Alright, since I have some time on my hands I figured I'd start preparing for school next year and put Linux on my laptop. Until now it wasn't really realistic for me to use it for school but now that I can use StarOffice and the Gimp and *hopefully* get my Wi-Fi to work.

I need a distro that will boot FAST, but I don't want to go as extreme as Gentoo again. But I don't want a crippled distribution either. I had been using Knoppix on the laptop which was nice because after a little fiddling most things worked (except my wireless card, it only worked when I booted from the CD), but it was too slow to use at school.

So, any suggestions?

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"Windows [n.]
A thirty-two bit extension and GUI shell to a sixteen bit patch to an eight bit operating system originally coded for a four bit microprocessor and sold by a two-bit company that can't stand one bit of competition."

Redhat is easy yet challenging (from my experience) and it tends to be slower than most distros.


Try Mandrake.



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The University of North Carolina has finally found a network server that, although missing for four years, hasn't missed a packet in all that time. Try as they might, university administrators couldn't find the server. Working with Novell Inc., IT workers tracked it down by meticulously following cable until they literally ran into a wall. The server had been mistakenly sealed behind drywall by maintenance workers.

Slack?

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There is no signature

Slackware and SuSE are the best distributions I've used other than Gentoo.

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Bassoon, n. A brazen instrument into which a fool blows out his brains.

If you like Knoppix, then go Debian. Though don't use the stable release - I'm still trying to update that headache. Doesn't really help that I'm on dialup.

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Our very existence is at stake

Yay! I can finally join the snail-racing crew.

-@%

Try Mandrake if you're a n00b, but if you were playing with Gentoo, you probably know your way around Linux.

I'd go with SuSE or Debian, Debian being my personal preference.

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When guitars are outlawed, only outlaws will have guitars.

[This message has been edited by MaD CoW (edited July 06, 2004).]

Mandrake.

You are work-ready in no time

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

Yes, except Mandrake is slow as hell compared to other distros.

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When guitars are outlawed, only outlaws will have guitars.

Does anybody know anything about getting WiFi cards to work? Are there any distros that are better for wireless than others?

And speed is the biggest priority right now, because I can't wait around for 40 seconds to open some office program.

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"Windows [n.]
A thirty-two bit extension and GUI shell to a sixteen bit patch to an eight bit operating system originally coded for a four bit microprocessor and sold by a two-bit company that can't stand one bit of competition."

For speed you need to go with a distro that allows you to only install the packages you need. I would recommend Debian. That's basically what you get with Knoppix, and if your wifi card works under Knoppix, no doubt you can get it to work under Debian proper or even an HD install of Knoppix. You just have to try to figure out what to configure for it. Try the Knoppix forums, they will help you out.

If you go straight debian, get testing or maybe even unstable distribution.

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EvilMagic.net: Brian's Web Log

Slack is awesome, but it takes some effort, due to not supporting RPMs. Once you get it working, it's awesome

SuSE is OKAY, but I wouln't recommend it for those who wish to delve deeper into Linux.

Gentoo is great if you love tweaking things. And once it's compiled, its fast as hell. But if you are scared of blowing up your PC, don't mess with this one

Knoppix itself is a good distribution. Its install is rock solid, and the debian OS it creates for you is great. But modifying the install after it comes up can be a pain sometimes.

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"The future is not determined by a throw of the dice, but is determined by the conscious decisions of you and me."
I am addicted to ellipses!!! AHHH!!! ...
Make Sorrowind Worthwhile... join it! http://sorrowind.net

I just found the driver that's supposed to work with my card, so I don't think that'll be a problem. So, I guess I'm going to try Debian. Are there any (free) better ways than fips to resize my Windows partition? It's been so long since I haven't partitioned my disk with space left for Linux.

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"Windows [n.]
A thirty-two bit extension and GUI shell to a sixteen bit patch to an eight bit operating system originally coded for a four bit microprocessor and sold by a two-bit company that can't stand one bit of competition."

Resizing your partitions is VERY, VERY, VERY dangerous, even with commercial software, such as PartitionMagic. I wouldn't do it unless you have nothing to lose.

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"The future is not determined by a throw of the dice, but is determined by the conscious decisions of you and me."
I am addicted to ellipses!!! AHHH!!! ...
Make Sorrowind Worthwhile... join it! http://sorrowind.net

I've done it plenty of times before, it's always worked. Hopefully I'll get lucky again.

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"Windows [n.]
A thirty-two bit extension and GUI shell to a sixteen bit patch to an eight bit operating system originally coded for a four bit microprocessor and sold by a two-bit company that can't stand one bit of competition."

Suse - For those who want a pure GUI system, or want high a highly polish GUI.
Debian - for those who like the command line, or merely love apt.
Gentoo - for those who love to tweak the hell out of their systems.

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Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow, and did you know
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind.
:wq

Um... what? You can apt-get remove anything you don't like or need. You can apt-get install anything you don't have that you want. So what is hard about modifying that? Sure, it installs EVERYTHING from the cd (including a couple of different windowing environments), but if you didn't want that, you could just go straight Debian.

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EvilMagic.net: Brian's Web Log

Which is the ideal distro for those that just want everything to work w/o excessive tweaking, command line, or anything, yet still wish to be free of Microsoft?



listen to the man-- he's dead on. Partitions like to be cereated and then left alone. if you have one large partition that takes up all your drive space, just get a secondary hard drive and use it as a slave.

8 bg should be sufficient for most distros, and you can find a drive like that for cheap, probably no more than $20 these days.

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The University of North Carolina has finally found a network server that, although missing for four years, hasn't missed a packet in all that time. Try as they might, university administrators couldn't find the server. Working with Novell Inc., IT workers tracked it down by meticulously following cable until they literally ran into a wall. The server had been mistakenly sealed behind drywall by maintenance workers.

[This message has been edited by Pagewizard_YKS (edited July 06, 2004).]

It's a laptop, I can't add another drive. I really don't want to have to reload Windows again just to re-partition, so I'm going to try the qtparted that comes with Knoppix. (But I'll make looooads of backups.)


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"Windows [n.]
A thirty-two bit extension and GUI shell to a sixteen bit patch to an eight bit operating system originally coded for a four bit microprocessor and sold by a two-bit company that can't stand one bit of competition."

Alright, how does this partition scheme sound?

NTFS - 10 gigs - Windows XP

Extended [
- Ext3 10 gigs - Linux
- Fat32 - 20 gigs - Shared storage


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"Windows [n.]
A thirty-two bit extension and GUI shell to a sixteen bit patch to an eight bit operating system originally coded for a four bit microprocessor and sold by a two-bit company that can't stand one bit of competition."

Suse.

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Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow, and did you know
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind.
:wq