Don't kill yourselves just yet, it's not staying on this machine, I'm running it off the CD.

I never really knew what to make of linux, back in its early days it was just another domain operating system that I just couldn't get my head around, but now with this whole 'free' initiative, a totally free OS seemed a tempting option to try, especially because I've got an old laptop handy.

Its my dads old machine that he no longer needs, on account of his work providing him a brand new dual core laptop(!). He told me to fix it up to put in the kitchen for my mother, so I thought I'd have a play before I got to the dirty business of killdisking it and submitting to windows XP reinstall.

And you know what? I think I'll keep Ubuntu on the laptop. It's damned clean, has all the features that you could need for the 'tubes (firefox), image editing (gimp), office tools (OpenOffice) and music (rhythmbox).

That, and it's also linux. Even though i'm running it straight off CD at the moment, it's running as fast, if not faster than my Win XP install ever did. It's snappy and responsive, even when I was trying installing new software off its online software catalog (which again is totally free).

I'm not going to keep it on here, that would be silly. It does of course have all the compatibility problems with windows software. Wine works, but it's slower and not everything is supported, and incomparability with my sound card and no suitable graphics capabilities on my desktop stem it in gaming - but who's going to use a 1.7mhz laptop for gaming?

Bottom line? Give it a shot. It's totally free from here as an ISO download (took me 20 minutes, you need to supply a CD to burn it on), or you can request a free CD (Takes a few weeks to actually show up) or purchase a cd/dvd for a very, very low price. You don't even need to install it as you can run it right off CD.

Oh but hl2 doesn't work that well on linux... yet.

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http://www.stieffers.com/Other/SF_Signature_Khuskan.gif

I prefer sabayon or openSUSE, never really liked ubuntu that much.

Ubuntu is my favourite desktop distro, centOS for my servers. You pretty much covered everything, except you didn't mention Gaybuntu and Ubuntu Christian Edition. OS's tailored towards different communities.

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God.

I've always liked Ubuntu.

I was going to put it on my server once I get it. By server, I mean a $100 piece of shit acting as my router, web server, and ftp server.

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That's the crazy thing about Linux - once it's up and running it is in fact incredibly easy to use, and really quite fast. Ubuntu is the first distribution to have put the effort in to appeal to non-hardcore types with a nice, accessible install process. Of course, there's a flipside, if you ever find yourself in the support forums or IRC channels you'll see them full of "I HAEV TUX KILLING BIL GATS AS MY DESKTOP AM I DOING THIS RITE!!!?!?!?1!?!?!?!1".

The distribution I use, Gentoo, still doesn't have a graphical installer. It's highly elitist, keeps all the technological chavs out.

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"If they rape and kill me, I hope they kill me first. That way, I sort of win."

I've had ubuntu lurking on this hdd for quite a while now - Dapper Drake.
It's lovely to use, just, as ever, the problem is the difficulty in installing windows apps or apps that you take for granted in windows

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Slackware is fun, but not great as a desktop distribution.

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God.

Developer dairies?

Does photoshop work with it?

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Hello

I'm using Linux for about a year or something now.
I started off with Ubuntu because its easy to install and handle but i think Ubuntu installs many things you dont ever need (e.g. Bluetooth and stuff like that) and this makes the system slow and idly.
I switched to Debain now and its the best distro i've ever had (Ubuntu, XUbuntu, SuSE, Fedora Core ...)
Its not as slow as Ubuntu and comes without the software you would never use (as long as you only install the main system and install the x- and desktop-system from console).

I personally think Linux is the better OS.
It has many great ideas implemented, the only problem is that the "industry" produces its games n stuff for windows because its the most used OS and the most kids grow up with it (vicious cyrcle)

bb
jack

It's not difficult to install photoshop under Wine, just takes time :/

@jack slayton: Yeah, it happens with a lot of things - take iPods for example. As much as the forum seems to loathe them, there's no denying they're the most popular mp3 player around. Because of this, more companies make peripherals for it because there is a larger market and thus more chance of a sale. The larger amount of peripherals adds another incentive to the ipod, so more people buy it over competition, which makes more incentive blah blah ;(

The only way linux will get more widely adopted is if a big name in software (adobe, EA etc) decides to support it

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