Post by mikkh on Jan 28, 2010 14:39:49 GMT
As I was just saying in another message, 10 years ago when the over hyped Ubuntu and it's many clones weren't even thought of, Mandrake and Suse were the two most popular distros by a long way.
10 years on, Mandrake has become Mandriva after merging with Conectiva (yes that is the right spelling btw) and produced it's most famous free offspring PClinuxOS. Suse has become OpenSuSe and both have failed to make Linux a commercial hit.
The free versions have always had a good following though and I did cut my Linux teeth with Suse, but abandoned it after finding Libranet (an early Debian clone that bought ease of use to the table for the first time)
Overlong introduction finished, the back to my roots bit simply means I'm back to using Suse - well a community edition called Edulife to be precise and a Fedora (Red Hat) community remix edition as my two main OS's
Using Edulife was more an exercise in self harm initially, because the (Suse) install is the slowest of all Linux distros by a long way - taking over an hour even on a fast PC. I'd heard good things about it though and it did have a 'live' option so I could see for myself.
Suitably impressed by the live version, I set about installing it and was glad I did. It has several desktops available by default, so you can pick your favourite from Gnome, KDE and at least three others. The 'edu' bit means it was originally designed for schools and colleges, so it contains a lot of educational software as well as the more usual Linux programs. I think it was initially destined for poorer countries who can't afford to buy a Microsoft licensed PC, but it's a big install that will struggle on older PC's so it's a bit of a catch 22 situation.
Here's a free OS, but it will run like crap on your old technology !
Their unfortunate loss is our gain though and if you have decent hardware, this is a very nice version of Linux.
The Fedora 12.1 community remix is surprisingly similar (minus the educational software) so it's probably a better choice for most people and it does have the more normal 15 - 20 minute install time. It has the same wide choice of different desktops to try and none of the annoyances of straight Fedora.
Waffle over, I 've enjoyed virtually talking to myself, but someone might make a bit of sense out of it one day - who knows !
10 years on, Mandrake has become Mandriva after merging with Conectiva (yes that is the right spelling btw) and produced it's most famous free offspring PClinuxOS. Suse has become OpenSuSe and both have failed to make Linux a commercial hit.
The free versions have always had a good following though and I did cut my Linux teeth with Suse, but abandoned it after finding Libranet (an early Debian clone that bought ease of use to the table for the first time)
Overlong introduction finished, the back to my roots bit simply means I'm back to using Suse - well a community edition called Edulife to be precise and a Fedora (Red Hat) community remix edition as my two main OS's
Using Edulife was more an exercise in self harm initially, because the (Suse) install is the slowest of all Linux distros by a long way - taking over an hour even on a fast PC. I'd heard good things about it though and it did have a 'live' option so I could see for myself.
Suitably impressed by the live version, I set about installing it and was glad I did. It has several desktops available by default, so you can pick your favourite from Gnome, KDE and at least three others. The 'edu' bit means it was originally designed for schools and colleges, so it contains a lot of educational software as well as the more usual Linux programs. I think it was initially destined for poorer countries who can't afford to buy a Microsoft licensed PC, but it's a big install that will struggle on older PC's so it's a bit of a catch 22 situation.
Here's a free OS, but it will run like crap on your old technology !
Their unfortunate loss is our gain though and if you have decent hardware, this is a very nice version of Linux.
The Fedora 12.1 community remix is surprisingly similar (minus the educational software) so it's probably a better choice for most people and it does have the more normal 15 - 20 minute install time. It has the same wide choice of different desktops to try and none of the annoyances of straight Fedora.
Waffle over, I 've enjoyed virtually talking to myself, but someone might make a bit of sense out of it one day - who knows !
) i have settled on Linux Mint 32bit and 64bit and my first payed for W7 OS £135.00 3 licenses 32 & 64bit discs.
