[Cialug] New members looking for test laptop

[Crouse]

http://www.everydaylinuxuser.com/2012/10/zorin-os-6-lite-lite-fantastic.html

Installed that on a acer one netbook for my wife to use.  She uses it
without any issues.  Runs great, looks great, I even installed software to
make my wireless color printer work with no issues.

On my faster machine (I7 laptop) I run Mint every day as my normal
desktop.  It just works, and while I absolutely love Arch, I just don't
have time to keep up with fixing stuff they tend to break that requires
manual intervention when doing updates at times.  Arch is not for
beginners, however for more experienced users, it's pretty cool if you like
to play with the most bleeding edge stuff.


On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 5:14 PM, David Champion <dchamp1337 at gmail.com>wrote:

> According to distrowatch.com (a good resource for looking at different
> Linux and BSD distros), the top 10 page hits are:
>
> RankDistributionH.P.D*1Mint <http://distrowatch.com/mint>3581[image: <]2
> Debian <http://distrowatch.com/debian>1894[image:
> >]3Ubuntu<http://distrowatch.com/ubuntu>
> 1890[image: >]4Mageia <http://distrowatch.com/mageia>1524[image:
> >]5Fedora<http://distrowatch.com/fedora>
> 1391[image: >]6openSUSE <http://distrowatch.com/suse>1332[image: >]7
> PCLinuxOS <http://distrowatch.com/pclinuxos>1101[image:
> <]8Manjaro<http://distrowatch.com/manjaro>
> 1022[image: >]9Arch <http://distrowatch.com/arch>946[image:
> >]10Puppy<http://distrowatch.com/puppy>
> 879[image: >]
> I use a variety of CentOS, Mageia, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu for various
> purposes.
>
> As I mentioned before, Mageia has a good mix of new features but still runs
> good on older hardware, like something without a PAE kernel like a Pentium
> Mobile, as you can see it does have quite a bit of popularity.
>
> Ubuntu will run OK on semi-old hardware if you don't use the Unity desktop,
> try something like KDE or XFCE, but the default install requires PAE
> support.
>
> -dc
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 4:53 PM, Matt Stanton <matt at itwannabe.com> wrote:
>
> > Mr. Denner recently gave a presentation at a LUG meeting on the
> > differences in the philosophy and setup of several of the most popular
> > Linux distributions.  You may be able to search the LUG mailing list
> > archive for an email with a link to his pdf/powerpoint(style)
> presentation.
> >
> > Some basic comparisons:
> > -----------------------
> > Debian - Focuses on providing absolutely free (Libre) software packages.
> >
> > Ubuntu - Based on Debian, but focuses on a user-friendly interface.
> >
> > Mint - Based on Ubuntu, focuses on an even more user-friendly interface
> > and includes commonly-installed license-restricted software packages by
> > default (i.e. MP3 decoders/encoders and similar non-free licensed codecs
> > that are popularly installed on Debian or Ubuntu after the normal
> install).
> > Fedora - a Redhat-based distribution that uses cutting-edge versions of
> > software packages.  serves basically as a testbed for packages that are
> > going to be released for RHEL once deemed stable by Redhat.
> >
> > RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) - a Redhat distribution aimed at
> enterprise
> > customers
> >
> > Centos - A distribution based on Redhat... not sure if it is based on
> > RHEL, but it is aimed at the same market
> >
> > Arch - certainly not for the beginner! aimed at the Linux expert who
> wants
> > a distribution that has a powerful package manager, but doesn't include a
> > lot of intrusive configuration customizations.  all packages must be
> > personally configured after installation, giving the admin the ability to
> > set the install up exactly as he/she wishes.  packages can also be easily
> > compiled from source, though Arch is aimed only at machines that use i686
> > or x86_64 hardware (I believe this consists of Pentium 4 chips or later)
> >
> > Gentoo - Also not for beginners.  Every package that is installed is
> > compiled from source code on the target machine.  If you want to get an
> > extra 1% performance out of your software by compiling everything you
> > install for a week straight, this is the distro for you.  (search Google
> > for "Gentoo is for ricers"... an extremely entertaining read) ;)
> >
> > There are hundreds of other distros, but these are the top selections
> that
> > I can think of off the top of my head.
> >
> > -- Matt (N0BOX)
> >
> >
> > On Fri, 24 Jan 2014 13:51:44 -0600, wdmtrader wrote:
> >
> >> My son and I are new to the group so please gently correct me if this
> >> request is inappropriate.  We are looking for a cheap laptop to
> experiment
> >> with various Linux distros.  We would like to experiment with Ubuntu,
> >> Fedora, and others.  Can you please recommend where we may find
> something
> >> under $200 (free is even better)?  What specs should we be looking for
> >> (RAM, CPU, DVD, DVI/HDMI out, etc.)?
> >>
> >> On a related note, is there a good resource that compares/contrast
> various
> >> distros?  What are the trade offs for choosing Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint,
> etc.?
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >>
> >> Scott Burklund
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Cialug mailing list
> >> Cialug at cialug.org
> >> http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/cialug
> >>
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Cialug mailing list
> > Cialug at cialug.org
> > http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/cialug
> >
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