wow been awhile for me, I see you guys are using distro's I've never heard of. I think redhat 6.0 was my last, used mandrake, caldera, storm...all gone. Just upg to xp from w2k (license key on the "new" pc) so it was free. Installing Openoffice has renewed my interest in opensource, that and the idea of paying for software. What flavor are you guys using?
Try Linux Mint or Ubuntu. both will get you up and running nearly out of the box. Mint adds the codecs for DVD and Mp3s and I think the most you have to do is download Flash for Firefox. WiFi and Bluetooth are set up automatically these days with newer distros. no more having to beat your head against a wall in Terminal trying to make your mouse work. Lots of fun and you can also download Virtual Box from Sun and try scores of Operating Systems in a virtual system without having to leave XP or your normal OS.
I switched to Linux Mint less that a year now from PCLinuxOS on my HP laptop. A newer netbook I have came with windows xp, I don't use that online all that much so I left it with just windows and use Firefox as a browser.
Mint and Dreamlinux both work out of the box with ZERO tweaking to get wifi and all my hardware running on 3 different aged laptops. If you've been out of the game that long, it will blow your mind. Check this out (Compiz Fusion on an ubuntu desktop): www.youtube.com/v/Y4wB3GUemVw
I'm running Ubuntu on my Dell laptop. The first version of Ubuntu I tried I couldn't get the wifi to work, it was a known issue. When the next version came out, wifi worked out of the box. I've been very happy with Ubuntu since. I'm gonna see if that Compiz Fusion will work on my laptop, it looks too cool not to have
Running Debian on one of my older laptops. I like it quite a bit. Took some tweaking to get sound and I am using a Linksys PCMCIA Ethernet adapter so I had to actually find and install the driver for. Byte
I use ubuntu, kubuntu (ubuntu with kde instead of gnome) (for those that dont know KDE and Gnome are the 2 most popular window managers for linux) i have run RedHat mandrake back in the day slackware gentoo openbsd ubuntu is easy slack is powerful gentoo is kinda both but is a little more of a pain to get setup.
Mage, have you tried Arch? I have an install of the Chakra Project which is pure Arch running under kde. Nice setup. http://chakra-project.org/
I just switched to Mint 8 from Mint 6 kde over the weekend. 8 has some things I like much better and a few things I don't like as well as I did with 6. Mint 8 seems to be a blend of gnome and KDE with some x stuff available. I screwed up the first install somehow and had to do it over. Well it wouldn't be the first time. But got it rocking now and am pleased with how its preforming.
I've downloaded and played around with several distros. Ubuntu, openSUSE, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva, MEPIS, Gentoo and I'm currently running Mint 9 on two desktops and a notebook, with Ubuntu Lucid Lynx on an iMac. I always seem to come back to the Debian derivatives. I've used Ubuntu and Mint for so long I struggle trying to remember how to perform certain tasks in Windows. I work from my home as a contractor to an IT company. Unfortunately, they require me to use a proprietary piece of software only compatible with Windows. So, when I'm "on the job", I run Windows 7. But as soon as I have finished my work for the day, I reboot back into Mint. I grumped at the company to see about building in some Linux compatibility and the response was, "Oh, you're one of those." Why yes, I suppose I am!
Ubuntu (Xubuntu for lower powered machines), Mint, and Mepis on a couple old laptops because it knew how to handle the onboard video and other versions didn't. DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD. is a good website to get the latest news and download links for *nix type OS's. - Tristan
Now using Mint 9 on my HP laptop that came with XP media addition, (similar to XP pro, but not). I' just downloaded Ubuntu 10.10 last week and tested it on an old emachine I have out in the barn, but didn't install it. Personally I like Mint better than Ubuntu, but difference is mostly cosmetic.
On my network I use fedora for the server, edubuntu for my kids computer, Ubuntu with compiz on one of my computers (I love the cube), and then have three xp computers. I think I might try mint sometime in the future, I keep hearing good things about it.
SM now runs on Fedora. I use Linux Mint 10 on my main system with a VBox of Win 7 Ult so I can keep my iPhone/itunes happy
I'm running Linux Mint on one laptop, Lubuntu (LXDE) on another, and Mint 10 XFCE on a really old one. My main laptop still has Mint 9 on it because of the long term support. I have tried a lot of builds and for the most part I really like Mint.
I still like Debian & Ubuntu in terms of being able to secure a machine physically from anyone who might take possession of your computer and have a peek at your hard disk. In terms of running secure web sites, though, I've become quite partial to Oracle Solaris 11 and the open source fork of it, OpenIndiana. The learning curve is quite steep but I think some of the virtualization options (zones, Crossbow, etc) plus the underlying filesystem (ZFS) are superior to Linux in many ways. Solaris 11 does offer filesystem encryption. It's not there yet in OpenIndiana, but you can be sure it's coming. For a firewall/router, instead of using an off-the-shelf solution, consider using an older computer with pfSense.
