BiG O

Both would still do what you want. Have you thought about trying these in virtual machines before installing them? To see what you like? I tried slack in a virtual machine, and learned i wanted nothing to do with it . I'm gonna try it again in a couple months.

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Guide: How to make Windows reinstallations more efficient with Windows PE

The Hundred Gunner

Well if it's going to be your "everything OS" (except gaming), then really, any Linux will do. In that case, I'll also recommend Suse

Really, you can do as much Terminal work as you like in any distro. It's just that some force you to use it more than others do. Hell, I use the Terminal plenty in OSX, and this is an OSX in which I NEVER have to touch it in the first place.

All very possible. View your options here:

http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/where.xml

(Edit: O shoot, maybe not FTP. You'll have to look into it a bit more there.)

Yeah, I find that it's always a good idea to VM first. That's what I do every time I get a new distro.

__________________
"But you would be amazed by how many people think that the only reason to have a computer is to play games, and that playing games is all that anyone with a computer does." - dangerousHobo

"Linux is everywhere, it is all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. " - mbp

"I have used a mac before. And they still don't have right click I mean come on." - aakar

Blah, blah, can't hear you

Chipp

I would use the minimal install CD is you'll be following the Handbook.

At the end of the Handbook's install guide you'll have a running terminal and base system, and Emerge (Gentoo's package manager). It's up to you to grab whatever else you want from there.

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... wherever I may roam; where I lay my head is home ...

Electricity Explained --- Got a G15? Use ATI Tool? Check this out! --- Compilation of Free Security Utilities --- Rule #1: Obey All Rules --- E2160 @ 3400mhz, Orthos Stable

Retrospekt

I'm going to try openSuse on vmware, then Gentoo and see which one I want to play around with. openSuse is a humongous download.

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BiG O

That it is. You'd be better served to torrent it. It has a lot of stuff in there . Although, you could always just download the live CD, which is much much smaller than the full DVD download.

__________________

Guide: How to make Windows reinstallations more efficient with Windows PE

Retrospekt

Full DVD download took me about 8 hours, so not too bad. I should be able to install it today.

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onexero

I agree, its one of the better distros to learn how to use Linux.

The Hundred Gunner

Torrents are ALWAYS slower than FTP/HTTP for me. I have no idea what it's about, but it's always slower. Suse was giving me ~20KB/s out of my usual 160 when I downloaded it.

Takes me about that long, too. I just leave the computer on over night.

__________________
"But you would be amazed by how many people think that the only reason to have a computer is to play games, and that playing games is all that anyone with a computer does." - dangerousHobo

"Linux is everywhere, it is all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. " - mbp

"I have used a mac before. And they still don't have right click I mean come on." - aakar

Blah, blah, can't hear you

thiussat

I finally installed OpenSUSE 11 last night and, while it does look good and seems stable, it does use a lot of memory. I have 2 GB of RAM and SUSE was using 1.5 GB. That doesn't leave much room to work with if I have to run memory intensive tasks.

My MiniME install has all the features of SUSE and never uses more than 400MB. I wish the "big" distros like SUSE, Fedora, Mandriva, Ubuntu offered "slimmed down" versions. I want to install the base, then add what I need. I don't need 3 web browsers, 4 media players, etc.

So, yeah, SUSE and YAST are very nice, but it's just too bloated for most desktop users.

The Hundred Gunner

According to the memory usage monitors, Suse uses a lot of memory... I don't know technically, but I'm almost positive that it's doing something with that memory, not using it because it has to. The reason I say this is because the system is never sluggish.

Use it for a while and see what you think.

I'm off to try Gentoo (installing via live edition)

__________________
"But you would be amazed by how many people think that the only reason to have a computer is to play games, and that playing games is all that anyone with a computer does." - dangerousHobo

"Linux is everywhere, it is all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. " - mbp

"I have used a mac before. And they still don't have right click I mean come on." - aakar

Blah, blah, can't hear you