Hey guys (and indeed gals), in a little over a fortnight I've got to abandon my beautiful uber fast internet connection for a month over the easter holidays.

Here's the catch - over the hols, I'll turn 21, and my parents may well be buying me a laptop (I'm a lucky boy! - hang on, they might not...ah well, in which case, I'll buy one with my savings), and I'm thinking of runing linux on that machine - so if there are things like the knoppix live CD (which I've already got and enjoy) that require some serious downloading, it'd be great to know what to get hold of now before I journey back home for a month!

Any advice on what to download (even just to try) will be met with various cookies (or as we refer to them on this side of the Atlantic "Biscuits")!

Cheers!

Martyn (Currently overwhelmed with designing a bridge...booo!)

------------------
If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards.

Erg. You sound happy, which is good. But I'm not quite sure what you are asking..

Do you want linux distros? Programs?

------------------
MadQuack on Military school: Pro's: I get to shoot a gun. Con's: Everything else.
"I'm going to beat you until the laws of physics are violated!!" ! Maeve's Warcry

RIP -MaDaVentor-. You will be missed.

There is a FreeBSD live CD

http://www.freesbie.org/

list of linux live CDs

http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php

------------------
"Music is the universal language and the
dialect we speak in is Hip Hop!" - King Solomon

[This message has been edited by Molgrew (edited March 02, 2004).]

[This message has been edited by Molgrew (edited March 02, 2004).]

Get the LInux port of the UT2k4 demo. Its a must-have...

------------------
The future is here, and all bets are off.

Happydud - Caramel Digestive for you,
Molgrew - you get a bourbon cream
GBK - a ginger nut for you sir!

Distros would be ecxellent - but newbie friendly (as they get)
Programs aren't too important - but any reccomendations for things to replace MSN messanger, winamp and other such run of the mill stuff would be dead useful...

Essentially anything that I can accrue (sp?) and burn for future playtime when I go back to 56k would be top! Stuff to get me off the ground I suppose!

Ta!

------------------
If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards.

I guess you could try Mandrake... I downloaded it and all was good, until I realised I needed the space it was taking up on my 20GB hard drive.

Yes, 20GB. And if the bikky is given, might I request a Jaffa cake?

------------------
The Earth is the cradle of the mind, but one cannot stay in the cradle forever.
-- Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, The Father of Rocketry

Use gaim to replace AIM and MSN. Use XMMS to replace winamp. Also you now have 404 posts, which made me chuckle.

------------------
http://www.sporkaudio.com

Yes, GAIM and XMMS rule.

And Mandrake, as well as tons of others can be found here.

------------------
MadQuack on Military school: Pro's: I get to shoot a gun. Con's: Everything else.
"I'm going to beat you until the laws of physics are violated!!" ! Maeve's Warcry

RIP -MaDaVentor-. You will be missed.

If you want to run linux on a laptop, be very sure you get one that's compatible. They have a lot of proprietary hardware that can be problematic with linux. Your best bet would be to order one with linux pre-installed. I got mine from here: http://www.laclinux.com/

------------------
EvilMagic.net: Brian's Web Log

A Jaffa Cake is indeed on its way to you Tony!
Noesc, for you there will be a custard cream...
For Brian there shall be a Rich Tea!

I'll get onto looking into all that sofware: thank you all!

PS Brian - the laptop will be most likely second hand, but thanks for the heads up on that site - I'll bookmark it for the future (when hopefully I'll be able to afford a brand new one!)

If the laptop doesn't really like Linux, I can always run Windows on it, and Linux on the desktop I'm currently sat at!


------------------
If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards.

Looking at LinuxISO.org, there's a distribution called College Linux (apparently based on slackware), which claims to be aimed at students (like me!) - has anyone had any experience with this one?

------------------
If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards.

Boing!

------------------
If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards.

Nope. However, I do definitely reccomend UT2k4... at 207MB (the Windows version), it's a hefty download. If you purchased an ATI Radeon card in the past 6 months, you'd also get a coupon redeemable for HL2 when it comes out... I hear that it can be used to download the full version eventually... That would be the ultimate abuse of broadband!

------------------
Nes digs around in the trash can.
Nes finds a hamburger!
Nes puts the hamburger in his backpack.

Bargainous indeed! Unfortunately my spec on this desktop certainly wouldn't hack it! (733 celeron, 384MB RAM, can't even remember what my graphics card is!)

Have just got hold of trillian - and done all the updating I can (windows service packs and the like)

all things are good!

------------------
If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards.