Alternative OS

[Wulfman]

the single most important thing to do with ubuntu:

INSTALL AUTOMATIX AS SOON AS YOUR INSTALLATION FINISHES!

nothing more to say. adds mp3, dvd/css, nvidia/ATI drivers & more useful stuff, that can't be included in the regular distribution for legal reasons.

mfg,
wulfman

[Wombat]

Automatix? I have not heard of it. I'm familiar with EasyUbuntu, though. Can you compare them?

[Wulfman]

same idea, as far as I can tell. automatix seems to be heavier on the apps-side, but you can customize what you want in the process.

compare for yourself:

http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/overview.html

http://www.getautomatix.com/wiki/index.php?title=Software_and_Tweaks

mfg
wulfman

[DGhost]

One of the advantages of grub is that it can be changed on the fly, at boot time.

the disadvantage is that it is grub. heh.

never had issues booting linux with ntldr even under Windows NT 4.0. It's a bit of a pain in the ass for any machine where you update the kernel frequently, but for production machines it was always pretty painless.

[Paddy]

Thanks guys. I've got the unbuntu distro, and i'll pull the suse 10.2 dvd tonight. On aesthetics alone, which would you pick? You guys seem to all be leaning towards unbuntu

[Jessterw]

Aesthetically there's not much difference in reality. SUSE runs Gnome just as Ubuntu does (KDE is becoming less the default with each new release), just as they do KDE and any other Window and Theme manager (yep, there are differences).

The differences come into play with how and where each distro places things. Ubuntu tends to be simpler in this regard, as SUSE comes packed with a lot of stuff.

Personally I prefer SUSE with Gnome and a non-default theme. Gnome Look (www.gnome-look.org) is a great place to delve into the available themes. There's also KDE Look site as well. The only marginally confusing thing is determining which window manager you're running. The default for me in SUSE running Gnome was Metacity.