3 systems new user advice needed

On Sun, 24 Jul 2005 18:58:31 -0700, freddie

Any Linux distro with even the resource hungry KDE or GNOME desktops will run just fine on the latter two systems. Since you're new to Linux, I suggest you go with a distro that's pretty much auto-installing, auto-configuring: Fedore Core 4 (www.redhat.com-fedora-), Mandrivia (www.mandrake.com) or SimplyMepis (www.mepis.org) would be good choices. Go to here -- distrowatch.com -- for more info on Linux distros than you can possibly absorb.

Now for the laptop: It's going to be more of a challenge. If you just ran Linux in terminal mode, that is, no desktop GUI, then most any distro would run just fine, even with 16MB of RAM, but with a desktop and even 64MB, you'll need a lightweight distro designed for older, slower resource challenged hardware. Try Damn Small Linux (www.damnsmalllinux.org), Puppy Linux (www.goosee.com-puppy-index.shtml), or Vector Linux (www.vectorlinux.com).

But before you get any of these, I strongly recommend getting the book RUNNING LINUX, 4th ed. (O'Reilly, pub.) and reading it thoroughly a couple of times before you buy or install any Linux distro. Here's a couple of links to get you started on learning Linux until you get the book:

www.tldp.org rute.2038bug.com-index.html.gz

All the BSD distros are based on UC Berkeley's version of Unix. Linux apps will run on it. The Mac OS X is really a customized version of NetBSD. Take a look at this one, too: www.freebsd.org There is even a link to a LiveCD version of it, so you can test and use it without installing it. Some like BSD for servers and workstations, because of its better security features than Linux, but it will run on a personal desktop just as easily. Some even prefer it over Linux for personal computers.

Stefan