[Cialug] Buying a new PC

[Todd Walton]

On 10/1/07, Brandon Griffis <brandongriffis at gmail.com> wrote:
> In my experience Vista is terribly bloated memory-wise, but otherwise
> works fine and the built in driver support is finally catching up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#Hardware_requirements

Vista requires 512MB for the stripped down version.  1GB for the
regular version.  XP required 128MB.  The real kicker is hard drive
space.  Vista requires 15GB *minimum*.  XP required 1.5GB.  I know
hard drive is really cheap compared to everything else.  But there is
no reason at all that an operating system should bloat to ten times
the hard drive space in one release.  Vista does *not* introduce
anything that justifies the hardware requirements.

> What is the easiest distribution in terms of package management going
> these days? I know this question may start a flamewar, sorry.

"Easiest" is relative.  I've been on Kubuntu for half a year now.  But
I'm still coming up frustrated at its package management.  I mean, I
know that you can just 'apt-get install' anything.  But something just
eats at me.  Easiest for what?  Easiest to install-and-forget?  Maybe
Ubuntu.  Easiest to install what *you* want?  Gentoo!  Even in the
Con-Kolivas-quitting articles he mentioned that his kernel development
was aided by Gentoo immensely.

"I know this is a flamewar" should mean trigger in anyone's mind
"there truly is no one right answer, it depends on what I want".  And
in that case, you'd be best to explain your parameters.

-todd, a man with opinions