so, uh... i wanna go back to linux
 

lately on weekends i start to think about it and i really think my current winXP installation is crap.

When i had linux before, like 2 years ago i enjoyed it pretty well. I used mandrake.

So what i'm looking for from this thread is suggestions on the following things:

what distro i should use - mandrake having gone commercial (correct me if i'm wrong about that), what do you guys like? I've heard good things about suse (i know they're commercial too but i think i could get ahold of it) and also debian although i'd be a little unsure of myself with debian's installer. recommendations pleeeeeeeeeeez.

Applications:

iPod - I know there's a buncha stuff out there for updating your iPod with linux, but if there's anyone here who's done it hearing from them would be great comfort.

Video Editing - again, i know there's stuff out there. but any recommendation would be great.

DVD Authoring - I got a DVD burner (<3<3<3) a while ago and would be looking for an app, wouldn't have to be complicated, that i could make a nice simple menu for my videos that i want on DVD.

also would be looking for a nice CD burning app.

edit -
Photo Importing Software - something in the ilk of iphoto or picasa that supports my camera [USB, xD card]

try ubuntu, it's pretty basic (i.e. it doesn't come with a bunch of software that all does the same thing) and it's only 1 cd. it is based on Debian, but it it updated more often and it uses Debian's apt-get for updating stuff. of course, i tried installing it a few weeks ago and it fucked up my MBR, but i wanted to dual boot.

don't use Fedora, it is really bad with media. and i hate KDE, so fuck Suse.

i heard good things about ubuntu also.

yeah... i didn't really have a reason, but i wasn't really about trying Fedora.
and I also dislike KDE. I ended up using IceWM a lot when i had mandrake.

i never really tried anything other than KDE or GNOME. i did install one when i was using Fedore, but the name escapes me now. it was really small and minimalistic and i didn't like it at all. GNOME fits all my needs.

I really don't have any suggestions here, I used linux on my server for a while but was forced back to win2k on it when I couldn't get samba to work after several attempts, I need to give it another go sometime, it's something I feel the need to be more than proficient in.

i'm running ubuntu right now, and it's good. the install is simple, and like raub mentioned, there's only one cd for it, so that's a bonus. here's the set of screens for installation and configuration of the latest version of ubuntu ("hoary").

i figure that within a few weeks, i'll be going back to gentoo, which is a great linux distro (it's been a while since i've had it installed). if you're interested in installing gentoo, be sure to read the gentoo manual (or handbook or whatever they call it), because even the simplest form of installation--a stage 3 install--is pretty do-it-yourself... it just sets up the more difficult things for you.

also, my laptop is running suse 9.2 right now, and it's pretty decent. i also don't like kde, but it seems to work just fine. and i've heard that in future versions, suse is going to be going with gnome instead of kde, so maybe 9.3 will install gnome by default, and work with it properly.. but in any case, a REAL man uses the tab window manager. :P

another thing i forgot to mention about ubuntu is that you can easily upgrade from one version to another. for instance, they just released Hoary a few weeks ago. instead of downloading the new cd you can just edit the repositories list that apt uses, and it will upgrade. the one that is one huge feature that i love over other versions. you should never have to reinstall linux when a new version comes out, which is quite often for some distros.

johnny, thank you for that link.

my last concern which i remembered last night was making sure my wireless card works well under linux...

Ubuntu 5.10 comes out in a few days and it seems to meet pretty much all of my needs. I wasn't able to test everything with the live CD, due to the nature of live CDs, but it detected all of my hardware, sound is working (needs some tweaking), USB automounts, etc...

I'll be installing it when it is officially released and hopefully it won't fuck up my Windows drive this time (I have high hopes... and it's fall break this weekend so I have time to fix it).

Sharkz, it's supposed to have great wireless support!

I installed ubuntu on my iMac which was getting too old to run newer versions of OS X. Runs okay but I still don't use it much, simply prefering that this computer is in my room.

I have an IBM netvista at my disposal... It's either going to me or my mom. If I get to keep it, it will almost certainly be ubuntu.

got Ubuntu installed and dual botted no problemo.

i think i'm going to take advantage of my fall break and reconfigure my system though. windows and linux will reside on my 60GB IDE drive, and i'll use my 120GB SATA as storage for both OSes to use.

I'm installing Ubuntu on my server right now..may recall my server has been shut off for several months, but, I got more hard drives and wanted to give something different a shot...

So I'm putting 5.10 ubuntu in, and, with the now 4 250gb wdse's i have, going to try out a raid 0+1, should be interesting as long as I can get the controller to work properly (it detected the drives already..hope building the array's will be as simple).

Also, samba..hopefully my previous issues won't prevail again.

donnie, you should test out the dapper beta. 5.10 ran fine for me, but dapper is gonna rock the house. unfortunately, for some reason the beta won't let me connect to the internet, but eth0 and everything else looks fine.

Yeah, I watched my friend install dapper on his laptop, i might have to give that one a try..right now I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with my server though..when i first booted it back up a few days ago after many months of being shut off...booted into win2k fine, but since formatting the main drive and trying to install different os's on it, getting nothing but fails, win2k3 server, nope, ubuntu, nope, i put in a new dvd rom drive, but it won't boot off the ubuntu dvd I downloaded/burned, but my main system boots it fine, downloading kubuntu now as a cd iso to give that a shot, might have to take the system apart and play around with it.

