Spyware Warrior

herbalist · Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2005 1:19 pm Post subject: Alternatives to Windows

A lot of us are looking into alternatives to a windows OS. It can be difficult to choose one. Lots of possible questions, not including cost. What comes with an OS? What's available for it, browser, media player, office suite, etc? What are its advantages, and disadvantages? Is it downloadable? If so, as a complete package or image file? Which can be installed in place of or in addition to windows? Which need separate or extra hardware?
Could we put together something here that would cover some of these basic questions and compare Linux, various "flavors", Unix, free BSD, open BSD, and other viable alternatives?
Rick

wawadave · Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2005 4:33 pm Post subject:

New to Linux? Start here With our beginner's guide to choosing a Linux distribution.
http://www.distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

good start there same link thats on my site.
to buy cheap allready done cd,s try these.
http://www.linuxcentral.com/_v3/
http://www.osheaven.net/index.htm?catalog.htm&1

to d/l free iso.s go here.
http://www.linuxiso.org/

to find info on linux click here
http://www.google.com/linux
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Nick · Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2005 7:15 pm Post subject:

I would suggest downloading and burning a copy of Knoppix Linux 1st. It is probably the easiest way to try out another OS without installing anything and it's free.
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Nick's Security Ticker

herbalist · Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2005 9:10 pm Post subject:

Are these just bare operating systems, or do they come with a browser, etc?
Anybody got info or a comparison to BSD, free or open?

wawadave · Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2005 10:26 pm Post subject:

Nick · Posted: Thu Jan 06, 2005 11:34 pm Post subject:

Like I said in the other topic about this, the two Linux flavors I have tried so far have come with everything that you would get from a new install of Windows (web browser, email client, media player, etc. ) and more since both came with open office. So no, they are not bare bones.
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Hat · Posted: Sat Jan 08, 2005 11:02 pm Post subject:

I've used three different free Linux distros (besides the Knoppix live CD):

Mandrake 10.0
Yoper 2.1
Ubuntu 4.10

Mandrake was my first Linux distro, and I was very underwhelmed. It was easy enough to install and it came with default apps for lots of things (browser, text editor, etc), but it was a little less than user friendly. Mandrake's biggest problem (for me) was it's package management. Installing programs was counter-intuitive - rpms frequently failed to work, and urpmi, their answer to Debian's apt-get and Gentoo's Portage was seriously lacking in the number of available files. I ran into dependency hell a number of times trying to manually install things. I eventually gave up and installed:

Yoper was wickedly fast, even on my 400mhz computer. This was the first Linux distro to really impress me - Mandrake sort of left a bad taste in my mouth, and the Knoppix live cd ran way too slowly to accomplish anything. It comes with KDE 3.3 which, even though it's bloated, looks *really* nice - now, KDE with Mandrake slowed my computer to a crawl, but it was noticeably faster with Yoper to the point that I could actually use it. OpenOffice opened much quicker than Mandrake, and it's package management is much better (you can use Synaptic to install programs for you (it's a graphical frontend for Debian's apt-get)). Unforutnately, Yoper had it's own share of problems. I was completely unable to add multiple logins, as they somehow defaulted to having privledges that made them even inaccessible to root (don't ask me how, but apparently, after searching, it seemed I wasn't the only one with this problem). Also, Yoper just felt unpolished - they have a "Yoperconf" configuration menu that attempts to control the computer's settings, but then KDE also has it's own config which controls many of the same settings, sometimes with different preferences in each. Also, Yoper defaults to installing a firewall, which, upon activated, locked my computer out of the internet. I couldn't fix/deactivate it, so I ended up just reinstalling it (the installation is rather painless and very quick). Also, Yoper started to break when I started to update things, so I wiped and installed:

Ubuntu Linux is a Debian variant, and it's the one that I'm currently using (and will likely continue to use for some time). First off, it defaults to Gnome, which I prefer over KDE. Also, Ubuntu is much more polished than both Mandrake and Yoper, even upon updating and installing programs, nothing has broken (yet). It comes with a good set of default programs, and new ones are easily installed using Synaptic (again, the frontend to apt-get). Because it's derived from Debian, you can add Debian's repositories to Synaptic and find practically whatever you could ever want to install. Thus far, I'm quite impressed with it, even though it's slower than Yoper (it is more stable though).

So, I'd recommend Ubuntu - they'll even send you the distro at no charge if you're unable to download it.

herbalist · Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2005 9:02 am Post subject:

Nobody's using FreeBSD?

Salient · Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2005 1:15 pm Post subject:

I am running the new SUSE 9.2 DVD (live CD) and it's really nice so far ... Morphix Gamer and Heavy GUI are nice as well. And of course as always Knoppix.

(Suse DVD ISO's)
http://www.suse.com/en/private/download/ftp/live_eval_int.html

(Morphix)
http://www.morphix.org/modules/mydownloads/

(Knoppix)
http://www.knoppix.org/

All have E-mail apps ... clipboard viewers, web browsers, media players, cd burning apps ...etc - The new 9.2 SUSE has 3 web browsers actually (Firefox, Mozilla, and Konqueror)