Your Questions About Debian Linux

admin answers:

Hi
tried all but Lin/Freespire (even RedHat) and always ended up with OpenSuse.;
mostly because (Open-)Suse has a **very** good hardware support, whereas other distro always fail to configure some of the hardware properly; unless you are keen spending nights getting the HW (& matching programs / drivers) running, stick with what works.
OpenSuse does, for me, even though, admittedly, my rig isn’t exactly your average LostDOS pc >:) =))

another advantage of OpenSuse, even though it comes at the price of a hefty download (> 3GB) is that it includes KDE as well as Gnome as well as pretty much any graphical user interface, out there. Even though Gnome is tempting for a fresh convert from LostDOS, because it prechews a lot of aspects of the OS, just like LostDOS does. If you are really looking to move away from that patronizing aspect, KDE might be a better choice. You may of course install KDE on top of any distro afterwards, but, hell, why not get it out of the box, right? OpenSuse lets you install all of them (!!! GBs) and lets you try them out side by side (even though the HW updates are not always ported automatically from one GUI to the others)
the (Open-)Suse support forums provide the usual support, of course.

PS: would recommend to start w/ version 10.1, as 10.2 comes w/ Xorg 7.2 which isn’t widely supported yet.

admin answers:

Knoppix is for system diagnostics and recovery, it can even crack a password from the windows sam file,
if you don’t really know what knoppix is for then you shouldn’t be using it,
most people don’t even know how to access the applications via root (or even the root password)

its bloated full of system tools, network tools, diagnostic tools, etc – all the tools a pc doctor uses

name me another 700mb live cd that can do what knoppix does – there isn’t one

if you have to use it but find the live cd slow to load, then find you cannot transfer anything to cd/dvd then try this

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/usb-knoppix-510/

i fix pc’s with it all the time

admin answers:

If you install Windows first (or already have it installed), yes. If you install Debian first, who knows? Windows does what it wants when it installs. Of course you’ll need at least 2 partitions for Linux (a small swap partition in addition to at least one Linux partition), so you’ll have to be careful that you don’t shrink your Windows partition so far that Windows doesn’t work. If you install Linux to a partition that already exists (which you break into 2), or you install Linux to another drive, you have nothing to think about.

admin answers:

As has been already said Sabayon is Gentoo based and in general very impressive. One thing of note for a Linux distro. It has a fair amount of bloat so ideally you need a fairly high spec. Machine to run it

I thoroughly recommend Linux Mint 8 Main Edition which is built upon Ubuntu 9.10 Its easy to install and easy to use plus it comes with much of the software you are likely to need preinstalled

Linux Mint 8 Download

http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=44

The Perfect Desktop – Linux Mint 8 (Helena) Installation

http://www.howtoforge.com/the-perfect-desktop-linux-mint-8-helena

Linux Mint 8 Helena User Guide

You download the ISO. Image of Linux Mint 8 then you need to create a Bootable LiveCD for installation

Linux Mint 8 can also be run direct from the LiveCD from Booting up without touching your Hard Drive

Also worth looking at is Ubuntu 9.10

Ubuntu 9.10 Download

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

The Perfect Desktop – Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) Installation

http://www.howtoforge.com/the-perfect-desktop-ubuntu-9.10-karmic-koala

Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) User Guide

http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Karmic

Ubuntu 9.10 can also be run straight from the LiveCD

LUg.

admin answers:

Yes Ubuntu 9.10 Dual boot with windows but mostly Ubuntu .