What shall I dual boot with?

[mr-woof]

Lo all,

I've decided tonight that I'm going to dual boot my old laptop with another linux distro, I thought I'd let everyone here decide what distro with a little woof poll :D

The laptop itself is an old Fujitsu Siemens, 1.5 celeron, 40gb hd with 512mb ram. I originally set it up quad boot (Xp, ubuntu, open solaris and pclinux)

So any suggestions will be appreciated, this is also my first time of making a thread with a poll so it's a mess, sorry :)

Also, I'd like the distro to work with wireless cards :)

[NoaHall]

fedora

[Crunchy the Headcrab]

Lol, sorry. I voted before I read your first post.

I was gonna say you should use an entirely different kernel altogether. Maybe Windows or something. However, after reading your post I would now like to recommend something entirely different than ubuntu.

Avoid OpenSuse and Fedora and go for something a little more exotic. Arch is a good place to start.

[RiceMonster]

I voted for them all because I can.


Avoid OpenSuse and Fedora and go for something a little more exotic. Arch is a good place to start.

Why avoid them, and how is Arch exotic?

[mr-woof]

Ha Ha, no worries :)

Arch could be good, I might have a couple of goes first in a virtual machine just so I don't make a right old mess

[Crunchy the Headcrab]

I voted for them all because I can.



Why avoid them, and how is Arch exotic?
I just meant that they are both pretty similar to Ubuntu. I've switched between Ubuntu, Fedora and OpenSuse quite a bit and always felt right at home. I used Arch and actually learned something is all I meant, it's a different beast as far as system configuration is concerned.

To be fair, I wasn't saying avoid them because they're bad. I quite like Fedora. I don't like OpenSuse so much, but that's just a matter of preference.

[Crunchy the Headcrab]

Ha Ha, no worries :)

Arch could be good, I might have a couple of goes first in a virtual machine just so I don't make a right old mess
Right. If you use arch, you will have to set up your wireless. It will not work OOTB. In fact you will have to set up a lot of stuff basically starting with just the cli. It's all well docmented on the Arch wiki though.

[RiceMonster]

Right. If you use arch, you will have to set up your wireless. It will not work OOTB. In fact you will have to set up a lot of stuff basically starting with just the cli. It's all well docmented on the Arch wiki though.

A lot of wireless drivers are included in the install cd. In fact, when you boot it up, you may find your wireless card already works, you just have to connect manually (obviously there's no network manager or wicd). Also, you have to make sure you select wireless related packages during the install process, then it should work when you boot your new install.

[mr-woof]

ok thanks for the advice chaps, Arch is winning the race at the moment :)

[Dharmachakra]

Arch is, basically by definition, the least exotic distribution there is.

If it were me, I'd go with OpenSUSE or Fedora. You can't go wrong with Fedora.

Alternatively, check out all the candidate's websites, forums, documentation, etc. If the distribution impresses you, might as well dual boot it.

[Squonk07]

I voted for them all because I can.

Yeah, I noticed that too and did the same thing. Because I could. ;)

Seriously, just take all your choices, print them on a piece of typing paper, tape it to a cork board, and throw a bunch of darts. The first hit is your winner.

[Twitch6000]

Open Solaris,but you will need a lighter version of it.