[PD] [OT] operating systems?

[Christian Klippel]

hello chad,

Am Sonntag, 16. März 2003 21:56 schrieb Chad Wood:
> Hello,
>
> I'm going to switch my laptop from Windows to Linux in a couple months.  I
> just wanted to know which distributions, desktop environments, etc. you all
> use.  Are some distributions of Linux more flexible with the various
> hardware that people use (MIDI, USB, etc)?  Thanks so much!
>
> Chad

if you are new to linux, i would suggest a suse linux distro. suse is, in my 
opinion, a very easy to install and set-up linux distro. it is also very 
complete regarding the software (7 cd's and 1 dvd). one drawback with suse 
is, that it is relatively bloated. that means, with a standard install you 
get lots of stuff and services installed you normally dont need/want.
thus it is always a good idea to "clean up" a fresh installed suse....

if you already have some experience with linux, you may try out debian.
the apt package management is by far the easiest i have seen yet.
it also has serveral kernels, also with lowlatency patches, available.
and, debian already has a pd and gem package (tough not the newest....)
to install something, you simply type "apt-get install <appname>" and there 
you go. updating a debian system also is just a single commandline.
aptitude is a nice menu-driven textinterface to that.

regardless of the distro you are going to use, as desktop i highly recommend 
kde 3.1. it has a great functionality, the apps really share a common look 
(not like gnome, where it often happens that for example the menues are 
differently placed and layouted in the different gnome apps).
also, kde has a great multimedia support in means of file-handling.
you can directly grab cd's and compress them to ogg or mp3 by just dragging 
the files somewhere, for example. also, kde allows the most flexible 
configuration for the look and feel, so for beginners it can really look 
almost exactly like windows. that way you will get familiar with it faster.
or like a mac, with the menubar at top and the like... (the one i prefer)
last but not least, the internationalization of the kde apps is very good.

greets,

chris