I like Puppy Linux. Not because it's a huge, complete linux distro, but because it runs directly from RAM and saves everything back to the Live CD at shut-down. That way I don't even have to install it to my HDD.

Many Linux distros afford the opportunity for a "live" session. However I am unfamiliar with a distro the "saves" everything back to the CD.

Puppy allows you to save your session to removable media or a CDRW. It doesn't save the session to a LiveCD.

i am a Linux amateur so Ubuntu is the easiest for me to use.

hahah LOL...............

Puppy Linux can actually save your session to the SAME CD (the LiveCD) you used to boot from, doesn't matter if it is rewritable or not. (You can also save to a different hdd/removable media).

(From Wikipedia)

As far as I know only Puppy and Morphix can do this.

If it's not a rewritable who could it possibly save back to the live disc (I think caravel is saying it's actually a LiveCDRW ) If the booted disc is not rewritable you're not going to write anything new to it - unless maybe there was free space left on the disc and an open session left on the media and if so then it would be a limited number of times.

Exactly! The puppy linux is only about 100 mb, and every time you turn it of it burns all files that have changed (it appends it to your CD). In my quote from Wikipedia it clearly saysI'm don't know the technical stuff behind this, I only know it works. I've used Puppy Linux on both CD and DVD, none of them where rewritable.

If you need more space for music and video you can use any internal/external hdd, they are all recognized by Puppy and a shortcut is placed on your desktop.

I do see the possibility of writing additional files to a CD-R, by way of the disc not being finalized in the first place. Many burning programs allow this, but normally the discs can only be played with the program that created it, until they are finalized.

So, if it works this way, hats off to Puppy Linux.

Although, with CD-R, nothing can be overwritten, so you will run out of space, but I think somebody else said that to.

BTW, this concept just dawned on me.

I used Fedora 7/8/9, Slackware 12.2, Ubuntu 7.10/8.04/8.10, Puppy, DSL/xDSL, Knoppix, Knoppix STD, Slax, etc. Out of every distro, I'd have to go with Ubuntu. It has more updates, better support, and less system hangs then the rest of them. Also, I love the speed of 9.04.

They even solved that. Once your CD-R is full, Puppy Linux asks for a new CD, and it puts the Puppy Linux files and your last session, so you can continue using that new CD instead of the other.

@ Lopdog; How could you start a Linux poll without including Ubuntu as a fixed choice option?

I just downloaded Ubuntu 9.04 today. To my utter amazement, this distro will actually run on new motherboards without hanging or asking for drivers.

All my machines have SATA HDDs, set to "run as IDE". To date this is the only distro that will run on a later board. All of them will run on my old Intel 915GAG, which is SATA running as IDE also, but they seem to miss the later HAL software. Tried Intel 965, Intel G31, and P45 boards and nothing would run until Ubuntu 9.04! Yay...!

Well, captaincranky, I didn't start this post, I just happen to have the first post on the second page... But this post was startet in 2004, a few months after the first distro of Ubuntu was released, so I guess that's why it's not included.
Anyway, I agree that Ubuntu is a great OS, no wonder it's so popular.

I see your point. Now I'm going back to reveling in the fact that Ubuntu will boot on a new board with HDDs in IDE mode. You just don't know how happy that makes me
Sorry, I thought that this was your poll. What good is opening your mouth if you don't bother to change feet, well?

I have Ubuntu and SUSE. Ubuntu scores big points with me because its file size is small enough that it only takes 15 minutes to install, and it has a simple user face that is easy to navigate yet the terminal is available for more diverse operations. I always recommend it to people who just want something easy to understand that works. SUSE has a very interesting user face with lots of pretty bells and whistles. It's kind of like walking through a candy forest, but it has a huge file size to load all that stuff on. I slept all through the night while it loaded.

Debian is much better than Ubuntu. Ubuntu is actually based on the unstable testing version of Debian - which is why in my opinion it's not that great for beginners and average users (in the same way that windows release candidates are not really for beginners either). There isn't much that Ubuntu has got that Debian hasn't, apart from some bells and whistles and the latter is far lighter and more stable. Most people stick with Ubuntu because it supports a lot of obscure hardware and it's easier to get things like proprietary drivers installed. With Debian it's harder to get say the ATI driver installed than it is in Ubuntu. But the end result is the same and well worth it.

