hey there. im thinking of switching over to linux as for i have had enough with xp. im looking at the latest releases of: Linspire, Xandros (business edition id prob get), and Suse Linux Pro. i have dont a good amount of research on those three but i still cant really make up my mind. i am currently downloading trils of then to try them out. this is what hardware i have... P4 LGA 775 2.8ghz 800mhz FSB 1mb L2 Cache HT 36GB SATA Raptor (Boot) 250GB IDE HD 2gb PC3200 Dual Channel (4x512mb) 256mb 9600 LE AGP 8x / 128mb 9800 Pro AGP 8x X-Micro 108mb PCI Wireless Card Internal DVD Burner, CDrw/DVD Card Reader, Floppy Drive i guess id be using linux for the everyday tasks, email, internet, word, etc. i video edit and record bands but to my knowledge i wouldnt be able to load those on linux, but im not sure. These are the apps i use for my production, Premiere Pro 1.5, Photoshop, FrontPage, Cubase, etc.. I would like to pick one of the three linux OS's listed above that would take full advantage of my hardware (cpu, ram, HT). let me know what you recommmed. thanks. **i notice xandros supports hyper-threading** and linspire you can get from newegg.com for under $30. i checked it out linspires website and it looks really easy to use and loaded with features. how can it be so low priced?
I'm not familiar with those distros, but I'd recommend you look for a hardware compatibility list on each site. Life is a lot easier if all your hardware is on the tested supported lists of the particular distro. As far as lots of features cheap, you can download .iso images of many Linux distros free and burn the CDs yourself. I'd ask around on the comp.os.linux.xxx newsgroups on usenet. Even though the newer Linux distros are easier to use and maintain than before, if you've never used a Unix type system you may find that some things you take for granted in Windows take a while to figure out, install or configure in Linux. I'd recommend using a boot loader or getting another HD and keeping the XP for a while until you get your feet wet with Linux. It takes a lot of the pressure off if you know in a pinch you can boot XP to get something done. OTOH many Linux distros are more stable than XP and you can actually surf the net and do stuff while logged in to a user level account. Plus it's inherently a multi-user system where Windows isn't. So if you take the time to mess with it, you can do a lot more. But sometimes you might rip your hair out.
