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Linux Distro for an XP convert.

3WAYsplit

3WAYsplit

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Sep 26, 2001
Messages
1,268
What would be a good Linux distro to replace XP?

My system is old, but has to run for a while longer. :(

AMD Athlon 64 3200+
2.21 GHz
2.00 GB Ram
Nvidia GeForce 7800 GS

I just want it for basic / casual computing. It needs to be new-user friendly. I would like it to be ready to go after install. I would like all audio and video to work, etc.

Play audio / video files
CD/DVD burning
web browsing
some basic games (solitaire, etc..)
notepad / word pad
paint, etc..

It needs to have a LIVE DVD so I can try it out first.

I'm too familiar with the XP desktop :rolleyes: but a distro similar would great.

What distros should I give a try?
 
What kind of GUI are you looking for? More feature/graphical rich, or a more minimalist one?

I personally prefer a minimalistic distro like Crunchbang. But I also like XUbuntu which runs XFCE instead of Gnome or KDE.
 
Anything with a Gnome2 desktop if you want an easy transition from XP, which you do. I'm glad I started with Ubuntu Hardy instead of fistfucking myself right off the bat with some elitist "minimalist" wankery where you have to build the bike before you can ride.

Mint Mate is great choice.
 
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I just tried the new version of Xubuntu. Xubuntu 14.04 LTS may be a good choice for you.
You have to open their own Software center and add the unsupported extras to have mp3 codecs. Not to hard. Another distro to check out is SolydX. It is a rolling release based on Debian. This means that you just update it, similar to Windows Update. Everything works out of the box, you should not have to install anything. It works well on Xp era hardware. They have a very friendly forum if you should have a problem or question. Good Luck
 
XFCE, Mate or enlightenment based system will probably be best for an ex XP user. KDE and GNOME have completely fucked up with the menu systems. I am mega annoyed whenever I try to use them.
 
Thx for the replies.


I've tried Mint Linux & Ubuntu Live DVDs a few times each.

I've been getting errors during boot, or the system hangs with no errors. :(
_________________________________________________

What's the difference between XFCE & Mate?
 
3WAYsplit said:
Thx for the replies.


I've tried Mint Linux & Ubuntu Live DVDs a few times each.

I've been getting errors during boot, or the system hangs with no errors. :(
_________________________________________________

What's the difference between XFCE & Mate?
Click to expand...

The difference is that they're two different windowing systems lol. Try them out, XFCE is older and Mate is a newcomer. Mate is afaik more flexible.

Mint releases have been very buggy in my experience also but with Xubuntu I have had very consistent success. Also Sabayon, Zorin etc. are worthwhile XP alternatives. Zorin looks amazingly much like Windows - perhaps even too much.
 
B00nie said:
The difference is that they're two different windowing systems lol. Try them out, XFCE is older and Mate is a newcomer. Mate is afaik more flexible.

Mint releases have been very buggy in my experience also but with Xubuntu I have had very consistent success. Also Sabayon, Zorin etc. are worthwhile XP alternatives. Zorin looks amazingly much like Windows - perhaps even too much.
Click to expand...

Also Mate is a fork of Gnome2, because most users didn't like the new interface of Gnome3.

Another distro that you can try out is Lubuntu (Ubuntu with LXDE Window Environment). It's lightweight and fast. After boot the system won't use more than 150mb.
 
i am a total noob and just started using Zorin , it seems easy enough right now.
 
B00nie said:
XFCE, Mate or enlightenment based system will probably be best for an ex XP user. KDE and GNOME have completely fucked up with the menu systems. I am mega annoyed whenever I try to use them.
Click to expand...

Word. Try ManjaroBox in VBox. No need for Guest Additions, as Manjaro is VBox-aware and does it for you.
OpenBox is the way things should be. Barebones 64-bit Arch kernel idles ~150MB. Conky on the standard desktop shows simple super-key bindings. RT click desktop for applications/prefs/system menu. Now you can drive OpenBox.


I'd recommend it for a Linux beginner, except it's Arch, and comes a little light compared to Mint or a Gnome2 like CentOS.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UY4c4wPp6o
 
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Learn how to manually install Arch Linux, no GUI. It's worth it.
 
