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[nooby]

Linux has had a special place in my heart since I first read about it
back so far in time me have forgot when it was.

I stumbled upon Unix around 1980 in a computer club.
And all those Unix fans got interested in Linux when
it got available. I was too much of a newbie already then
so I stayed out of it but admire them from the sidelines.

I felt very proud when I got two CDs with Red Hat???
Don\t ask me when. Then around 2003 I bought a
computer mag with a free Knoppix release and that
could have been 2003 or at most 2004 february maybe.

That was the first one I tested and it worked good.
Next was a free Ubuntu 6.04 or 6.10 maybe 2005 or 2006
not sure. I actually tested that one but updated to 7.04
over the internet. and later to 8.04.

But there was no way to get Ubuntu to get along with my
hardware. It failed to shut down without forcing me to use
the power button and such had bad consequences. MBR
and need to use the restor disk each time almost.

So me felt very happy when I found Puppy 2008 June29
and got persuaded in a friendly way to actually burn a DVD
with it. Worked very well and since then I played with Linux
every days.

I've tested almost distros in the upper part of the list of DW.
DistroWatch. Either burned them or the bigger ones in Vbox.

Those distros me like best are in order of preference due to
features.

Vector,
Nimblex
Puppy
zenwalk.

But if I go for easy to get answers when I fail to get it going
then the Puppy forum have more people willing to jump in
and support.

Don\t get this wrong at all. You are very helpful and friendly here
but there are way more people active in Puppy but from a user
point of view from my perspective nothing beats Vector SOHO
preview in features that suites me. Both our national free TVNews
services work. One in FF and the other in Opera.

As I remember now none of all the 20 to 30 distros me have tested
can do this. So Vector is best.

What I still have failed is to set up it in frugal install on ntfs so it saves
all the changes in keyboard and  bookmarks and such me wants.

But hopefully some day that will be solved.

So see me as an annoying old grumpy man that want to be friendly
but due to social clumsyness comes through as a demanding guy.

all the best to you folks.

Fred Werter
Stockholm Sweden.

[Lyn]

Hi and welcome, most of us go through loads of distros, I still regularly try ones out to see how they do on my machines.  You will find the people here very helpful :-)

[nightflier]

Hello Fred. Fellow Scandinavian here (Norway). My list of tested distros also grew very long over the years before I settled on VL a couple years back. Guess I'm a traditionalist so I stick with the standard hard drive install, keeps things simpler.

Have fun,
Roy

[ZenMystic]

Hi Fred

welcome to the forum. I noticed some of your other posts, but don't understand why you are against installing to hard drive. You mention defrag, but that should not be a problem as you sould keep your XP defragged anyway. You also mention your data, but you should have backups anyway, at least one backup of stuff you would prefer not to lose, and at least two backups of stuff you really really do not want to lose. The only thing left now, I think, is Windows XP, but you should have an installation disk for this, unless you have one of those hidden restore patitions. You should also have drivers handy, e.g. for motherboard. A computer can fail at any time, and you can lose everthing on it. It is my opinion that you should be able to get up & running again, assuming the hardware to be OK, in the time it takes to do a fresh install. Partitioning is so simple when you don't have to worry about loosing stuff, but you should never be in that position to begin with.

Good luck with which ever method you choose, and enjoy you stay here.

[nooby]

Thanks to all of you but I try to answer some of the things you take up ZenMystic

ZenMystic, those are wise words and would normally work on any normal guy.
I\m not that well organized. I'm too ADD to be patient to do such things.

But believe me, I have tried to do partition many times,

I trust I did three defrag in one day to allow me to resize and it still said I need to defrag still.
So I asked people what to do. Win defrag is crap get this one from this CD they told me.

The defragger was hidden within a tar.gz big file on a CD one had to burn from an image.

I tried and never found the defragger.

But even if it would work it still depends on drivers being there in linux.
I have two main computers and two others as back up just in case.

My main one is a AOpen Mini barebone that have intel 915 chipset and that one seems known
for having issues. It is an ultra silent design so the drivers need to do the fan properly and
APM fails and ACPI usually fails too. The Linux drivers fail to do proper shut down. Only a few
distros manage to do it.

The other main computer is a laptop that has what you was aware of. A hidden partition with
the OEM installed restore CD on it.  So one should burn a CD that would work as restore.

But one only get one chance and if that one fails then it is very costly to buy such from Packard Bell.
And trust me everything fails when I touch it cause I have ADD and click on things too fast without
getting what the text really says.

You don't have to see it my way but I think of it all in this way. There are many distros that comes
with a "live" cd and a frugal install is very much like a live CD. So in theory one don't really need
to do partition. The live cd already show it works without having to do resizing and partitioning.

Yes I know that is an odd view and I should not push it on all others but one could wish that
frugal install would be more welcomed and considered by those who do development so it is
thought of already at making them ready for iso. and with the needed menu.lst documented .

I managed to do frugal now for ZenLive, Vector SOHO, NimbleX, GoblinX, SliTaz, Puppy, and
maybe some more that I fail to remember. Both DSL and Knoppix has cheat codes for frugal.
Ubuntu has it's WUBI that is a variation of it but using loopmounted file what ever that is.

One use same menu.lst but instead of grldr they use ntldr if I remember. I\m a noob I barely get
what I write about.

I can do partitioning maybe on the least important computer I have. And in basement I have old
ones with win95 that maybe can use puppy or DSL but they have not much ram DDR memory 
So more work than result. too much trouble to do partitioning and live cd shows that it is not
really a necessity either.

But that is only me. I\m not argueing I just tell my views. Friendly smile.

I\m in KDE now and fail to set Swedish keyboard. Yes I have set it but it doesn't get activated.
Very typical of my total inability to learn fast enough for my needs.

[nightflier]

A beautiful thing about Linux/OSS is that you can do whatever you want with your system. There are no arbitrary restrictions on how/how many times/where you install your OS. You are free to experiment as you see fit. Of course, you accept the risks and liabilities involved  .

I have only done some frugal installs, and only with Puppy or DSL, which were designed for it. VL is not, but you have proven that it can be done. Well done, keep at it.

For partitioning hard drives, try PartedMagic: http://partedmagic.com/ 

Happy Hacking!

[Triarius Fidelis]

So see me as an annoying old grumpy man that want to be friendly
but due to social clumsyness comes through as a demanding guy.

Hejsan

Jag kan väl leva mig in i det, trots att jag bara är 20 år gammal.

Hoppas att du ska trivas här, och finna lösningarna för alla problemen.

'kalla' hälsningar,
Episkt Fel Kille