Which Linux would work best for me?

[componentwarehouse]

Hi

I am going to get one of those Eee PCs soon, and I am planning to install a different Linux distro over it. Ive had some experience with linux before (but dont know coding or commands etc.), and I just want it to work and have support for a lot of peripherals. Which one? Partically looking at Ubuntu or Fedora.

Thanks
Alex

 

[whitebus]

not sure about support for peripherals, but my programming buddies are all installing ubuntu

 

[Sup3rkirby]

Ubuntu is probably one of your best bets I guess. A pretty large community for that so support is good.

I'm curious about the specs on the PC though. Most linux distros will run on pretty much any PC, but there are some higher end distros out there.

I personally favor Sabayon Linux. Another one I have started to appreciate is Puppy Linux. The thing I like most about it is the ease of adding windows drivers with a wizard driven setup for ndiswrapper.


You really should try some distros for yourself and see what you like about each one. There will be things you like and don't like about each one probably so it is just finding one that is easy enough for you and comfortable.

 

[Hazirak]

I personally favor Fedora, but Ubuntu is known for being the most user-friendly distribution of Linux available. I've installed it a couple of times and had it run beautifully right out of the (metaphorical) box... plus, as Sup3rkirby said, it has a pretty large community support base. These small details may make it more appealing than Fedora, in your case.

On an off-hand note, I've heard Xandros (the distro that comes on Eee PCs) is pretty interesting. It might be worth toying around with some before you get rid of it.

 

[Smith6612]

Should stick with Ubuntu for now. Download some Live CDs or install Ubuntu with your current operating system before you trash your old OS and give Ubuntu a test drive to see how you like it. If anything, the ISO only needs around 256MB of RAM to work properly and you should be able to do whatever you need to do with it.

 

[kushelmex]

well , ubuntu is working very well on notebooks , i guess it would work fine on a Eee, fedora is a nice option too.

 

[componentwarehouse]

OK thanks for all the suggestions. The specs are:

Intel Atom 1.6Ghz
1GB RAM
20GB SSD Drive
Graphics? (Not at all designed for gaming so probably pretty lousy)

I'll give the live CDs a spin for Fedora and Ubuntu a try when I get it. I'll also have a look at the Xandros one, but I think I will be wanting something with a few more settings and things to play with, not a simple point and click.

Thanks
Alex

 

[DeadBattery]

I'd install Ubuntu 8.04 for the first time. If you don't like it, try another distro.
Ubuntu and Gnome is one of the best combinations out there and is very user-friendly.
First of all, what do you plan to do with this computer?

 

[marshian]

OK thanks for all the suggestions. The specs are:

Intel Atom 1.6Ghz
1GB RAM
20GB SSD Drive
Graphics? (Not at all designed for gaming so probably pretty lousy)

I'll give the live CDs a spin for Fedora and Ubuntu a try when I get it. I'll also have a look at the Xandros one, but I think I will be wanting something with a few more settings and things to play with, not a simple point and click.

Thanks
Alex

When you're trying a live cd, your pc will be slowed down because you have to read everything from a cd. (Which is slower then a hd.)
So don't think your pc isn't good enough for Ubuntu if it is slow with the live cd.
(I've used a live cd myself too, on a pc with 2 1.83 GHz processors, a 250 GB HD, 2 GB RAM and a regular video card, and it was rather slow... When it was installed, it runned a lot faster. I did remove Ubuntu, because I just don't like it.)

 

[Hazirak]

I'll also have a look at the Xandros one, but I think I will be wanting something with a few more settings and things to play with, not a simple point and click.

There's supposed to be a way to enable the full desktop on Xandros, though I couldn't tell you how, exactly. I'm sure a quick Google search could turn something up, if instructions aren't already provided by ASUS.

The installed version of Xandros is tab based, though the full desktop version (or "Advanced Mode") is easily obtained through a set of administrative command prompts. The full desktop version features a KDE 3 desktop with a few modifications performed by Xandros. This desktop mode also provides access to the Synaptic Package Manager which can be used to update and manage the Eee PC's software.

 

[componentwarehouse]

I mainly plan on using it out and about, for light tasks, like email, notes, MSN etc but Ill also want to do much more complicated things as time goes on. But it wont be used for anything like Image/video editing or games, nothing like that since it cant run it.

It will mainly be basic computing tasks. The battery life is key though, I need it to be as long as possible.

Thanks
Alex

 

[Smith6612]

The most you're really going to get out of a 6 cell battery is probably only going to be no more than 4 hours when using the computer, though if it's efficient enough, you could get about 8 hours of juice. 9 cell batteries will be able to get a lot though. I've seen some of them get around 7 hours before on Windows.

 

[componentwarehouse]

Well Asus claim 8 hours, but we all know what manufacturer claims are like... I read an independant review which got 4.5 hours with max performance (eg. videos, wireless, bluetooth and screen brightness all on max) and 6 hours on basic use. Hopefully Linux would keep this up, although I read somewhere a long time ago that some Linux OS's didnt give great battery life, is this true?

Alex

 

[Smith6612]

It's not true. They can give some pretty crazy battery life. Heck, even my old Dell Insprion 3800GT can get about 3 1/2 hours off of a live CD with the HD running, than Windows which only gives about 2 and a half hours of battery.

 

[componentwarehouse]

OK - well its better then my current laptop that barely gets me 1 1/2 hours with its Pentium 4... However decided to put that in there.

Anyway, back on topic, I will give the Xandros a shot, then probably upgrade to Ubuntu a little later. Thanks for the input.

Thanks
Alex

 

[Evocation]

Best thing is to get aload of live CD's and check them all out for abit and find the one best to your liking

 

[perpsgt]

Check out Distowatch. They provide information on most of the linux distributions out there, with lists of pros and cons for each. My advice would be to pick a distribution and then perservere with it for a while, as chopping and changing between distributions will just make things more difficult to start with.

Personally, I have been using openSuse since version 10.0, and Ubuntu since 6.06, and it hasn't taken too long to pick up enough knowledge to get by. I now only dual boot to Windows for certain games and applications that won't run under Wine in Linux.

 

[componentwarehouse]

OK thanks - can you get Office 2007 to run under WINE, does anyone know? This I would need as I use it almost constantly, especially for a mobile laptop to check emails etc I couldnt live without Outlook now.

Thanks
Alex

 

[perpsgt]

OK thanks - can you get Office 2007 to run under WINE, does anyone know? This I would need as I use it almost constantly, especially for a mobile laptop to check emails etc I couldnt live without Outlook now.

Thanks
Alex

Check here. Looks like some people have had some limited success under Wine, but not all of the apps will work.

- perpsgt.

 

[soporteweb]

Ubunto is best one