[Discuss] Multi-Boot Distributions

[John Blomfield]

Now that I have more or less completed my little project of building a 
Linux demo box, for the Linux SIG at BB&C, consisting of five typical 
Linux distributions I thought I would share with you how I arrived at my 
final selection.  I admit a some what biased view. 

I decided to install five distros, rather than just show Live CD's, 
because experience has taught me that installation and configuration 
reveals problems with a distro that are not apparent with a Live CD.  My 
final five ended up being four, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and Suse.  In the 
case of Ubuntu and Fedora I have also installed both the Gnome and the 
KDE desktops.  For Debian I installed just Gnome and Suse just KDE.  In 
addition to these I tried Mandriva, Linux Mint, PCLinuxOS and Gentoo but 
did not included them for the reasons mentioned below.  I tried to get a 
representative cross section of the main distribution root sources but 
was only partly successful in that Ubuntu is a Debian fork.  PCLinuxOS 
is a fork of Mandriva and Linux Mint a fork of Ubuntu and Gentoo is, 
well, Gentoo.  The root distributions tend to define the installation 
software tool, the package management tool and (to some extent) the 
provision of hardware drivers.  The features that tend to define the 
characteristics of a distribution are the visual appearance (themes and 
look) the menu layout and the organization and presentation of the 
system configuration tools.  Some of these same features are defined 
also by the desktop choice of Gnome or KDE. Those of you that have 
followed Joan's and my earlier emails will also note that ease of 
installation is also dependent on the hardware.

My criteria for inclusion was first and foremost that installation 
should be relatively straight forward.  Because I was installing onto 
two previously multi-partitioned hard drives I was not able to assess 
how a distros would install automatically onto a single drive, with 
Windows installed.  This case is probably the most common situation for 
the newbie Linux user.  However, I did partly test the manual 
partitioning installation procedure in that I had to manually select the 
partition where I wanted the distro.  All four cases this went without a 
problem and the three different partitioning packages worked as did the 
Mandriva tool when I tried it on another computer.  Mandriva failed to 
install properly on my old computer because of an incorrect video 
driver.  I could have corrected this manually but I considered this 
would be beyond the average newbie.  PCLinuxOS came in both Gnome and 
KDE live CD versions.  The Gnome version installed ok but failed to 
install grub properly and the KDE version hung up on formating the 
partition.  When I tried Mandriva on my new computer it was very slick 
and had some impressive 3D features built in so it was unfortunate that 
I could not include it.  Linux Mint (Gnome) installed ok but failed to 
find the base kde libraries on the Ubuntu repository which I knew were 
there because Ubuntu found them.  Also it gave an option to install a 
proprietary nVidia which if you agreed installed a 3D driver for my old 
video card causing X to choke! I think Ubuntu did this also but I 
declined and the default driver worked fine.  Finally I tried Gentoo to 
make up the five but it failed to complete the installation and for no 
apparent reason.  The installation software was not user friendly, in my 
view, so I decided four distros was enough.  I am sure that given time 
and persistence I could have successfully installed all the distros but 
that was not the object of the exercise.  The final four were easy to 
understand, install and IDEAL FOR A NEWBIE.

 From a purely personal point of view, ease of use, stability and having 
good configuration and package management tools are most important which 
puts Fedora and Ubuntu(KDE) at the top of my list.  Ubuntu is growing on 
me and I have found that downloading KDE stuff into Ubuntu rather than 
starting with Kubuntu is better if you like KDE.  I find being able to 
switch in and out of Gnome and KDE useful at times for testing software.

*-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*
*  Name              *  Live CD/Spin      *   Package Manager    *  
Latest Stable Version *   Base Distribution*
*-------------------*-----------------------*-------------------------*---------------------------*---------------------*
*  Debian            * Gnome/KDE         *  apt /synaptic            *  
April 8, 2007            *  Debian
*                        *
*  Fedora            *  Gnome/KDE         *  yum                       
*  Nov 8, 2007             *  Red Hat
*                        *
*  SuSe               *  Gnome/KDE         *  YaST                     
*  Oct 4, 2007              *  Slackware
*                        *
*  Ubuntu            *  Gnome                 *  apt 
/synaptic            *  Oct 18, 2007            *  Debian
*                        *
*-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note when you download KDE on top of Ubuntu and login as KDE you actual 
get a Kubuntu background etc.

The BOD are recommending that Linux SIG newbies begin by using Ubuntu.

John Blomfield