a distro bundled with all the stuff a basic user needs

[desai_amogh]

i got a ubuntu 7.04 cd shipped from shipit.ubuntu.com few weeks ago..
installed it.. but no luck playing media files.. no active internet connection..
cant run to a cybercafe for resolving small small dependenies...
& to my luck while surfing 2 days i found this.. now im very happy with this distro (http://www.linuxmint.com/cassandra.html)..
planning to dump windows very soon..

i shud say this (http://linuxmint.com/download.html) is the best distro out there for a bigginer.
& it is Linux Mint 3.0, codename Cassandra (http://www.linuxmint.com/cassandra.html).. im sure many of u guys must be knowing abt it & finding it boring
coz thr is nothing u need to mess with it or nothing much to configure & its pretty simple & it gets installed in just like 8-10 clicks..
here r some key features mentioned on the release notes i liked:
☺ Out of the box multimedia support
☺ 3D Effects
☺ OpenOffice 2.2 (complete suite)
☺ Ubuntu Feisty innovations (restricted-manager, desktop-effects, windows migration assistant, avahi)
☺ Sun Java 6 installed by default
☺ Pidgin installed by default
☺ Compiz, Beryl and Emerald installed by default
☺ Thunderbird installed by default
☺ Great selection of default applications (OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, Gimp, Pidgin, XChat, Amarok..etc)
☺ Solid package base (Google Earth, Picasa, Skype.. a lot of important software present in the repositories or in the Linux Mint Software Portal, compatibility with all Ubuntu Feisty repositories and most Debian packages)


the thing i loved at the 1st instance is tht when i played a Xvid movie after installing it.. it worked like a charm on the 1st click!!
mp3s,.mov,& most of the other formats work with it !!
even DVDs worked without any problem ..
im enjoying my movies music & dvds now !!

[philcom]

Thank you Pal ,
I will surely try this and report it back to you . I was really in need of this "almost everything out of the box" feature.
And with the help of the little knowledge I gathered from roaming around this nice thread, I ,as a newbie but still without a single problem, managed to install and experience Sabayon, Ubuntu, Musix , BOSS etc. And I am very much impressed with their salient features although I had to download a considerable amount of data from the respected repositories.
So I sincerely do hope that your suggestion will surely help me to a great extent.
regards.

[rocket357]

My vote for "beginner distro" would have to go to HLFS.

Available at www.google.com

...


P.S. - Yes, I'm kidding.

[faraaz]

Mint is good...but I prefer a default Ubuntu install for the customizability and a leaner system. That plus Mint forums are way too slow.

Its a good system for a newbie on an offline machine though. But if out of the box functionality is your thing, try Sabayon ...

[baccilus]

I have been using linux mint for a long time, even though i am still a newbie. This according to me is an awesome distro. And it's really pretty too.

[rocket357]

I have a friend that needs me to set up a Linux box for him (I set up an OpenBSD firewall around a year ago for him and it hasn't given him a single problem yet, so he's interested in checking out more of what open source has to offer), but one of the core requirements is the ability to run 1-2 Windows apps.

I demonstrated a "virtualized" WinXP install to him on my Gentoo Linux machine. He was impressed, and wants the same.

Problem is, this Linux machine can't be a stripped, lean system. It needs to be intuitive and user friendly. No command line usage here...He's a psychiatrist, not a computer scientist!

So I downloaded Mint (everyone who has tried it seems to like it so far), and I'm installing that on an old laptop I had lying around. I'll post more tomorrow when I get to work...but so far Mint is looking like *just* the thing my buddy needs...kudos to the team(s) involved with this project!

Edit - Mint was a bit heavy for the laptop (PIII M 600 with 192MB RAM...hahaha), so I dug up an old PIII (1.0GHz with 512 MB RAM) and I'll install both Sabayon and Mint on there (and perhaps Ubuntu, though I know my graphic chipset will prove to be a headache), and post more opinions on them later...

[faraaz]

@rocket:Sabayon enables Beryl by default. If you remove that, and also uninstall applications that your friend won't need then it should run fine on his laptop.

[ray|raven]

@rocket357
For a system so old,i'd suggest using ZenWalk @ www.zenwalk.org
Its great for older systems.
It's got multimedia support out of the box and u could keep workin without installing anything else.

Regards...
ray

[rocket357]

@rocket357
For a system so old,i'd suggest using ZenWalk @ www.zenwalk.org (http://www.zenwalk.org)
Its great for older systems.
It's got multimedia support out of the box and u could keep workin without installing anything else.

Regards...
ray
Thanks for the suggestion, but it comes just a bit late...I'm working on a project for college dealing with Windows 2003 Server and device drivers, and I put Windows 2000 Pro on the laptop for remote debugging the Win2k3 machine (made a quick decision last night...the laptop really only needs to run a few programs, but the PIII desktop machine has enough RAM for me to really check out what the Linux distros I'm looking at have to offer). With the 1.0GHz PIII available for "playing" around with Linux distros, I have a little more power for distros like Mint and Sabayon so I can experience them (rather, demo them to my friend) without having to cut out big portions of the "Mint experience" or "Sabayon experience". Bottom line is that my friend will make the decision...I just set the machines up haha.

@rocket:Sabayon enables Beryl by default. If you remove that, and also uninstall applications that your friend won't need then it should run fine on his laptop.
The laptop is mine, and as noted above, it is currently running Windows 2000 Professional for the remote debug rig.

My friend, on the other hand, has an AMD Sempron 3100+ with 256 MB RAM and a single SATA hard drive. I've voiced concern over running a virtual WinXP install on only 256 MB RAM, and he's agreed that more RAM is necessary to get it running smoothly.

If he chooses Sabayon, then I'm sure the machine will handle it fine, especially considering he's aiming at running virtual XP on this system.

[faraaz]

Er, Sabayon is a bit of a heavyweight...comes as a 4 GB install, dontcherknow?? Ah well, he can try it out I guess.

[rocket357]

Er, Sabayon is a bit of a heavyweight...comes as a 4 GB install, dontcherknow?? Ah well, he can try it out I guess.

Sabayon also comes as a 697MB "mini" disc.

[praka123]

there are legal restrictions for carrying some proprietory items in GNU/Linux.for eg:mp3 etc.that's why otherwise all distros shud have bundled like linux mint or freespire.I dont know what is their fate later on(not in india).

[vignesh]

But the decoder can be shipped with the distro..only the encoder has legal problems..

[praka123]

there are controversies over libdvdcss afaik.