Can anyone help me find a good distro ?

[piratePenguin]

If they don't want to know how their PC works, then they should probably get somebody else to use it for them (check their emails, listen to their music etc).

We'd have to ship in Africans if every such person wanted to do that

I am sure these don't-want-to-know-how-it-works users have had to deal with a number of issues and quirks during their windows life, so they can't complain that linux isn't suddenly as smooth as silk for them, especially if they won't make the effort to shift mentally to the new paradigm.

The new paradigm is in the direction Ubuntu, FC etc are going.. And on these OSes they can well complain if "linux isn't suddenly as smooth as silk for them", because they're part of the target audience of these OSes.

I wouldn't even bother with slackware anymore. It was king for when I wanted to know how the individual OS components work (e.g. X11). Now I get it and slackware is mostly just a waste of my time (fuck having to go anywhere when a friend brings over a camera ... just plug the damn thing in and the photo manager automatically pops up. I wouldn't want to have that done in a rush on slackware).

[H_TeXMeX_H]

I've found both Ubuntu and FC to be really buggy (especially new releases). Slackware is the way to go if you don't want serious buggyness.

[worker201]

I've found both Ubuntu and FC to be really buggy (especially new releases). Slackware is the way to go if you don't want serious buggyness.

Make sure you are extremely clear here - unless I'm mistaken, they're not buggy, they just don't support your shitty hardware very well.  There's a difference.

[H_TeXMeX_H]

Yeah, well many people have shitty hardware (at least that's what I saw on the Ubuntu forums ... there were hundreds of posts about bugs due to BIOS and other hardware problems).

As for FC6 ... it's fucked even without shitty hardware.

[pofnlice]

I had absolutely ZERO hardware issues with Ubuntu. I'm not top end at all.

AMD Athlon 2800+
Abit NF7S Motherboard
Nvidia on board sound device
Radeon 8500 video
Network everywhere ethernet card

[H_TeXMeX_H]

Ok, whatever, hopefully there will be more people like you than me.

So, if you don't want to learn how Linux works (and perhaps some shell script that will simplify your life by a whole lot), have good hardware, and/or want a distro that looks and acts a lot like Window$ (except stability and security is much improved), then Ubuntu is for you.

If you want to learn how Linux works (and don't want to spend hours and hours compiling stuff from scratch), have shitty or buggy hardware, and/or want a distro that looks nothing like Window$, is fast, responsive, ultra stable, yet still easy to use, and you don't care too much for dependency checking, then Slackware is for you.

[pofnlice]

Oy you, there's no need to be nasty! To argue windows and ubuntu look alike is really silly. Gnome or KDE or xforce are, as you know, mearly frontends for a graphical usewr interface. I don't see where there are many options as far as a toolbar or 2, a few icons, whether on the desktop or on the toolbars, a sartish style button, a shutdown button and a clock...have I missed anything? what else is there? Based on that, you could argue any distro which uses any GUI such as Gnome KDE or XFCE ius windowish.

Besides, slackware scares me.

[mobrien_12]

Slackware will facilitate learning about Linux.  It was my first distribution, and I learned a lot from it.  It's also very sleek and you can make a slackware install very small, as small as you want.  Slackware is really very much like a hot-rod...

However, I went to the RPM-based distributions like RedHat and Caldera  because they were alot easier to patch, and where I kept my boxes, that was important:  one of my networks was essentially a world wide black-hat hacker target range, and the network admins didn't care, and when they did want to firewall the network, one moron made such a stink and spread so much FUD about network security being bad and causing more problems than it solved (and when anyone disagreed with him he started making personal attacks) that the whole idea was dropped.  

I kept slackware around for lightweight stuff, like turning old 486's into Xterminals (did one on a 486 with 8 MB ram and a 60 MB hard disk, great XTERM), but if it had services, it got a distro that could be patched easily.

[H_TeXMeX_H]

Oy you, there's no need to be nasty! To argue windows and ubuntu look alike is really silly. Gnome or KDE or xforce are, as you know, mearly frontends for a graphical usewr interface. I don't see where there are many options as far as a toolbar or 2, a few icons, whether on the desktop or on the toolbars, a sartish style button, a shutdown button and a clock...have I missed anything? what else is there? Based on that, you could argue any distro which uses any GUI such as Gnome KDE or XFCE ius windowish.

Besides, slackware scares me.

Ok, but it's more than that on Ubuntu, it's also those annoying pop-ups in the corner, saying click here to update, exactly like in Window$ ... as if someone liked it.

And the startup sound ... it's not much, and you can turn it off, but I get flashbacks

However, I went to the RPM-based distributions like RedHat and Caldera  because they were alot easier to patch,

Maybe you should try slapt-get ...

 slapt-get is an APT-like system for Slackware package management. It allows you to search Slackware mirrors and third-party package sources (such as www.linuxpackages.net) for packages, compare them with installed packages, and install new packages or upgrade installed packages, all with a few simple commands.

I think it might be just as easy to update.

[pofnlice]

If I remember correctly, any distro can be set up for a start up sound, if you so desire. For guys like me, that turn the computer on, then go fix a cup of coffee and mess around in the kitchen, maybe go outside and light up a cigarette, the sound is nice. It lets me know the damned thing is running and ready. If it bugged me, then I would turn it off.

Yast and Yum can also be configured to do that pop up thing. It's just a matter of preference. Again, I kind of like that. I am a lazy computist. If it weren't for that, I MIGHT remember to update once a month at best, or just forget all together. Unless I'm bored and playing in the command line and just for shits and giggle do an apt-get update / apt-get upgrade to see if synaptic/yum/yast missed anything.

Maybe it's not that Ubuntu can do it, but rather it's done as a default that pisses you off so much? Now that I can certainly understand. A ot of *nix users WANT to customize thier machines the way they want them to run and want it to be just basic from the start. Every neat thing after that is something they did themselves. That is one of the many charms of linux. You have your own OS, not some boxed and packaged 3rd grade artwork that your forced to have, whether you like it or not.

[worker201]

Allota people talk about how uncustomizable Windows is.  Am I missing something here?  You can change your icons, you can change your wallpaper, you can change your fonts, you can change your window presentation.  Exactly what else do you need to be changing?

[pofnlice]

you can't make your task bar transparent or have a picture on it!

I didn't say you couldn't. I was just stating that your options for customizing aren't as robust. You are correct though, you can change colors, icons positions and wall papers.

[H_TeXMeX_H]

You can customize Window$ as much as Bill Gate$ will allow you to.

[Jack2000]

"You can customize Window$ as much as" Your skills "allow you to."
Just change the Shell(explorer.exe) and if you want something even sinistr use dll hooks.
Its just about the 2nd most tweakable thing since a *nix os
Though i've set my mind to install a free os on the system that i'm gonna buy this X-mas

[pofnlice]

Ubuntu or Debian