Linux Distro watch - again

I was recently playing again with some more Linux distros.

PinguyOS, which is based on Ubuntu, is very good out of the box distro. You can run it from live CD or from USB.

The flash support is built in and YouTube videos open fine.

But it has a big drawback - you can use persistent storage feature. Even though it exists in theory I could not make it work!

That's why I still can't praise it enough.

One reason why typical Windows users will be willing to use Linux is they want to play with a different OS.

For them, being able to boot from USB and save settings and other data is important. Also flash support etc. should be very easy to set up.

If possible, USB disk should be accessible from Windows system (with SuSE, Windows could not read the drive).

The distro should also come with common packages Open Office, although it is not that imporant as web based office apps are quite handy nowadays.

I tried EasyPeasy Linux and didn't really like the interface.

Lately I also poked around SuSE 11.3 It now has persistence feature created on the fly at first reboot. It's interface is eye catching. But some useful apps are not put into shortcuts by default! It froze once during my brief testing.

So, at the end, my Linux distro favorites still remain the same - Fedora, Ubuntu and SuSE (in that order).

Unix distros - where they originate from

This is a tree showing how various Unix distros originated from.

Unix

--Linux

----RPM (Red Hat Linux)

------Fedora

------Cent OS

------SuSE

------Mandriva

--------PCLinux

----Debian

------Ubuntu

--------gOS
--------PinguyOS
--------EasyPeasy

--------Linux Mint

------Mepis

------Maemo

------Linspire

------Knoppix

--------Damn Small Linux

----Gentoo

----Slackware

------Puppy Linux

Best USB Linux distros

I have used almost all Linux distros on the market! I liked some of them, hated the rest of them. Majority of users who still do not use Linux, they actually hesitate to install Linux on their computers' hard disks so that it does not interere with Windows.

So, I reckon a good way to start Linux is to try it without touching your existing Windows hard disks.
Of course, you can run a lot of Linux distros directly from live CD/DVD. But not only this is slower but also you often don't get any option to save your settings.

Fortunately, a lot of Linux distros offer the facility to create live bootable USB disk! You can simply boot from your USB disk [as long as your PC BIOS supports that] and then you will work like normal. You can even save your files on USB disk.

One thing you must remember though, Linux uses a different file system known as ext2 or ext3 compared to NTFS (and FAT) for Windows. Linux can read (but may not write) your Windows disks but not vice versa (without using special software)!

The new Linux users mostly confused by so many distros available. Which one is best?

First of all, you must select a distro which supports your hardwire fully. A lot of Linux distros don't support many WiFi cards and so if you use them, you need to connect to internet via ethernet cable only!

Here is a list of what I found about most popular distros.

Ubuntu - The version 8 onwards offers you to create a USB disk once you have booted with live CD.
Ubuntu is most popular distro now and it has excellent user community. However, its only problems are poor hardware support (especially non Intel based WiFi cards) and rather slow startup time.

Open SuSE - A very competent distro. Very good hardware recognition. However, I couldn't make it work from USB following guidelines.

Fedora (formerly Redhat Linux) - My personal favorite. It's hardware recognition is very good and it's lightening fast! My Windows Vista boots up from hard disk in 45 seconds. Fedora 10 boots up from USB in same time!
It is also easy to install new applications (eg. Open Office) in Fedora.

Mandriva - Another very good distro. Lots of built in apps. You can run from USB disk. But it too didn't like my WiFi card.

Knoppix - Its live DVD comes with most number of built in applications. But I was unsuccessful running Knoppix 6 from USB disk. Even if you run it from live DVD, you can still save your settings (persistent storage) in USB disk.

Puppy Linux - a small frill free Linux. At one time in past it was my favorite distro. But now, there are better alternatives available. A version of puppy comes with Open Office as well.

Damn Small Linux - Just 50 MB in size. But too small for modern day computing.

gOS - Based on Ubuntu, comes with lots of Google gadgets. Nothing special though.

Other distros - Not used yet.

Remember, if you Windows computer is screwed, you can still access most of your files if you boot up your computer with Linux.

The site www.pendrivelinux.com has list of USB Linux versions with step by step guide of how to create them.

Feel free to try all of them and see what you like. My personal suggestion will be - Ubuntu, Fedora and SuSE though as they offer best balance between features and usability.

In Linux world, you often hear the terms like Gnome and KDE. These are just two different GUIs for desktop (like Start menu/taskbar in Windows). You will also come accross as Debian and RPM packages. This is just a way of distributing applications in Linux. Some distros are Debian based (eg. Ubuntu) and some are RPM based (eg Fedora).