Ubuntu is a good choice for those who don't want to have to deal with re-partitioning the old way; it can actually shrink your Windows partition like PartitionMagic, create its own partition, install itself and add Windows to the bootloader it uses, GRUB (GRand Unified Bootloader). Repartitioning isn't really the hassle it once was, at least under Linux. However if you need to reinstall Windows for some reason, it's not so nice and unceremoniously overwrites GRUB with its own bootloader, forcing a boot from the Linux LiveCD and re-installing GRUB manually which is a bit more of a hassle but well documented on numerous Web sites.
Gentoo is available as a LiveCD, as most major Linux distributions are now. The Linux "PartitionMagic", GParted, is available as a LiveCD itself. Since CD-Rs are so cheap these days, I recommend trying out several different LiveCD distributions and just see what suits you best. The ones you don't care for can be made into a nice mobile. :-) If you have older hardware, check out ones that use the Enlightenment window manager (if you want a GUI at all) as it's very lightweight and efficient. GNOME is probably more heavy-duty and KDE more so still. ________________________________ From: Dos-Man 64 <[email protected]> To: Linux Users Group <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, July 25, 2009 2:44:51 PM Subject: [lug:14836] Re: Is there a non-unicode Linux version? On Jul 25, 2:02 pm, Jason Montoya <[email protected]> wrote: > It is, though it looks like the last updates are from last August. It's up > to 4.4.10 and the "classic" version 3 was also updated to 3.4.12. Whether > it's "practical" all depends on what your needs are - personally I've found > DSL good as a diagnostic Linux. For daily use I use a full-size distro > (Fedora 11) to which I just switched from Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope. Both > Ubuntu and Fedora have the option to create a Live Flash version of > themselves as well. I've also used Gentoo, which is truly a > do-it-yourselfer's dream and installing it is a project in itself, but > certainly a great way to learn Linux by jumping in with both feet first and > you end up with a system absolutely customized to what your system has and > what you want and nothing else. The basic installation leaves you pretty > much with a kernel, a shell, a few basic system utilities, a network, and the > Portage system which is similar to yum or apt-get except instead of > downloading binaries, it > downloads and compiles source, according to options you set in advance. And > everything is configured through editing text files. > I'm pretty sure I want to stick with a LIVE CD distribution. I don't need or want the hassle of creating partitions. Also don't need the hassle of the OS getting corrupted at some point and needing to be restored. Booting from a CD-ROM seems to me to be about the best feature that linux provides (although it isn't particularly fast.) I may even remove both of my hard drives. The live CDs also present a great way to preserve a sense of anonynimity. I fail to see why my OS needs to know who I am or keep track of any information about me (as windows is so fond of doing.) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Linux Users Group. To post a message, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit our group at http://groups.google.com/group/linuxusersgroup -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
