Running Linux? post here

[signa]

Any linux fans on TGN?

what is your favorite distro(s)?

I dual boot vista/SalineOS on my laptop, but mostly boot the saline 98% of the time. usually only windows get a boot if i need windows specific software.

[Vreki]

Re: Running Linux? post here

I did once have a dualboot with Ubuntu, but I always ended up booting to windows anyway since that is where my games are.
These days linux is something I run in VMware if I need it, but I rarely do.

[Stev0esque]

Re: Running Linux? post here

I usually run Ubuntu on this netbook which is an MSI Wind U160. However, this is the red headed stepchild of MSI netbooks because it uses an obscure wireless card which tends to fail if I restart after putting it into hybernate. Currently I'm just using the windows 8 preview but would like to go back to linux.

[signa]

Re: Running Linux? post here

I usually run Ubuntu on this netbook which is an MSI Wind U160. However, this is the red headed stepchild of MSI netbooks because it uses an obscure wireless card which tends to fail if I restart after putting it into hybernate. Currently I'm just using the windows 8 preview but would like to go back to linux.

ya that can be a problem with certain distros, they just don't work perfectly with different hardware out of the box and unless your an advanced linux user, its hard to figure out how to fix some problems. I suggest trying out different distros and finding one that works.

[Stev0esque]

Re: Running Linux? post here

Well being a newbie linux user (would like to learn command line, just don't have the time or patience at this point) I have tried both ubuntu and mint, but do you have any other suggestions?

What also sucks about this nettie is that there are tons of help for the wind U100 and the ones after this one but just not for this one, or there is only limited help and none of it for my problem. Why must I be a netbook hipster?

[Vreki]

Re: Running Linux? post here

Well, if you only want to mess with commandline, you could just get this: http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/
Basically it is a windows port of the most common windows command.

egrep, sed, tail, join etc. will make you life a lot easier if you work with large textfiles, e.g system logs.
They tend to end up all windows servers I manage, often together with ActivePerl.

[signa]

Re: Running Linux? post here

I have tried both ubuntu and mint, but do you have any other suggestions?

a couple questions first:
how much ram do you have?
are you planning on dual booting windows/linux, or are you ok with wiping the hdd and starting fresh?
do you prefer installed apps / local files - or do you prefer working mostly with "cloud" style storage/apps?

[Stev0esque]

Re: Running Linux? post here

a couple questions first:
how much ram do you have?
are you planning on dual booting windows/linux, or are you ok with wiping the hdd and starting fresh?
do you prefer installed apps / local files - or do you prefer working mostly with "cloud" style storage/apps?

Well its for an Atom Netbook with a gig of ram. I usually just do a pure linux install, but I might dual boot if its possible with this thing (haven't tried dual booting yet.). I am one of those computer libertarians who doesn't trust Cloud, so I'd prefer installed apps and files, though honestly, cloud does sound more and more interesting, if Australian internet didn't suck (but I am moving to the states soon).

Again, I have experimented with Ubuntu and mint.

[signa]

Re: Running Linux? post here

ubuntu and mint are both good distro's and obviously the most popular but might be a little heavy on a netbook.

I've been wanting to experiment with linux on a netbook but haven't got the chance. You definitely would want a distro with a lighter GUI so it would run faster and not take up as much resources. KDE, Gnome and ubuntu's unity would be a little heavy (imo). xfce might be better but i would go even lighter and go with lxde, openbox or E17 for maximum performance.

I would suggest trying out Lubuntu, Crunchbang, pclinuxos lxde, and bodhi. I've tried out all of these recently. Lubuntu is usually my "go to" distro when i need something portable for recovery. pclinuxos lxde seemed to be a little heavy on the memory usage, but its a damn nice distro. I've been liking Bodhi recently, and the E17 gui is pretty awesome, but i couldn't get the screen brightness working on my laptop. Peppermint is a nice snappy OS but uses a lot of cloud based apps; it's worth a look.
I gotta throw in puppy linux as an honorable mention as almost nothing runs faster (try lucid puppy). puppy is fun, but a little odd in the fact that its usually not installed like a regular OS, and it's usually a 1 user system running as administrator.

You also can't go wrong with debian or ubuntu based distro's as their software repository has something like 30,000 apps.

You can download any of those linux distro's and make them bootable from usb flash drive by using unetbootin, or linuxliveusb.
For partitioning i would boot one of those distros from flash drive, run Gparted, and wipe the hard drive.
Setup 2 partitions for linux: the first for linux formatted ext4, and leave room for a 2nd partition formatted linux-swap. swap partition should be 2x your amount of ram.
If you think you might want to dual boot later you could do 3 partitions like [linux ext4 | windows ntfs | swap]

you can get more info on all those distro's here: http://distrowatch.com/

[Stev0esque]

Re: Running Linux? post here

Cool, thanks sig. will keep all that in mind. They were right about distros being among the hardest things to decide over...

[signa]

Re: Running Linux? post here

On second thought, try out crunchbang first. It runs very light and has a clean look although customizing the look of it can take some time to research. It also installs with a minimal amount of apps. you might need to pass along some startup commands such as OSI and backlight. link.

[signa]

doing a little distro hopping, now running Peppermint OS3 x64.

[CptainCrunch]

In case anyone is interested in a free copy of CrossOver:

http://flock.codeweavers.com/