SUSE/openSUSE is larger because of KDE. It's a nice Window Manager but it is rather bloated. Even gnome (what Debian and Ubuntu use as their WM) can be said to be bloated but KDE is huge compared to it.

The good thing about distros like Debian is that you can install whichever window manager you want without creating a mess and losing some functionality. Even Kubuntu (essentially a remaster of Ubuntu with KDE) has been criticised for this. It's just not on the same level as openSUSE or Mandriva which are designed around KDE.

Don't forget that Ubuntu is the most popular distro out there; meaning it will have the bigger community such as the forums etc., meaning if you have an issue that there is most likely a solution that is easily available out there, not to mention many of the big companies out there like Dell ship machines with Ubuntu because of ease of use and popularity.

The community is large, but it lacks experienced users. It's essentially a huge support forum - and a decidedly average one at that. A lot of threads go unanswered because of this and they can disappear off the first page in a about an hour due to the volume of new users and threads coming in. Much of the help will be advice to reinstall anyway.

If you go for one of the better distributions such as openSUSE, Centos, Fedora, Gentoo, Debian, etc you tend to get much more knowledgeable individuals answering your threads, providing real solutions.

Personally I wouldn't buy a Dell no matter what it came pre-installed with. The uptake on their Ubuntu pre-installed machines has not been good anyway IIRC.

Ubuntu is simply all about marketing. The reason it's popular is because of this and due to it's wealthy financial backer, funding it out of his own pocket. Users that say it's "user friendly" etc have often not actually used any other Linux distribution.

You often find with Ubuntu that users go from cult like zealots when the OS is working fine, to angry and complaining "I'm going back to windows" types when it all goes wrong (which it does quite often). This is because, unlike other distributions, Ubuntu is trying to set itself up as windows alternative. A lot of misguided people turn up at their forums. I've seen people trying to run .exe files and others that installed Ubuntu and wiped out their windows partition. If someone hasn't grasped these basics then they should not be installing an OS at all. You don't see this at other Linux online communities - or if you do it's very rare - but at the Ubuntu forums it's pretty common place.

At the above post; from personal experience, Ubuntu actually is great for learning Linux and the forums are great, every thread I post eventually gets down to the very bottom. I then moved to Sabayon and Fedora (forum posts there seem to sit forever) then tried Slackware for a bit, and I used prior knowledge from Ubuntu and Google and it wasn't even hard to set up any distro to my liking. The way I see it, the evolution of Linux will be moving away from the command line and just using it as a normal desktop / server with a nice GUI with effects, just like OS X and Windows, but until then it will remain a nice, free, niche.

As for Ubuntu on OEM machines, although sales aren't really there, I couldn't see them throwing a command line Linux or any other distro other than Ubuntu unless they do something drastic. Remember, it's aimed for typical consumers not technology enthusiasts like ourselves. Sure, Mint is more ahead and "user friendly" by pre-installing Flash, etc. but again, Ubuntu has more support. So a great balance of 'ease of use', 'appearance', and 'support' is what most people need from their Linux.

I agree about Fedora forums, but that's just one. There are a lot of other distributions and other sites out there.

I think Ubuntu is ok as an initiation into Linux, but it's not great for learning. Users tend to hit a lot of brick walls and the community there is not able enough to assist with a lot of the more advanced issues.

Again IMHO it's not a good learning OS or a beginners' OS because it's based on an unstable distribution. If you want something for learning the basics you need something stable. One of the biggest reasons for users giving up, is bugginess. And Ubuntu is renowned for this. It's in it's nature that it will be buggy. Ubuntu is more of a tweakers distribution. It's good for those that want to mess with Linux rather than those that want to use it.

They can throw just about any distro they like on there so long as it's pre-installed, tested and working. It does not have to be Ubuntu. The Acer netbooks come pre-installed with Linpus lite for example.