How To Pick A Distro

Hey guys, what's the best way to try out distros? Do I completely reinstall each time I want to change a distro and if so, would nt that wipe all my data? Or does my personal data , text files etc etc stay on the system and only the distro changes?

My Linux computer comes today and it has Ubuntu installed which I believe is a very popular and stable system but I really want to check out the so evolve distro because it looks fantastic and the reviews were very favorable. BUT I was warned on this forum not to get involved with beta distros until I know what I'm doing.

Does swapping distros erase all data ?

I'm running Xubuntu and it was a challenge just getting Copy.com on there. (I installed the desktop app on both of my computers.) Now that I have it though, I don't really know how to use it.

I know this is kind of more a Copy.com question, but I don't know anything about Copy.com (besides having it--lol) and besides, I like you LQ guys.

So yeah, I installed the desktop app for Copy.com on both of my computers. I know that if I put something in the Copy folder that will be available to both computers.

But how Copy does the backing up I don't know.

When I change a file or folder do I have to plop that into the Copy folder every time or does Copy somehow update the file or folder in the Copy folder automatically? (It doesn't seem to.)

Okay, when I, say, take the Documents folder from one computer and plop it into the Copy folder that's that. Then I take the Documents folder from the other computer and plop that into the Copy folder, then all the files from both folders will be in the Copy folder (and the Copy cloud), right?

Now I just removed a couple of files from a folder and copied and pasted the folder into the Copy folder. But then when I looked at the Copy folder the files I'd deleted were still there. What's the process? How does it work?

I mean, how does this work as a way of backing things up AND organizing things? To me it seems like a decent way of throwing stuff into the Copy folder (and cloud), but how is that different than Google Drive? I mean, that's not really a backup, is it? It's like a flash drive in the cloud.

And when I combined the same folders (with the same titles anyway, but they each had different files within them) from the two computers I'd expected each folder on each computer to have all the same files that were cumulatively on both. Instead, they're the same. And the cumulative is only on the Copy folder.

I like the notion of just throwing the folders and files into the Copy folder. It's much quicker than Google Drive. But the backing up feature eludes me and the syncing feature makes me fearful that I'll lose data or that the files will become hopelessly less organized.

Thanks.

Hello All, I am a newbie to Linux I have used computers for years & would say I'm certainly not computer illiterate, however I am completely new to Linux. Hubby & I have a netbook each & I wanted to give linux a go on them. I installed Mint 17.1 Xfce on mine & am loving it, not really having any problems. However this is not the case with hubby's netbook....which has the following spec:

eeepc 904HD
80 GB HDD
Intel Celeron M, 897 mHz (512 cache, 32 bit)
995 mb RAM
VGA - intel 915/GMS/910GML express graphic controller (rev04)

(mine has the atom processor & was shipped with windows 7 starter which I have dual booted with mint

On hubbys we have tried the following distros:
Mint 17.1
Mint 13
Lubuntu
Xubuntu
Zorin 9 lite
Bhodi 3.0.0

The problem we're experiencing with each & every distro is the mouse/touchpad freezes. In the live version all is OK, then once installed still OK...but only last for a couple of shutdowns & then the above problem kicks in. sometimes after the freeze it may work ok again the next time it is booted but not long before the freeze occurs again.....obviously xinput shows the elantech touchpad is not listed
I know it is a low spec netbook but there are many distros which claim to work on a much lower spec than this. I am not sure if this processor supports PAE as it often mentions PAE not supported on celeron M's but I also read that the pc usually needs to be pre 1995 to not support PAE & this netbook was made around 2008
I must say that most of the distros we've tried seem to be running OK until the 'freeze' put top hat on hit...so I am stumped as to what the issue is and hope some of you more experienced guys can point me in the right direction....i.e. a suitable distro for use on this eeepc netbook. My hubby does nothing fancy on the pc, he's just really browsing, skyping would be nice....OH & he is very computer illiterate....so something simple to use, fast & lightweight is all that is required.
The next distro I was going to try was leeenux linux, which is supposed to be perfect for the eeepc, but the only 2 free versions I could find is version 5.1 extended & v6 lxde SSD 2g
Many thanks in advance !!

Hi guys, I have 2 distros on my computer and I want to get rid of one and instal another in its place. My basic Ubuntu is amazing so I want to leave that I. Place but the music distro I have installed is not to my liking . I would like to install amother in its place. What do I have to do to create the space for a new distro?

I compose on a Dell laptop model #Latitude D505. I have Xubuntu 12.04 (it won't upgrade) on it. Here are the Dell's specs:

Quote:
Dell Inspiron 8600 (Pentium M 710 1.4GHz, 1GB RAM, 40GB HDD)
And it has 20 GB free space. I guess on paper it should run the Xubuntu easily but it is deadly slow. Most of the things I do in the terminal don't complete (I tried to install Dropbox--no luck.). Sometimes I can't even open the Ubuntu Software Center, let alone install stuff from there.

I have LibreOffice 4.2 something on there and that is all I need. Like I was saying Dropbox would be nice though.

So I stared checking out lighter distros. (I was told Xubuntu was one of the lightest--btw I have two desktops with Xubuntu on them as well--distros out there but was shocked when I started investigating.) (see screenshot)

So as long as I can install a relatively recent version of LibreOffice (and like I said Dropbox would be nice) I will be happy.

