Linux?

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They already have the alphas out? *drools* Ah man, I wish I had more than one machine. If I had an extra computer laying around, I could do so much distro testing without worrying about messing something up.


I don't think there's a huge difference unless you get something crazy like Gentoo or Arch. I even tried Vector Linux, a derivative of Slackware, and the set-up was about as easy as Ubuntu if you ignore the scariness of a pure text-based installer (would not use if uncomfortable with partitioning). Fedora and OpenSUSE are probably also fine for newbies.

A Red Hat guy could help you out with Fedora if you want to go that route. I know a guy on my floor uses Fedora.

I've never tried Mint, but I've got everything working just fine in Ubuntu. Just install ubuntu-restricted-extras and most everything should be fine, whatever isn't can be dealt with easily enough as it comes up.

Mints nice. When I tried it it wasn't significantly different from Ubuntu(pretty desktop though!), so I just kept on truckin with Ubuntu. Its not like I would leave anything stock anyway.

You can add the mint repository to Ubuntu of course. The inverse is already true.

But they are all alike in the end. Suse w/gnome was really attractive too. Perhaps I will look at redhat/Fedora next.

Alpha one comes out 1 month after the full release. Its an ultra fast development. Its due for replacement by alpha two on dec 18th, with three a month after that.

Why dont you get a test machine? I bet you can scrounge up a freebie on campus. Talk to recycling people or garbage collection. Put up some signs offering a good home for a retired computer.

It doesnt have to be the greatest unit, as long as it works. Its just a test bed after all.

Try for a mini tower or something. You may not get a monitor with it, so perhaps use your LCD tv? Thats what I do with my test rig. Dont discount getting 2 machines and combining them. Recycle the left overs. Lots of free CRT monitors if you have the room though.

I'll keep my ears open, and maybe start hanging around the comp sci building more, but with the close quarters of a college dorm I doubt I'd have space for multiple comps anyways. And I don't have an LCD TV, or any TV for that matter.

VM it then!

If you're a patient man who wants a stable distribution, then Debian Lenny is the best choice out there (at the present), according to my opinion. Non free stuff needs to be installed afterwards, though. And everything don't work out of the box without adding some extras.

What's the point of getting a distribution with the latest version of all programs if the system just keeps on crashing, for instance?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=debian+lenny&search=Search[/youtube]

I personally use Archlinux for the majority of my stuff, it is not recommended for the absolute newbie, however it is a rolling release distribution and updates to applications are usually made available very shortly after release, it has a great little community and is designed for greater flexibility in Desktop/Applications, I have not had to reinstall the OS on my fileserver and primary desktop in nearly 2 years

Debian is what I would use if I had a single desktop and valued rock-solid reliability over all else. The Debian project has, IMHO, an overly stringent definition of stability. As it stands, Ubuntu is based off of Debian Sid (as unstable as it gets in the Debian world) and is still more solid than any version of Windows. It doesn't generally crash, and nearly all the problems I've had with Ubuntu are a result of me doing something stupid. (Meaning I've had loads of problems with it )

Still, Debian and Debian derivatives are pretty dominant in the Linux world, and you can't really go wrong with something as stable as Debian.

Ubuntu 9.04 alpha 1 is being a pain regarding graphics driver for nvidia. I'm doing a fresh install of 8.10 and will upgrade again i guess. If that doesnt work I will just get the iso for 9.04. I could be a little patient and wait a few days for alpha 2 though!

But its a fun adventure.

^ This is an example of someone for whom Debian is obviously not a suitable choice. Not even waiting for the alpha-2 of a distro that releases a new version twice a year...

You'd probably like a bleeding-edge distro like Arch, though. Rolling release. You get the new kernels as they come out.

No, Debian wasnt quite for me. I tried it out and wondered "Whats new? Where are the new things? Where?" Then I went back to Ubuntu.

I'm waiting for xorg to be removed entirely, but I see its still around in 9.04.

The new focus is to be on boot speed and integration of web with the desktop. I'm not particularly impatient when it comes to boots.. its just new features to mess with.

Problem solved. 9.04 is nice. It remains to be seen if its stable yet! Previous early releases gave me no grief.

why would xorg be removed from 9.04???

What would you replace it with? I like x.

Apparently Something Called Wayland, which is in the early phases of development no 9.04 for you , hell it is not even an X server (which may be a good thing) but would provide one similar to Mac OSX