Im getting a new laptop next week, and my wife and I will no longer be forced to share.

This will be my own personal computer, and I would like to get away from Windows. I dabbled in Linux based systems when I was in high school, but its been a few years since Ive spent serious time on a Linux machine.

Im trying to decide between Fedora 10 (Cambridge)

and Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex)

I think either of these O/Ss would work well, are there any others I should check out?

What are the computer geeks thoughts on this?

The computer is a Dell Inspiron 9100, 2 gig processor, 2 gig of ram, and 100 gig internal hard drive. I will also be using a .5 terabyte external hard drive for heavy storage, and regular system backup.

So, no takers?

Well, if I have no replies by Monday night, Im taking this to general.

i like ubuntu. i kinda messed around with fedora, but for just getting away from windows, ubuntu is easy to use and customizable

nnorton44 wrote:http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p...num=1

Thats about as helpful as a hole in my head hahahahahah

They perform identically.

Thanks for trying to help though.

Im more looking for actual experiences with different O/S's. Id like peoples opinions, I want to know who likes what. I will be doing very little if any gaming, so usability is what Im after.
Modified by FlatBlackIan at 9:09 AM 2/17/2009

If you're using a Laptop, I wouldn't recommend Fedora, as, in my experience, Fedora has been lacking in out of the box driver support. I use OpenSUSE on my server, and it works wonderfully for me. Ubuntu works well on laptops and is a good system to learn on if you don't have much Linux experience.

Adeianos wrote:If you're using a Laptop, I wouldn't recommend Fedora, as, in my experience, Fedora has been lacking in out of the box driver support. I use OpenSUSE on my server, and it works wonderfully for me. Ubuntu works well on laptops and is a good system to learn on if you don't have much Linux experience.

This is the kind of advice I'm looking for.

This is one more skittle in the bowl on Ubuntu's side. Im leaning more in that direction anyway, it seems like the user base is larger, and support more available.

Im also trying to find out how many tuning programs support Linux based systems, as I will use my laptop for occasional tuning.

FlatBlackIan wrote:
This is the kind of advice I'm looking for.

This is one more skittle in the bowl on Ubuntu's side. Im leaning more in that direction anyway, it seems like the user base is larger, and support more available.

Im also trying to find out how many tuning programs support Linux based systems, as I will use my laptop for occasional tuning.

Just remember, you can use WINE (http://www.winehq.com) to emulate windows, which should help you run programs that don't support Linux.

Or you could leave windows as the primary OS, and load vmware and try as many different Linux flavors as you want.

rawill240sx wrote:Or you could leave windows as the primary OS, and load vmware and try as many different Linux flavors as you want.

This is a thought Ive kept in mind. Im still just running through options, I'm just feeling the need to step as far from Microsoft as possible as of late.

Quote »Just remember, you can use WINE (http://www.winehq.com) to emulate windows, which should help you run programs that don't support Linux.[/quote]Thanks, I will keep that in mind.

On a slightly related note, does anyone have an emulated version of Mario 3 for NES.

Ive been craving as of late, and my copy of Super Mario All stars no longer works.

Go with Ubuntu 8.04 instead of 8.10

The newest version adds a good bit of bloat

FlatBlackIan wrote:
On a slightly related note, does anyone have an emulated version of Mario 3 for NES.

Ive been craving as of late, and my copy of Super Mario All stars no longer works.

http://www.adeianos.com/Emulators.rar

Has a few hundred games for both NES and SNES, along with both emulators.Enjoy.

PoorManQ45 wrote:Go with Ubuntu 8.04 instead of 8.10

The newest version adds a good bit of bloat

Can you clarify "bloat"?

Adeianos wrote:
http://www.adeianos.com/Emulators.rar

Has a few hundred games for both NES and SNES, along with both emulators.Enjoy.

