On machines with 256 megs or more:
PCLinuxOS (www.pclinuxonline.com) is an offshoot of Mandrake. The work of Texstar and friends, PCLOS is a Live CD that has it all: polish, configuration tools, a KDE desktop that seems designed for someone who wants to work, not just show off the software.
The best part is that it's all preconfigured: it has the most complete list of browser plugins I've seen. Although rpm based, it uses apt-get/Synaptic for software management. The community is smart and helpful.
The repositories are surprisingly rich. You get even more current software than Mandrake. The difference is, PCLOS is more tightly integrated, and in my experience, more stable. PCLOS is what I run on my home machine -- after the Live CD assured me that everything worked. (And then I installed Gnome, which works beautifully.)
Ubuntu (www.ubuntulinux.org) is Gnome-based. It doesn't come with the pre-configured thoughtfulness of PCLOS. But providing you first install it on your hard drive, one 35 minutes session with apt and the online Ubuntu Starter Guide (ubuntuguide.org) packs in everything else you need, from browser plug-ins to Microsoft-compatible fonts. The founder is Mark Shuttleworth, the African dot-com millionaire who bought his way into space -- and now focuses his attention on providing affordable computing for the masses.
Ubuntu closely tracks the latest Gnome, and Gnome's new utilities for setting up network and printers make Ubuntu a breeze to use.
BeatrIX (www.watsky.net) is a sleeper. It's Knoppix (for hardware recognition), then Ubuntu, with one more cycle of focus and distillation. Pop in the Live CD (which fits on a mini-disc), and put it in front of a computer user who has never seen Linux. They won't know or care. Stripped to nothing but core apps and a kernelized Gnome, Ubuntu is quick, uses industry standard applications, and is synched to the gold mine of Ubuntu repositories. This is the CD I carry around with me. The website bills this gem as "Small, Simple, and Elegant." It's true.
Caution: BeatrIX doesn't mess with multimedia stuff. Again, with a hard drive install, you can add whatever you want, but it's target is internet and office use.
Mepis (www.mepis.org) is the home user's upgrade to Knoppix. It is KDE-based. I'll admit it: I prefer Gnome. But Mepis has just enough user utilities (to install to hard drive, to set up your wireless network, and more) to convince me that it really wants to do the job. Caution: a "dist-upgrade," as opposed to just apt-get upgrade," can (and in my case, did) break the whole installation, as it actually moves you to Debian SID. But Mepis is responsive and comprehensive, with another great community.
_On machines with 128 megs_
When you step down to a 128 meg machine, the choices change some. In general, the window manager determines the speed. Window managers with small footprints -- Blackbox, Fluxbox, Xfce, Icewm -- are quick and robust. The tradeoff? You get fewer utilities to set up the network and printer. Too, you tend to get a collection of unrelated programs, rather than a consistent interface.
A more full-fledged desktop environment -- KDE or Gnome -- slows things down. In exchange for the demand on system resources, you get more utilities. Again, I happen to prefer Gnome 2.8's remarkably straightforward guides to setting up a network connection or printer. It's hard to do the wrong thing. By contrast, KDE wizards offer too many options, all of which seem strangely equal, and most of which are incorrect.
But both of them have a logic. Both of them work. Moreover, both have other bundled applications that make the computing experience more predictable and therefore comfortable. KDE has the edge on integrated programs: Konqueror, KOffice,KMail, and KOrganizer are far more seamless than Abiword, Gnumeric, and Mozilla (or Firefox and Thunderbird or Evolution).
Openoffice.org runs on all of the above, of course, but is the gorilla at the dinner party -- you can dress it up, but it still looks a little out of place. On the other hand, PCLOS uses KDE integration for OOo, which does help.
If speed is the primary desideratum, the best of the Live CD's ranks as follows:
1st tier:
Damn Small Linux (www.damnsmalllinux.org). It's a little scary, this fluxbox-based distro is so fast. It took a little noodling around, but I got it to find my wireless. It's printer config program baffled me. I liked its hell-bent-for-leather approach -- but DSL is a hodgepodge. What goes into DSL is clearly governed by these two rules alone: it's fast, and it fits. I haven't seen such a mishmash of interfaces and programs since my old DOS computer. It drove me crazy.
Next would be Luit (luitlinux.sarovar.org)-- a distro based on Xfce AND DSL. Xfce is an up-and-comer, a low-resource window manager/desktop environment that lends coherence to a distro. Luit feels better than DSL to me, but it doesn't come with a hard drive install or, as near as I could discover, any way to print. The idea, I gather, is to install Knoppix, then grab Xfce through apt-get.
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