I also recommend Mint if your looking for a windows like experience. I have it installed on a 2.4ghz intel dual core with 2 gb od ram and its snappy. perfect for web, email etc
 
The one Linux distro I keep coming back to is CrunchBang linux. It's based on Debian, and uses a pretty nice pre-configured lightweight OpenBox window manager. It's minimalist and I like it quite a bit. Here's a screenshot of it with a slightly modified Conky (the stats menu on the right) and also the menu where you run most things from, I'm showing the Conky configuration menu to show how easy the developers made it for people to modify the basic GUI:

2h7nf3q.png


The Emulators menu I added myself for Snes9x :p
 
Ruoh said:
Learn how to manually install Arch Linux, no GUI. It's worth it.
Click to expand...


Compiled X master race reporting in. :D

While your shit's compiling, why don't you step us through configuring a dual stack nic with tss clamping around 9014 using ip in Arch?

XP will do it all automatically :D


.
 
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PornoSatan said:
The one Linux distro I keep coming back to is CrunchBang linux. It's based on Debian, and uses a pretty nice pre-configured lightweight OpenBox window manager. It's minimalist and I like it quite a bit. Here's a screenshot of it with a slightly modified Conky (the stats menu on the right) and also the menu where you run most things from, I'm showing the Conky configuration menu to show how easy the developers made it for people to modify the basic GUI:

2h7nf3q.png


The Emulators menu I added myself for Snes9x :p
Click to expand...


Looks like the OG CDE on SunOS. :cool:

Code: 
# truss -def
 
I was surprised I was able to get nVidia's 337.12 driver to work fine on Ubuntu with the 3.13.9 kernel. So far so good. I'm using a GTX 660 that's flashed to do a 1215 boost. Mem is set @ 3300.

I was going to go back to Mint because I missed Cinnamon, however instead of reinstalling that, I just dropped Cinnamon on Ubuntu.

I've nothing bad to say about Mint or Ubuntu. I like both and have been able to game on both with PlayOnLinux.

I've run Skyrim, AoC, SWTOR, Neverwinter, ME 2 and Drakensang on them.
 
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mi7chy said:
Had better experience with Mint Linux versus Ubuntu as far as driver compatibility and stability.

To create a bootable USB key use Universal USB Installer since it supports persistent storage to save changes between reboots and install software like Chrome, UniGine benchmarks, etc.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/
Click to expand...

2nd this

Mint also seems to have a more "friendly" community too.
Can't understand why everyone in the Ubuntu forms act like they are too good to answer questions.

I use Xubuntu (Xfce) for my work system but I have Mint Cinnamon on my laptop. Both are great.

I use Kubuntu for a long while but and liked the KDE desktop but I HATED the Nepomuk subsystem.
It was a unbelieve resource hog. I tried to disable it and ended up killing KDE altogether.
Switched to Xubuntu after that.
 
Are any of the distros listed on the "Distrowatch" 1-100 list worth trying? I'm interested in desktops only, no specialized programs (formaters, servers, etc)

Besides the ones already mentioned. If so which ones offer a LIVE DVD or LIVE CD?

I'd prefer the LIVE DVDs. Would LIVE CDs be able to burned onto DVDs?
 
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3WAYsplit said:
Are any of the distros listed on the "Distrowatch" 1-100 list worth trying? I'm interested in desktops only, no specialized programs (formaters, servers, etc)

Besides the ones already mentioned. If so which ones offer a LIVE DVD or LIVE CD?

I'd prefer the LIVE DVDs. Would LIVE CDs be able to burned onto DVDs?
Click to expand...

Puppy linux. Boots from USB, runs 100% in ram and saves your session to USB when you shut down. Very light (180Mb) and still does most of what 'big' distros do. Also boots from cd/dvd and yes, live-cd can be burned as dvd. You just waste a lot of space :)
 
I'm a big fan of Xubuntu. I just did a fresh install of the new 14.04 LTS and I like it quite a bit. The new XFCE with the new whiskerplugin is really nice.

I love Arch as well but you have to be ready for issues when dealing with a rolling release OS. I broke my ability to compile Android and my apps a number of times when updating pieces. I'd still be on Arch if my old laptop hadn't died. I went Xubuntu for the simplicity because I was too lazy to bother building Arch again and re-configuring everything again.
 
paret0 said:
Compiled X master race reporting in. :D

While your shit's compiling, why don't you step us through configuring a dual stack nic with tss clamping around 9014 using ip in Arch?

XP will do it all automatically :D


.
Click to expand...

