The Linux Experiment

Two posts in one day!

I am learning quite a bit in my continued research of which Linux distro will be right for me. So far I think I have knocked out a lot of the more… exotic Linux distros and have come up with a bit of a short list with a few pros and cons to go along with them.

The Short List

• Debian
  • Pros: Very stable, lots of support, lost of software, one of the oldest distros.
  • Cons: The distro prioritizes stability over new technology which sometimes seems kind of dull, only F/OSS software.
  • Why I am considering it: This distribution has widespread use and serves as sort of a gold standard and I know using this would be a very practical choice.
• Fedora
  • Pros: Stable, very secure, a lot of support, constantly adding brand new technology.
  • Cons: Using bleeding edge technology can sometimes be a bad thing (I hear KDE 4.0 didn’t go over so well for example), I don’t know a lot about it, not sure what the software situation is like for example.
  • Why I am considering it: To be honest it intrigues me. It seems like a distro that can have a lot of customization done to it and it has a focus on security which I’m a bit of a nut about.
• Linux Mint
  • Pros: Ubuntu as a starting point, tried to make the best desktop experience possible, simplified a lot of the UI and made great improvements in the usability.
  • Cons: It’s a relatively new distro and doesn’t quite have the community behind it yet. I’m worried that updates for Mint specific problems might not come frequently enough.
  • Why I am considering it: I am familiar with Ubuntu and this seems like an improved version of that.
• Mandriva
  • Pros: Mandriva One sounds like it includes everything I could possibly ask for.
  • Cons: It seems to try and push a full computing experience on the user, which for most would be great but for this experiment maybe not so much.
  • Why I am considering it: It seems like an easy out.

Hopefully I can make my decision shortly and read up some more about it before the start of the experiment!

I have finally settled on some hardware that I will be using for this experiment:

Dell Studio XPS 16

• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 at 2.40GHz with 3MB cache and 1066Mhz FSB
• RAM: 4GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1067MHz
• LCD Panel: Widescreen 15.6 inch WLED LCD (1600×900)
• Web Cam: 2.0MP
• Video Card: ATi Mobility RADEON HD 4670 with 1GB of memory
• Hard Drive: 320GB 7200 RPM SATA
• Optical Drive: Slot loaded 8X DVD+/- RW
• Sound Card: TBD (High Definition Audio 2.0)
• Wireless Networking Card: Intel 5300 WLAN Wireless-N (3×3) Mini Card
• Bluetooth: Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth Module (2.1+EDR)

I have yet to research if there are any Linux compatibility issues with these hardware pieces but that’s all just part of the game