Silent Warrior
February 2nd, 2010, 09:18 AM
I have two desktops at home - one running Ubuntu/XP, the other a sort of pre-scrap-heap, currently running PCLinuxOS (Gnome). I'm considering moving to a more suitable distribution - I have nothing against PCLOS, besides it installing a ton of drivers and stuff through Mandriva's user-friendly ideals that I just don't need (like 50+ printer-drivers...), and removing them seems to invite full system-wide breakdown. In short, I want to lighten the load a bit. (Not necessarily switching to XFCE/LXDE/other lightweighters, but I can live with that.)
Specs (in flux - I'm somewhat planning a system upgrade of the main machine during the next five years, and the hardware from that will end up in the concerned box):
ASUS P4T-E
Pentium4 2GHz
512 Mb RDRAM
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro (might be 512 Mb - haven't checked in a while, could be 256)
Ages-old TFT screen that isn't detected properly - 15" supposedly capable of 1024x768, though not presently allowed to go there. (Samsung SyncMaster [something]c, integrated speakers)
Creative SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 Platinum (currently no speakers attached - working on that on the side, headphones until further notice)
80 Gb HDD (in other words - space is not an issue)
Realtek 8169
Requirements/preferences:
Graphical package manager (req)
Rolling release model (pref) :) This kind of thing still hasn't caused me any trouble on desktop-PCs. I find it more convenient - and let's not argue about its merits/downsides for now.
More than one or two DEs available (req)
Binary>=source-packages (req - customizable though they are, source-based distributions take too much effort/time to update/maintain to justify use for this purpose, but some compilation is definitely acceptable)
Customizability (req), little extra stuff installed and not traumatizing to remove post-install
Usage-scenarios:
Checking game-FAQs or other light text-processing (gedit/OpenOffice/Firefox/Misc. browser)
Running Wesnoth-SVN, and compiling it ;)
Running a few older DOS-era games through DOSbox - Wing Commander and the like
... Guess that's it. Besides listening to a limited stock of music with Amarok, but I now mean to switch to Audacious on that machine. Or maybe the upcoming Bangarang?
So, what can you recommend? I'm currently testing Arch with VBox - falls flat due to the lack of graphical package management, but the rest of the package-related stuff is absolutely a-OK by me. Nice mix of binary repositories and source-tarballs bagged through AUR. It is rather a lot of trouble to get set up to my liking, though, without browsing through Synaptic and see what's available. (pacman -Ss | less isn't doing it for me...) I'm not sure I want to go through all that bother just to discover I missed something crucial and end up with a brick because I was looking away for ten seconds while updates were applied.
Gentoo and other pure source-distros are out, period, as I outlined above. Sabayon seems to cover some kind of middle-ground though, and I took some liking to it as I was testing it a few months ago. Probable candidate. Thoughts? Opinions? Hate-mail? Mail-bombs?
I have not tried Slackware - well, I tried installing it once, and failed.
PuppyLinux and the like might be an option, though this is DEFINITELY going to be installed to HD - no monkey-business with USB-sticks for this setup, besides for shuffling files between the two boxes.
The by-the-way about future upgrading means that a too specialized configuration would cause a bit of bother in the impending transition, unless I go for the safe option of a reinstall - which makes Arch in my eyes a less-than-optimal choice (unfortunately - would be almost perfect otherwise). Whether I'd carry over the harddrives from the other computer is not decided at the moment, but doing so (and going full SATA - Ubuntu occupies an IDE-drive, and the other drives are pretty darn full, to say the least) would increase the likelyhood of me going for a reinstall rather than just booting post-upgrade and crossing my fingers (improving Arch's outlook, but the package-management is still a factor).
Specs (in flux - I'm somewhat planning a system upgrade of the main machine during the next five years, and the hardware from that will end up in the concerned box):
ASUS P4T-E
Pentium4 2GHz
512 Mb RDRAM
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro (might be 512 Mb - haven't checked in a while, could be 256)
Ages-old TFT screen that isn't detected properly - 15" supposedly capable of 1024x768, though not presently allowed to go there. (Samsung SyncMaster [something]c, integrated speakers)
Creative SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 Platinum (currently no speakers attached - working on that on the side, headphones until further notice)
80 Gb HDD (in other words - space is not an issue)
Realtek 8169
Requirements/preferences:
Graphical package manager (req)
Rolling release model (pref) :) This kind of thing still hasn't caused me any trouble on desktop-PCs. I find it more convenient - and let's not argue about its merits/downsides for now.
More than one or two DEs available (req)
Binary>=source-packages (req - customizable though they are, source-based distributions take too much effort/time to update/maintain to justify use for this purpose, but some compilation is definitely acceptable)
Customizability (req), little extra stuff installed and not traumatizing to remove post-install
Usage-scenarios:
Checking game-FAQs or other light text-processing (gedit/OpenOffice/Firefox/Misc. browser)
Running Wesnoth-SVN, and compiling it ;)
Running a few older DOS-era games through DOSbox - Wing Commander and the like
... Guess that's it. Besides listening to a limited stock of music with Amarok, but I now mean to switch to Audacious on that machine. Or maybe the upcoming Bangarang?
So, what can you recommend? I'm currently testing Arch with VBox - falls flat due to the lack of graphical package management, but the rest of the package-related stuff is absolutely a-OK by me. Nice mix of binary repositories and source-tarballs bagged through AUR. It is rather a lot of trouble to get set up to my liking, though, without browsing through Synaptic and see what's available. (pacman -Ss | less isn't doing it for me...) I'm not sure I want to go through all that bother just to discover I missed something crucial and end up with a brick because I was looking away for ten seconds while updates were applied.
Gentoo and other pure source-distros are out, period, as I outlined above. Sabayon seems to cover some kind of middle-ground though, and I took some liking to it as I was testing it a few months ago. Probable candidate. Thoughts? Opinions? Hate-mail? Mail-bombs?
I have not tried Slackware - well, I tried installing it once, and failed.
PuppyLinux and the like might be an option, though this is DEFINITELY going to be installed to HD - no monkey-business with USB-sticks for this setup, besides for shuffling files between the two boxes.
The by-the-way about future upgrading means that a too specialized configuration would cause a bit of bother in the impending transition, unless I go for the safe option of a reinstall - which makes Arch in my eyes a less-than-optimal choice (unfortunately - would be almost perfect otherwise). Whether I'd carry over the harddrives from the other computer is not decided at the moment, but doing so (and going full SATA - Ubuntu occupies an IDE-drive, and the other drives are pretty darn full, to say the least) would increase the likelyhood of me going for a reinstall rather than just booting post-upgrade and crossing my fingers (improving Arch's outlook, but the package-management is still a factor).