the most.

I love seeing an interesting topic, clicking on it, and realizing I made it some time ago...

My offer to sell FC4 is withdrawn. You can get it cheaper at a site, I lost the URL for it, but they basically sell Linux distros at just above cost for those of us who can't download them. Plus I haven't got that DVD anymore, since I've moved. I still have the x86_64 version of Ubuntu 5.04 archived, but 5.10 is out now, and 5.04 had a couple issues, so I'd recommend trying to get 5.10.

I want to try Xandros sometime...

I haven't run Linspire since 4.5, though I believe I have... yep, I have 5.059 archived. Aent has some significant complaints against it (the one I can remember, is it doesn't protect the Root account as others do - you're always Root... but that's just like Windows XP -- limited accounts are worthless) but for a casual user, preferrably behind a hardware firewall, should be OK.

I ought to try Linspire 5 for multimedia, but the main reason I'm taking an "LOA" from Linux for a while is the lack of multimedia support. Maybe in a year, when we have high-speed Internet again, I'll go trying Linux distros again, get my girlfriend into the game, but for now we can only really use Windows XP -- especially as she's hooked on Fable.

Hey, I just downloaded suse yesterday, and now this thread is revived. How convenient!

Anyways, anyone have any tips on dual booting suse w/ Windows XP? I'll be Googl'ing later in the week, but I though I'd around for any pointers from anyone who's already done it.

Umm... it does it automatically during Installation.

Hey, have pity on a Linux noob. I used it for a few weeks, but this'll be the first time doing an install.

Thanks for the info, though.

For the Record, Fedora Core 3/4 and Ubuntu 5.04 all set up dual booting with Windows XP. IIRC, Linux will boot by default, but you can escape with any key during a 5-30 second window, at which point you can choose Linux or Windows... actually Windows will often be noted as "Unknown" or something like that, and you may get about 8 choices for Linux -- safe mode and a bunch of others.

And most of us are Linux noobs... the learning curve isn't the same as it is with Windows or MacOS X.

I recently changed both of my two computers. The first one was running Mandrake and Win98, now it's running Ubuntu. The other one was running Fedora and WinXP, now it's running Ubuntu and WinXP.

Im a sort-of linux n00b, so i got recommended these:

• Ubuntu
• Debian
• Fedora

They only setup dual booting automatically if you load the distro's bootloader onto the MBR. Personally I prefer just to add an entry to the Window's boot loader.