ylexot
Super Genius
I tried using Linux a few years ago (Fedora 5, I think), but it turned out to be a huge PITA. I could get some hardware working, but it was painful. Some hardware just plain wouldn't work, and some would work one day and not the next. There were nice forums full of people who could help, but the problem was that if they had the knowledge to help, they spoke Linux...and I don't (not that well, anyway). So, it wasn't quite mature enough for me at the time and I made the upgrade to XP (from WinME, it is an upgrade).
I mentioned to a Linux-running friend that I was considering trying Linux again and she mentioned that they have "Live CDs" now where you burn the OS onto a CD and boot from that...nice way to do a test drive. So, I downloaded SLAX Linux (www.slax.org) and burned it to a CD last night. I threw it into my laptop this morning and was up and running in no time. Only problem was that I need to get the WiFi up and running. The site mentions that it comes with "ndiswrapper for loading Windows drivers for WIFI cards", so I guess that is a known thing that you have to do and I'll have to figure that out. I didn't have time to play with it much this morning, so I'll see if I can get that working later.
Other cool thing is that you can put it onto a USB flash drive and have your OS customized the way you like it with you anywhere you go. The large SLAX "KillBill" edition will fit on a 256MB stick and the "popcorn" edition will fit on a 128MB stick! So a 1GB+ stick would be plenty for customized files, programs, etc.
We'll see how it goes...
I mentioned to a Linux-running friend that I was considering trying Linux again and she mentioned that they have "Live CDs" now where you burn the OS onto a CD and boot from that...nice way to do a test drive. So, I downloaded SLAX Linux (www.slax.org) and burned it to a CD last night. I threw it into my laptop this morning and was up and running in no time. Only problem was that I need to get the WiFi up and running. The site mentions that it comes with "ndiswrapper for loading Windows drivers for WIFI cards", so I guess that is a known thing that you have to do and I'll have to figure that out. I didn't have time to play with it much this morning, so I'll see if I can get that working later.
Other cool thing is that you can put it onto a USB flash drive and have your OS customized the way you like it with you anywhere you go. The large SLAX "KillBill" edition will fit on a 256MB stick and the "popcorn" edition will fit on a 128MB stick! So a 1GB+ stick would be plenty for customized files, programs, etc.
We'll see how it goes...