To reiterate: I'm just using the laptop as a word processor. Yes, I would have to be online (and can be) to use Dropbox but Dropbox is not essential.

Btw. The libreoffice on there now works well (once it gets going) as a word proccesor, but with all those distros that are so much smaller I was thinking that I could even improve on the word processor's speed.

Thanks.

I'm not sure if this should be in the newbie section, but I am somewhat of a newbie, so here goes:

In a home network, I have an Xubuntu file server with a Samba share that has me as the owner and authorizes me to access the share.

On another computer, I have Mint running and providing various services, including webdav on Apache with SSL. In the var/www/webdav directory of the Mint computer, I have the Xubuntu Samba share mounted. This is supposed to allow me to access the Samba share from the public internet.

Everything works fine except for one big problem: Apache requires the owner of the webdav directory to be user "www-data," and I can't figure out how to give www-data access to the Samba share, since www-data is not a user on the Xubuntu computer, and moreover I don't know the password for user www-data.

Can anyone figure out how to get around this problem? In particular, is there a way to configure the Samba share on the Xubuntu computer so that user www-data on the Mint computer can have access to it?

(Incidentally, I have my reasons for using two computers, one as a file server and one as a web server. Also, I am thinking about switching to NFS instead of Samba, but I'm not sure if even that would solve my problem.)

I have a Dell Optiplex 170L I'm using now running Xubuntu. It's okay but it's getting a little sluggish. I'm attaching the RAM printout.

Somebody gave me an LG computer that's much newer. But it's been cloned from another Dell Optiplex 170L so that's what the spec says. Anyway, here's what it says:
Dell Optiplex 170L
AMD A6-3500 APU with Radeon (tm) HD Graphics
2.09 GHz, 3.25 GB RAM

Hardrive is 74GB. Which is more than double my 36GB now.

But I noticed (see 009 attachment) my old computer has a faster processor (2.80 Ghz).

This new one has XP on it. So I'd probably single boot Xubuntu to it. (Or could it handle a bigger distro?)

I have another identical computer (to my old one) that I added a half GB RAM to and it helped. I could do the same to this one.

Or use the new one.

I am a true newbie and not up for the switch, but if it would be worth it I would. Think I should?

Hi
I am not brand new to Linux but have been using a very popular Linux distro which has pretty much made everything easy for me in day to day use
I do distro hop quite a bit on my spare laptop and have tried many distros i came across Antix 13.2 which i really love and is a superb distro in terms of speed and increasing my learning curve in linux systems and was easyish to set up via wicd (just involved writing in wlan0) and that was it
One thing i can never get the hang of though and would love a complete idiots guide to is the wifi set up in some distros i have discarded because i just do not understand how to set it up
This evening i tried Sparky Linux on a usb and would love to have tried it but the wifi problem surfaced again
a box comes up re edit connections and from there i have no idea at all what to do what i normally do is disregard that distro and move on! But i would like to be able to input the info to get it working..any ideas please
Many Thanks

I am a basic computer user as far as operating systems are concerned. I do a little programming here and there but nothing special yet.

I have tried Linux many times, but I'm always left to getting *another* distro, after I fail to properly install Linux. Basically I resort to simple installs and found that Linux Mint and Ubuntu, most of the time work out of the box. However, after an installation, ... here and there I get error messages and sometimes crashes and i understand that my installation is not stable, simply because I did not properly configure some conf file or similar.

Another even more important problem I have is device drivers. Working from the command prompt (console) and the GUI is very confusing to me. I'm not sure if I'm setting something right with one and then unsetting it with the other. So basically I'm here with some noob questions and a couple specific ones.

1. Can someone recommend a good distro to learn to correctly configure drivers with manually. Remember, that I understand that there are distros that work out of the box mostly, but I actually am not worried about complexity as far as someone can guide me through errors. Which will lead to more questions of course.

2. After an installation there are sometimes a dozen errors during bootup, but no stops. Since it all scrolls by fast (most distros), where can I check after bootup what I need to fix?

The Goal is an *error free* stable installation of a linux distro, with enough common sense learned to take it to other distros.

Hey,

When you have decided to multi-boot several distros and have space to do so. Is there a preferred sequential order for those distros?

Let me see if I can make it even more confusing. I presently have two Linux distros on my PC, PClinuxOS and Manjaro 0.8.12 XFCE. My PCLOS was installed first then came Manjaro.

If I am able to install a third distro would I do it from when I am using Manjaro, or would it be better sequentially to do when I am using PCLinuxOS? Or does it not make a hill of Garbanzos which distro I happen to be using at the time of the third installation?

How does 'GRUB' feature in to this equation?

The Grub screen (I think it's called) shows 'Manjaro' at the top, then Manjaro Advanced. Then below it is, PCLinuxOS followed by PCLinuxOS Advanced. Last is the MEMTest.

Would this hypothetical third distro and there is no problem with installation or with 'GRUB', appear at the top of the list when booting into it?

"XXX.distro
XXX.distro advanced
manjaro
manjaro adcanced
pclos
pclos advanced
MemTest"

Just for elucidation the third Linux distro I am considering adding is; Ubuntu 15.04 Mate Edition.

Thanking All in Advance.

herakles_14