Hah, kubuntu failed too...same thing as ubuntu..fails in base installation...nice.

In the end i said piss on it...put xp back on the server, remote desktop ftw.

a few weeks ago i installed ubuntu again, and made the switch back to linux. the only reason i installed windows xp a while back was because i wanted to use itunes with my (at the time) brand new ipod. there didn't really seem to be a good linux alternative. but just recently i decided to do a little searching and found yamipod, which works wonderfully. there is also gtkpod, which i haven't played with yet.

soon-ish, i'm going to decide whether i want to install the dapper drake version, or give gentoo a try. the main thing against gentoo is that i'm lazy and the install is more involved.

i'd stick with dapper, personally. i've heard tons of people raving about gtkpod, definitely give it a shot.

When I tried Linux, I used KDE, and I didn't like it at all. I've always wanted to have a Linux partition, but it never seemed very practical for me.

I'd still like to do it sometime though, for as they say "shits and giggles".

kde is just a window manager; not an actual linux distribution.

but i don't particularly like kde either. gnome and xfce are both better, in my opinion. (twm and fvwm are sometimes fun too, even if they are pretty ugly)

i always install KDE and give it a shot, but it just never feels right to me. Gnome works so well, and I actually like the fact that it's not as flashy.

Oh, well, shows how much I know then.

unrelated, but my computer crashed today and lost my 10 page ethnic studies midterm thats due tomorrow, plus all my writing and my photos and all. Second time in a year....I hate dell.

i am with you on that one. gnome is pleasing to my eyes without being, i dunno.. over-the-top.

so the next ubuntu release is slated for june 1st, still. a few days ago they released a release candidate for dapper, and an update for the update manager, so i guess if everything seems to be in order the official dapper release should be on time. i was thinking of installing kubuntu and giving kde another shot (fer the hell of it), instead of just upgrading my current ubuntu install, but maybe i'll just put kubuntu on my laptop..

i installed dapper today. ran into some trouble like i did with the beta. apparently the kernel muffed some stuff up with the drivers for my ethernet card, which causes DHCP to fail. even static IPs fail too.

grabbed an old card from my dad and have it working now.

johnny, you know you can have ubuntu and kubunu (and xubuntu and edubuntu) installed all at once, right? just run:

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

i was fucking with kubuntu for a few days, and i was trying to like kde, but to no avail..

i just installed dapper and the only problem i've run into so far has to do with my screen resolution. i want 1280x1024, but i can't seem to use it. i've added it to my xorg.conf file, which (i think) ought to fix it, but i still can't use it. i'm stuck on 1024x768, which sucks. the installers on previous version would allow you to choose which resolutions to allow to be used, but dapper kinda.. glossed over that stuff. and now i'm stuck with a big ugly screen. if i don't figure it out in a few days i may have to go back to using breezy.

that happened to me, but i know you can't just add it to xorg.conf

did you install the video driver (if you have ati or nvidia)? that should fix it. other than that i'd just try reconfiguring xorg, but i forget the command to do it. i need to get my middle mouse working.

<edit> here you got johnny boy

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

yea, i found that solution somewhere on the ubuntu forums last night. gave it a try this morning, and everything looks correct again. phew! i couldn't stand 1024x768 for very much longer.

haha i know what you mean, i'm using my widescreen monitor with a native res of 1440x900, running at 1024x768 is awful.

i need to find a nice green theme somewhere. i love clearlooks 2, so maybe i'll just edit one of the themes to be a nice lush green. (the outdoors theme that's in there already is pretty nice).

i'm digging the rusty colours. it's brighter than the browner human theme from breezy. but that background image is sorta fugly.

yeah, it is fugly. i need to find a nice rustic one to match the outdoors theme.

i tried out KDE tonight and it's pretty good, but still some weird stuff that i don't like.

i find kde's control-panel-like program to be glitchy sometimes. they may have resolved that now though..

anyways, why bother with the kde when you could be using xfce? it's not quite up to par with gnome, but it's still good.

i try to use XFCE, but... why use XFCE when i could be using Gnome :)

yeah, the KDE control panel is pretty much the one thing i really hate about it. so hard to find what you need. i still can't figure out how to make Konquerer display all directories in list view by default. plus none of the new transparency stuff worked for me at all, it just did nothing.

i really wish i could get emulators working well in Linux, they just don't work right for me.

i haven't really had to bother with emulators yet, so i can't help much.

i was thinking of isntalling dosbox (i think it's called dosbox, anyways..) and tracking down some old dos games. maybe play some leisure suit larry or king's quest.

yeah, it's dosbox. i think emulators don't run well because of ALSA or whatever sound driver they use. on windows they run perfect, but in Linux not at all.

and on my laptop in windows they run like they do in Linux because it is just a shitty onboard sound chip.

well anyways, i've started playing lieutenant skat and now i'm hooked to it, like i once was to freecell. simple card games have always been the best computer games i guess.

now that ubuntu didn't work out on my desktop, i just got my sister's old laptop (PII) and i'm thinking ubuntuing it. more to follow.

why didn't it work out?