Since I have been sitting around unable to work due to my injuries from the December car accident, and being a long time Linux user, I decided to spend some time evaluating some of the multitude of distributions (flavors) of the Linux operating system out there today. All were evaluated on the same computer, an older Compaq Armada M700 notebook, PII 399Mhz processor, a Linksys Network Everywhere NP100 ethernet card connected to a dsl router, a Motorola WN825G wireless card, and a home built CD-R/RW burner connected through a Dynex DX-UC202 USB 2.0 card.
I intentionally used a lot of pcmcia cards for my testig as this seems to be a common compatability issue in Linux.
I had used Mandrake for a couple of years and found it to be very buggy and at times very frustrating to try and set up certain hardware, especially wireless cards.
I will say that Mandrake's installation was very intuitive and easy. It's a very popular Red Hat based flavor, especially among Linux newbies who are accustomed to the familiar point and click.
There is also the dependency hell of installing software packages. Basically, if a package needs some other file or program to run which isn't installed, you have to go out and hunt it down and install it, along with any dependencies for THAT one as well. Can become a long process.
Mandrake recognized my on-board system hardware and ethernet card no problem. Didn't recognize my wireless card at all. Did recognize my USB card and CD burner no problem.
I tried SuSE which is also a Red Hat type distro. Installation was also very simple. Much less buggy than Mandrake, but some hardware issues with it as well. I never could get my ethernet card to work, but it did use my wireless card and CD burner. Same dependency hell.
To get away from the whole dependencies issue, I decided to try some Debian based flavors. Debian and Debian based Linux deals with package installation in a totaly different way. While the Red Hat distros install software packages using RPM (Red Hat Package Manager), and you have to chase down dependencies manually, the Debian flavors use a handy package management program called APT.
Using APT to install software packages either from a command line or from one of several graphical package managers is a whole different ball game. APT not only downloads and installs your software packages for you, but it also "fetches" any dependency programs and files needed to make it all work.
The first I tried was Ubuntu as I had heard that it recognized most hardware tright out of the box. If that's true, I guess a lot of my hardware is in that small niche that it doesn't recognize. The istallation was simple enough in spite of the lack of a graphical interface.
My basic system hardware wasn't configured properly. To be honest, I didn't spend much time trying to fix the problems in this distro as my over all impression of it was less than favorable.
The next Debian based flavor I tried was Libranet. Libranet installed quite easily. No graphical installation interface either, but not a real challenge. It leads you through it no problem.
Libranet seemed very well put together at first impression, although there were hardware issues there too. My ethernet card wouldn't work, but the wireless card would. CD burner wouldn't work.
I tried software installation. The APT lived up to it's reputation in that packages and their dependencies were downloaded and installed automatically with no problems at all. Very nice. Next I tried an distribution upgrade, and this is where I spotted problems. The difference is that not only are existing packages upgraded, but any availble new stuff is also installed. The upgrade broke several key parts of the OS.
OK, in all fairness, I did some research, checked the repository source list file to make sure there were no problems there, and tried again. Same results. There were always key components that were removed or broken during upgrade. No good.
Finally, I tried SimplyMepis which is a Debian based flavor from West Virginia. I'd seen several very positive posts about this one in many Linux forums.
The first thing I noticed was that after burning the cd and booting, the SimpyMepis OS runs right from the cd as a LiveCD version for demo purposes. Everything seems ok so far, so I click the desktop link "Install Me".
The installation went smoothly and was very easy to get through. The only thing a newbie may have a little trouble with is the disk partitioning which I would recommend a new user learn something about before installing any OS in a dual boot configuration.
Once installed, I began testing my hardware. Everything, and I mean everything, was recognized and configured correctly. Great. The system uses the KDE window manager by default, and also offers Gnome. You also have the option to install any of many other window managers you may want to use allowing you to customize your desktop any way you please, and switch between the different window managers as you see fit.
I tried some software package installs using the included graphical package managers as well as command line. Everything went smooth as silk so I decided to try a basic upgrade. No prblems at all. APT found, downloaded, and installed all available upgrades for the software on my system without a single hitch.
OK, now for the final test I chose to do a distribution upgrade. No problem. Went smoothly.
I have to say that I was very impressed with SimplyMepis and have chosen to not only keep it as my Linux OS, but to remove Windows from my system completely as it does everything I want it to do and much more. SimplyMepis comes with a very complete suite of software packages so that I was up and running right away.
And being as SimplyMepis can be downloaded for free, the price is right too.