This is a list of Distro's I have worked with on two separate machines and have had success or failure with Success Ubuntu PCLinux BackTrack Musix Failure Open Suse 10.2
Every one has worked for me with the odd exception later found to be either my system, or lack of ram Failures :: kororaa (not enough ram) puppy 2.14 (faulty build apparently) videolinux 1.2b (something invalid about the graphics drivers) And notably suse 10.2.. It runs from the live cd ok.. but installing it fails every time. They have apparently released an updated bugfix version.. but I haven't tried it. The ones I always point people at are slax killbill (best hardware support) Dreamlinux (just excellent for quick ipod connectivity) and puppy 2.12 (good ntfs read support) 64 bit with enough ram? sabayon.. great for recovering important data from a dead windows installation. Mount, find and burn all from a live dvd.. excellent.
I could not get the live cd to run at all on 2 different machines. Maybe I will try a previous release and see how that goes. Sabayon looks worth a try as well. PCLinux is going to replace Ubuntu on my dual boot machine as I have really liked how the live cd performs. Ubuntu Gutsy also looks good, but still needs some work before it's ready to try an install. Ubuntu Feisty was really buggy on my system and did not impress me at all.
Lately the only 2 live cd's i use (and install from) are PCLinuxOS (2007) and TinyMe test 6, though wireless on TinyMe is proving troublesome at the moment. Rock solid using ethernet though so that's what i use the most when i'm on wired. PCLinuxOS is very impressive and very stable, the thing that stands out is the inbuilt wireless support. Don't get me wrong, getting wireless working is usually fairly easy but just because you know what to do, doesn't mean you should have to put in hours of effort just to fail, when there's a distro such as this where it 'just works'. i used to like DSL a few versions ago but it corrupted the XP installation on 2 different triple-boot machines so i don't trust it for now. Wireless was far too much trouble to get working (ie in the end i didn't get it working). Puppy was a nice one, again i couldn't be bothered with the wireless on that one. Tried Mint 3.0 the other day on a P4 laptop, my God that distro took forever to even booy. Lost interest after that, however i read that 3.1 was allegedly leaner so i downloaded that, though haven't tried it out yet.
I thought I would post some screen shots of the Live cd's which have worked and look good in testing Sabayon http://my.afterdawn.com/wolfmanz/show_image.cfm/14850/full Backtrack 2 http://my.afterdawn.com/wolfmanz/show_image.cfm/11578/full PCLinux http://my.afterdawn.com/wolfmanz/show_image.cfm/14670/full
