Which Linux?

[Holmqvist]

I've been thinking about using Linux on my laptop..
It's 733mhz, I want to use it for developement, graphics and animation.
So which Linux dist would you recommend for me?
(I've been using redhat before, but I'm not an experienced Linux-user..)

/ Jacob

[Valen]

From my experience, Mandrake has always been the easiest to use. It even auto-mounted my Windows partitions and imported the Windows fonts (and that was a few versions ago). When I tried RedHat, I wasn't able to figure out how to auto mount the Windows partitions on startup, as well as how to do many other things. Make sure you have a Creative sound card in that computer (or another brand that has Linux drivers). Integrated AC97 sound chips don't work in Linux (last I checked, unless they managed to hack those things).

[ggambett]

Once you get started, distributions are irrelevant. Distributions are, after all, subsets of all the existing packages + proprietary config tools. I use something which started as Red Hat 8.0 some years ago. I don't know what it is anymore :)

For such a laptop, RH8.0 can be a good option. Newer distributions have heavier desktop managers.

BTW, I have an AC97 card and it works just fine.

[Diragor]

I've been experimenting with some Linux distros at work and home recently and found Suse (9.1) to be my favorite. The installation is extremely easy (which still can't be said for several distros), it auto-mounts Windows partitions, does an excellent job of hardware setup, has a very nice package maintenance app and generally makes Linux newbies (which I'd still consider myself to be) as comfortable as possible. I haven't personally tried Mandrake but I always hear good things about it.

ggambett - Of course you're right that it's all the same under the hood, but sometimes those proprietary additions make a big difference, especially if you're just getting started with Linux.

[mathgenius]

I use mandrake here too. It's really slick IMO. Good for newbies and experts alike. And I would recomend the gnome desktop (not the KDE); it seems more stable.

Simon.

[carl]

I use mandrake here too. It's really slick IMO. Good for newbies and experts alike. And I would recomend the gnome desktop (not the KDE); it seems more stable.

Here's another thumbs up for Mandrake, although I'm a KDE fan myself.

Another distro you might want to look at is Debian. After spending a few hours trying to install an rpm and all it's dependencies, you can appreciate a tool like apt-get.

Cheers!
Carl

[Holmqvist]

Thanks everyone for the input!
Do you think that Mandrake 10.0 would work good on my laptop or should I go for an older version..?
I'm a little confused over the options, on the pages where mandrake is sold on cd:s it comes in three versions: one simple, one more advanced and one with some network stuff.. I decided to go for the second alternative, however when I went to the download page, even though there are different ways and formats to download in, it seems like it's only one version? :confused: They aren't marked up very clearly anyway..

/ Jacob

[mathgenius]

Yes, give mandrake 10 a go. Who knows if it will detect your hardware... There is a linux on laptops website if you want to check that, or you could try knoppix (no install needed). Driver support is a kernel issue; mostly independant of the distribution used. In terms of performance, ram is most critical, eg. 256mb or more. If you have less, perhaps stay away from mozilla, and use eg. galeon or some other light weight browser.

cheers,

Simon.