My hero

I have been on Ubuntu exclusivly for about 5 years now with my laptop. Started with 5.04.I'm on 8.10 now. Love it. (presario 2100)My main computer is dual boot with winxp and ubuntu. The last time I booted into windows was about 4 months ago. Can't exactly remember why, I think I was flashing firmware on my phone.If you are going to put linux on a laptop, be sure to check if the wireless card is supported. The hardest part has always been wireless cards. When I first tried linux I had to buy a different wireless card because the one I had was not supported. That was many years ago and more and more cards are now supported. Suspend and hibernate can be a issue sometimes to.About the only thing you can't do as much of is games. Yes there are linux games, but stuff like half life and newer are not directly supported. Dell actually ships computers with ubuntu on them.If I were you, I would check out the ubuntu forums. Just search for your specific laptop and see if there are any issues.Welcome to the world of linux. No spyware, no virus, quick booting. Rock solid stability. If you have any issues, shoot me a email. I am by no means a linux expert, but I have been with it a while and will help if I can.One other note. Ubuntu is based on debian, and uses .deb packages. Fedora uses .rpm based packages.In my experience, debian based packages are more reliable. I would guess that 99.9% or all deb packages will work in Ubuntu without any issues. Fedora uses rpm packages, which can be slightly different form distro to distro. I would guess 85% of all rpm based packages work in Fedora without issues.The above statement is debatable. If I were to post that on a Linux forum the debate would go on and on and I would be flamed to death. Sort of like ka24det vs sr20. It's just my opinion.
Modified by iitywygms at 5:33 PM 3/2/2009

Thanks for the info. Delivery of the new computer was delayed, and it should be here this week.

For about a month I used Ubuntu on my desktop. I can't remember why I switched back to Windows but I am about to go back to Linux again. What I did was installed the Virtual Box software and loaded TinyXP and ran it as a VirtBox.. It worked VERY well and when I went to that desktop and hit Seamless mode it went fullscreen and I was suddenly running WinXP..

I really liked that setup and will probably go back to that and use the XP VB for things like AnyDVD and CloneDVD and those other little things I use Windows for.. So far those are just a couple of the things I cannot find an alternative for.

EDIT: Check out Linux Mint as well. I have it loaded on my Test Laptop and it is a pretty neat spinoff of Ubuntu 8.10

I like Ubuntu for the native inclusion of synaptics package manager

I forgot about this thread. Ive been running linux for a while now, and Im loving it. Im running Ubuntu 8.10 right now, but I have been playing with the idea of switching to Kubuntu, or Mint just for something different. I had a slight problem when I first loaded up, I was doing a dual boot with XP, and I screwed something up somewhere that XP really didnt like. I could force load into linux, but XP was FUBAR. I chose to just ditch windows entirely, and I switched solely to Linux.

That's weird.

Grub natively integrates XP and/or vista into its bootloader.

PoorManQ45 wrote:That's weird.

Grub natively integrates XP and/or vista into its bootloader.

It had to do with the partitioning of the hard drive. I did the partitioning using the windows drive manager, and just left open space for linux. After installing Ubuntu XP decided it would not accept any of the partitions except the tiny one it was based in. I had no file storage. I reconfigured the main file storage (shared) portion of the drive which should have been fine, but I ended up with grub error after error. I didnt want to deal with force loading, so I started all over, and dropped XP entirely. I had already dumped all my important files to my external HD anyway.

In the event that I do need windows for something (doubtful) I can always use my wife's computer.

Im going to see how long I can go without resorting to that.

I run Mint on my backup laptop.I like it.

I also use the command console a lot and Mint already has "fortune" installed so whenever I open the command console, a cow or moose having something written in their thought bubble.

Linux is fun stuff.

FlatBlackIan wrote:
It had to do with the partitioning of the hard drive. I did the partitioning using the windows drive manager, and just left open space for linux. After installing Ubuntu XP decided it would not accept any of the partitions except the tiny one it was based in. I had no file storage. I reconfigured the main file storage (shared) portion of the drive which should have been fine, but I ended up with grub error after error. I didnt want to deal with force loading, so I started all over, and dropped XP entirely. I had already dumped all my important files to my external HD anyway.

In the event that I do need windows for something (doubtful) I can always use my wife's computer.

Im going to see how long I can go without resorting to that.

Sounds like what happened was you confined XP to whatever it was using at the time of the re-partition. When you installed Linux it took over the rest of the HDD and had it formatted for Linux. Windows can only "see" certain formats of Linux file system so most people have three partitions for a dual-boot. You have the XP partition, the Linux Partition, then the Linux-Swap Partition which is a file system both OS's can see.

Maverick7687 wrote:Sounds like what happened was you confined XP to whatever it was using at the time of the re-partition. When you installed Linux it took over the rest of the HDD and had it formatted for Linux. Windows can only "see" certain formats of Linux file system so most people have three partitions for a dual-boot. You have the XP partition, the Linux Partition, then the Linux-Swap Partition which is a file system both OS's can see.

Thats how I set it up. I manually set up the partitions, and when I installed linux I didn't format the shared file storage part of the drive. I left it unformatted until I had both OSs loaded. Then I tried to format that portions, using a Windows filing system. For some reason the Windows drive manager decided to mess with the boot loader.