K
kenizl86
Guest
I'm pretty sure this question has been asked many severals of times on many severals of forums, but I still need to ask it, mostly because I would love some seasoned input into the matter that is currently bothering my brain (and laptop).
The situation:
My old laptop's motherboard fragged out, so it was time for me to get a new old laptop (a Lenovo Thinkpad T400 [fancy I know!]). My old dead laptop had a dual-booted system running Windows 7 and #! Linux (crunchbang for the un-informed). I re-installed Win7 on my new old one, and I went to install #!, when lo-and-behold I found out that the distro suddenly caught a bad case of death. This of course plunged me into a deep hysteria, frantically scrapping to find a new distro; cuz I need my Linux yo!
The question:
I need a new distro, but there are so daggone many of them that it hurts my brain to look at the list on DistroWatch. Arch, ubuntu, kubuntu, lubuntu, xubuntu, ubuntu studio, slackware, minix, dragora, and on and on until I have an aneurysm out of sheer overwhelming choices. So the question now is- what do you guys recommend?
The specifications:
To narrow this down I have a few concerns/stipulations/uncertainties. First of all let me say that I tried many distros in the past (not an innumerable plethora, just a few like Mint, Ubuntu, Backtrack, Xubuntu, and such), but #! was the first to get lodged in my chest cavity like an old bullet fragment from a ridiculous hunting accident that holds many fond memories (not really; it was much more pleasant than that). I loved that it was simplistic on the outside, but had lots of guts and configurability on the inside while still being simple. So I'm looking for a distro that I can use for school (I'm a Computer Science major in college), which means that it needs a WM/desktop environment (or if it doesn't come packaged with one it can be easily set up with one). Preferably it should be simple but not overly so (that's right, no Ubuntu for me, especially since my computer would probably xplode). I want to be able to further my linux/unix understanding with the system but not have to tweak it all the time (for example I don't want to have the scenario where I sit down to write a research paper and all of a sudden an update bricks my computer).
I've looked around and tried to figure it out, but it's really hard to make a decision. For example: Arch is KISS, but with the bleeding-edgeness you might brick your comp in an update; Slackware is powerful, simple, and stable, but has a fraction of the packages Arch has; Ubuntu is a little too much like Windows (overly simple); Mint is also too simplistic; Debian I can't seem to get working on my 64-bit comp (although I've tried and tried); etc. I also considered using #! even though it was dead, but I wasn't sure how wise this was. I also thought about doing LFS, but I don't really have the schedule to sit down for a weekend and configure it and keep it going.
Summary:
1. #! died
2. Cried, considered continuing using #!.....
3. Need a new linux distro that is simple, powerful, and configurable (with WM like was set up in #!)
4. Would love input from you the community!
5. Will install new distro and rejoice in the Frabjous Day
6. Kill Windows and live with distro happily ever after
The situation:
My old laptop's motherboard fragged out, so it was time for me to get a new old laptop (a Lenovo Thinkpad T400 [fancy I know!]). My old dead laptop had a dual-booted system running Windows 7 and #! Linux (crunchbang for the un-informed). I re-installed Win7 on my new old one, and I went to install #!, when lo-and-behold I found out that the distro suddenly caught a bad case of death. This of course plunged me into a deep hysteria, frantically scrapping to find a new distro; cuz I need my Linux yo!
The question:
I need a new distro, but there are so daggone many of them that it hurts my brain to look at the list on DistroWatch. Arch, ubuntu, kubuntu, lubuntu, xubuntu, ubuntu studio, slackware, minix, dragora, and on and on until I have an aneurysm out of sheer overwhelming choices. So the question now is- what do you guys recommend?
The specifications:
To narrow this down I have a few concerns/stipulations/uncertainties. First of all let me say that I tried many distros in the past (not an innumerable plethora, just a few like Mint, Ubuntu, Backtrack, Xubuntu, and such), but #! was the first to get lodged in my chest cavity like an old bullet fragment from a ridiculous hunting accident that holds many fond memories (not really; it was much more pleasant than that). I loved that it was simplistic on the outside, but had lots of guts and configurability on the inside while still being simple. So I'm looking for a distro that I can use for school (I'm a Computer Science major in college), which means that it needs a WM/desktop environment (or if it doesn't come packaged with one it can be easily set up with one). Preferably it should be simple but not overly so (that's right, no Ubuntu for me, especially since my computer would probably xplode). I want to be able to further my linux/unix understanding with the system but not have to tweak it all the time (for example I don't want to have the scenario where I sit down to write a research paper and all of a sudden an update bricks my computer).
I've looked around and tried to figure it out, but it's really hard to make a decision. For example: Arch is KISS, but with the bleeding-edgeness you might brick your comp in an update; Slackware is powerful, simple, and stable, but has a fraction of the packages Arch has; Ubuntu is a little too much like Windows (overly simple); Mint is also too simplistic; Debian I can't seem to get working on my 64-bit comp (although I've tried and tried); etc. I also considered using #! even though it was dead, but I wasn't sure how wise this was. I also thought about doing LFS, but I don't really have the schedule to sit down for a weekend and configure it and keep it going.
Summary:
1. #! died
2. Cried, considered continuing using #!.....
3. Need a new linux distro that is simple, powerful, and configurable (with WM like was set up in #!)
4. Would love input from you the community!
5. Will install new distro and rejoice in the Frabjous Day
6. Kill Windows and live with distro happily ever after