It was simply an suggestion to understand the basics. The Arch community has an excellent wiki setup, and doing everything by hand really helps to understand what's going on under the hood. Not to mention it's considered cutting edge Linux.
 
Ruoh said:
It was simply an suggestion to understand the basics. The Arch community has an excellent wiki setup, and doing everything by hand really helps to understand what's going on under the hood. Not to mention it's considered cutting edge Linux.
Click to expand...


A WinXP user needs to spend 2 days installing an Arch terminal about as much as a 15-year old needs to sit in an abstract algebra or complex analysis class: There might be a few out there...but most are just gonna feel a little lost... :(

If OP already knew how to use curl and wget to plunder the Arch forums like Zuckerberg, or even use a next-gen linux routing platform to configure a nic it would be one thing. But a new Linux user should not have to be confronted with properly installing his engine and transmission (or users and groups, ifconfig, X11, and Firefox) before he can learn how to drive.

Linux is free. An XP user should get something happy and clicky and have a good time so he'll enjoy learning Linux and gain enough confidence to go on to flash custom compiles of his personal Arch kernel into his wristwatches and coffee makers and supercomputers.


:cool:
 
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paret0 said:
Linux is free. An XP user should get something happy and clicky and have a good time so he'll enjoy learning Linux and gain enough confidence....:cool:
Click to expand...

That's where I'm at. I need something that I can get running without headaches. It needs to boot a LIVE DVD or CD so I can test it for a while.

I've tried different distros, but only had so/so luck with two of them: openMandriva & Mageia 4 KDE.. Those even were a pita to get running. Sometimes they would load completely but
have no audio while video would play. While other times they wouldn't load at all.

I need a distro that will boot up each time. But so far nothing it working for me. :(
 
3WAYsplit said:
That's where I'm at. I need something that I can get running without headaches. It needs to boot a LIVE DVD or CD so I can test it for a while.

I've tried different distros, but only had so/so luck with two of them: openMandriva & Mageia 4 KDE.. Those even were a pita to get running. Sometimes they would load completely but
have no audio while video would play. While other times they wouldn't load at all.

I need a distro that will boot up each time. But so far nothing it working for me. :(
Click to expand...


What sort of hardware are we talking about?


VirtualBox is also a good way to check out new distros.
 
paret0 said:
What sort of hardware are we talking about?.
Click to expand...

MS XP SP3
MSI MS-7181
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
2.21 GHz
2 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 7800GS

That's what I'm stuck using for now. :(

From what I've been reading the best distros for me to try would be:

Ubuntu
Kubuntu
Linux Mint
PC Linux OS
Zorin
Xubuntu

Where would be the best place to download ISO files for each distro? Best program to check there MD5? Which version of each distro? What GUI (KDE, Gnome, etc) should I try?

Sorry for all the questions, but I'm trying to get into Linux. I'm so tired of M$, and want to be free of it. :)
 
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In my very brief research into this question, I find that Mint and Ubuntu are the two most popular distros. One of the biggest reasons that Mint is more popular than Ubuntu now is that Mint uses the Cinnamon GUI while Ubuntu is sticking with its in-house Unity GUI.

The main difference between Cinnamon and Unity, as I understand it, is that Cinnamon looks better on a desktop than Unity does, and Unity looks better on phones, tablets and TVs than Cinnamon does.
 
B00nie said:
distrowatch.com has all the info you need.
Click to expand...

I'm looking for a little more detailed info. Some information is there, but I would like to know more about certain aspects of the distros, etc.


paret0 said:
1. Use the distro's torrent download links for the latest edition whenever possible, and the checksumming will be done for you as you download
Click to expand...

Are the torrents better? Do they tend to download error free? Does that apply to all distros, or to some more than others?
 
3WAYsplit said:
I'm looking for a little more detailed info. Some information is there, but I would like to know more about certain aspects of the distros, etc.
Click to expand...

Then you'd obviously need to go to the distro's homepage.




Are the torrents better? Do they tend to download error free? Does that apply to all distros, or to some more than others?
Click to expand...

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes,No
 
3WAYsplit said:
I'm looking for a little more detailed info. Some information is there, but I would like to know more about certain aspects of the distros, etc.




Are the torrents better? Do they tend to download error free? Does that apply to all distros, or to some more than others?
Click to expand...

Distrowatch has it all. It has links to the distros homepages, download links, popularity info etc. Read it a bit please.
 
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