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Thinking about giving a dual boot to Linux a try...

mephiston5

mephiston5

Senior member
Any distribution recommendations? After doing a little research, Mint, Ubuntu, or openSUSE seem like reasonable choices... Any thoughts there?

I am looking for something that is relatively plug and play, as far as that is possible. Also, if there is a new distro version (like Natty Narwhal) coming out soon, I am fine waiting.

That being said...for the time being, my interest in Linux is somewhat academic. I like the idea of it, and I want to try it out, but I am not completely convinced that it is really a viable choice for my everyday computing as of yet (several of my go to programs don't run on Linux, though there are substitutes, or perhaps emulation or Wine).

I am really looking to kick the tires and see what it is like.

Thanks.
 
First off, I'd recommend a virtual machine as opposed to a dual boot. Dual booting's a PITA, especially for playing around purposes. You could also use Ubuntu's wubi install. That's second best, and it sets up a fake dual boot using virtual disks. Ubuntu's a solid choice for a beginner, and about as easy as it gets. I'd use 10.10, then try an in place upgrade when 11.04 comes out, just to see how it all works.
 
Fedora may be OK, but I probably wouldn't recommend it for a beginner. I now use openSUSE (as the latest release was 10 March), and it is really good!
 
You could always install WUBI for Ubuntu. Gives the advantages of Dual Booting with none of the hassle. Undoing it is as simple as uninstalling it from within Windows.

Joe
 
I find that Ubuntu has been getting uglier and uglier while Mint keeps on looking better and better.

IMO Mint > Ubuntu, especially for a beginner.
 
I agree about the virtual machine. You can dual boot, but I prefer to run a VM on my regular system. Sometimes as a background process too...so I can setup a webserver/mysql box and use it for whatever I'm working on.

My favorite virtual platform is windows virtual PC 2007....free and weighs in at a 30 meg download with minimal system overhead. The only downside is that it's not really made for linux. It takes a little tweaking for some distros to install in graphical mode and can really be a pain. If you try that and hit a snag, it may take some work to get it working, so YMMV.

If you have a copy of VMware workstation it'll be the most user-friendly choice. It's just also a little more overhead and has a lot more options which aren't always a good thing. I typically prefer simplicity these days. 😛
 
Update.

I have installed WUBI for Ubuntu 10.10, and so far I am pretty impressed. I am however a bit bummed that my file sync/backup service (sugarsync) does not currently have a Linux client. It may work with WINE, but I haven't really figured that out yet.

Still, it is a lot easier than I would have thought...
 
You might want to start a new thread discussing Linux syncing. I think there's some powerful tools you can use, but I don't know exactly what they are, as I don't use them.
 
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