I have just bought a laptop with SuSE Linux SuSE Enterprise Desktop, SLES 11. It uses a Gnome GUI and is very reliable. I made a mistake using the touchpad and believed I had crippled the OS while writing to a DVD for a backup (you need 3) but I found a Recovery line on the start-up page. It reloaded a new OS from disk while saving my home directory. The HP 635 laptop with an AMD E-450 CPU cost me 265 euros, OS included.
Tullio

---

In my daily experience with dealing with my PC, I am against a wall of duplicates of the files I have in different directories.

So if a directory has the name of Internet Explorer and is lying in C:\Programfiler (C:\Program Files may be more common in other languages), I could have both Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer(1), Internet Explorer(2) and so on for the directories.

Same goes for the files. One file may be having the name of Explorer.exe, another file Explorer.exe(1) and perhaps even Explorer.exe(2) may be present as well in either the same or different directories having the same name syntax.

The ultimate goal with what I have here is bringing the correct files together in the correct place, getting rid of any unneccesary files and in the end get it all working in an orderly and correctly fashion as well.

This works out for Windows XP Home and Windows XP Professional. I have not encountered it yet, but the same principle should go for Windows Ultimate also.

Choosing a distro is going to be a harder problem

:-)

Ain't that the truth. My vote is for (Ubuntu-based) Mint(see green LM icon in my sig below), or plain Ubuntu if you like a radically different interface (Unity).

Running Mint 10 here.

Lets see if we can work out some kind of short list for N9JFE so he doesn't have to try all the distros available.

Ubuntu - if you want to try the new UI (or just see what so many complain about); I have only briefly tested some software on Ubuntu so I don't really have strong feelings either way of the new UI
Mint - Ubuntu under the hood and more traditional UI
Debian - stable version is ok for servers but has older software, I don't know how usable unstable and testing are

Of the RedHat land
Mandriva - I think ML1 runs this; I had a bad experience with this, but it may have had something to do with very unstable hardware I had at the time
Mageia - Mandriva fork, apparently ok and somewhat popular
Fedora - if you want to see what S@H staff is using

Since the machine in question is a "crummy little netbook" I think KDE might not be best option which rules out Mandriva and Mageia (if someone wants to correct me go ahead). Of course there are distros that are designed for netbooks and are lightweight but they may have lost some user-friendliness in the process.

So, I'd vote Mint 13 MATE.

I'll give a healthy agreement to your summary and selection.

Yes, I run Mandriva amongst others. Even though the organisation behind Mandriva has had a very shaky time recently, I've had no need to 'upgrade' my main work machine and so I'm still on now quite an 'old' Mandriva. However, that is still a long way ahead of certain other OSes... ;-)

I'd recommend the Mageia distro as an alternative to Mandriva until the dust settles on the recent reorganisation for Mandriva into whatever new name.

I'm also rather impressed with the ridiculous flexibility of Gentoo and the seamless system of updates. However, that is also an example of bewildering choice unless you stay with the defaults. There are various distro spin-offs from Gentoo that nicely package the choices up for you.


Happy crunchin',
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Thanks for all the advice, guys. And sorry it has taken me so long to say so.

I really do intend to follow up on this. The crummy little netbook (which has now been replaced anyway) is probably not worth the effort itself, but I think this is a skill I'd like to have in case I need it in the future for some other more important machine.

---

David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

... The crummy little netbook (which has now been replaced anyway) is probably not worth the effort itself, but I think this is a skill I'd like to have in case I need it in the future for some other more important machine.

Hey! This is being typed on a "crummy little netbook"!!

Not as fast as using a desktop, but then again, I don't go lugging my desktop around with me in my knapsack... At the moment, I'm on an old Acer AspireOne resplendent with 1.5GB RAM, 8GB SSD, and the KDE desktop on Mandriva Linux. Works fine. More than enough grunt even for Firefox...

The only slowdown is from when I suffer slow WiFi from whatever roaming hookup (no problems at home), and from the physical size being a little too small for comfort. Then again, I got the netbook precisely because of that small size for portability!

Aside: The s@h forums are rather cumbersome for small screen sizes. And this new paging feature on the forums requires too many clicks and pauses on slow connections! (Rain doesn't help the WiFi signal either :-( )


When I'm not out and about, it also does good service as the source for driving a projector for presentations!!

For typing, even a 2/3rd sized keyboard is preferable to a touch-screen...


Happy crunchin',
Martin

So... Why did Microsoft slap down the netbook format?... :-( Many years later, we're only just now seeing comparable devices oncemore...

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

As I recall, someone at Microsoft (I think we all know who), also said that we'd never need more than 1 MB of RAM.....

---

Don't take life too seriously, as you'll never come out of it alive!

Also Thomas J.Watson Sr. said the the world would need only 5 computers (made by IBM, of course).
Tullio

---