Which Linux distribution should I dual boot with Ubuntu?

[JackieChan]

I'm a real newbie outside Ubuntu, and I would like to try something different on my laptop. Is there any other distributions I should try? I just recently got my laptop fixed, and would love to try a new operating system on it.

I've heard good things about Fedora and Mint, are there any others? What do you recommend?

[simtaalo]

well if your choosing between mint and fedora then choose fedora. mint is just ubuntu with a few extra bits here n there, its a great distribution for people new to linux as there's less to configure after installation (i.e codecs etc...) but it is the same o/s when it comes down to it.

fedora on the other hand is very different. it sounds like you wanna do what i did a few months ago, and just have a different distro on the HD that you can play about with.

Fedora10 is a great distro, i don't boot into that often as i generally do my work in my ubuntu partition, but i'm writing this post from F10

i've also had openSuse on this partition for a while which was cool, but i preferred fedora, but i'm sure at some point i'll change my mind again.

[cmat]

Try fedora if you want something different. Or else check out Debian. You don't really need to dual boot. Instead, install them into a VM. Sort of redundant (to me at least) having lots of linux distros on one PC.

[snowpine]

I agree 100% with cmat; use a virtualizer like virtualbox and you can test out as many linux distros as you like--you can even have several going at once (ram permitting) and alt-tab between them! The nice thing about virtual machines is that you can experiment to your heart's content without fear of accidentally "breaking" your Ubuntu install.

[Sorivenul]

The big question here is, "What would you do with the second OS?"

A lot of our suggestions will depend on if you wish to use it to learn, or to actually be productive on immediately or with very little effort.

If you want to learn:
Slackware
Arch

If you want fast productivity:
Fedora
openSUSE

If you want an adventure:
Free/Open/NetBSD
OpenSolaris

Virtualize a few first and pick what you wish. Good luck!

[DeadSuperHero]

I'd recommend trying GoboLinux. It uses a package called "rootless" that uses symlinks and hidden folders to make your file-system layout more newbie-friendly.


It also is taking a stab at the "the filesystem is the package manager" metaphor, I'd say if you're up for tinkering try it out.

http://www.gobolinux.org/

[snowpine]

Personally, I like to dual-boot Ubuntu with a linux distro that's really, really fast... sometimes I just need to get online quickly, don't need all of Ubuntu's bells and whistles. SliTaz is my #1 choice for this--I find it to be very fast and elegant--but Puppy and DSL would be good choices, too. You can even do a "frugal install" of Puppy, which is like dual-booting, but without the need for a separate partition.

[AnonCat]

SliTaz looks interesting. I'm going to give that a try.

[kk0sse54]

The big question here is, "What would you do with the second OS?"

A lot of our suggestions will depend on if you wish to use it to learn, or to actually be productive on immediately or with very little effort.

If you want to learn:
Slackware
Arch

If you want fast productivity:
Fedora
openSUSE

If you want an adventure:
Free/Open/NetBSD
OpenSolaris

Virtualize a few first and pick what you wish. Good luck!

+1, otherwise makes friends with distrowatch and just check out whatever interests you

[Kinney]

If you're looking for a distro to use as a replacement for Ubuntu than Fedora and OpenSUSE are worth checking out.

If you're looking for a distro to play around with and learn more about Linux but still intend on using Ubuntu I'd suggest Linux From Scratch. http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
It's basically a set of instructions to walk you through building your own Linux distro. If you actually pay attention and try to learn it's a good way of figuring out what's going on behind the scenes. It's been a few years since I've played around with it but I've been thinking about going through it in a virtual machine now that I actually have a much better understanding of Linux since the last time I did it.