Which full linux distribution is extremely fast, runs KDE and is easily installable?

Question

I want to install it on an old IBM X30 thinkpad. The distro should be more or less up-to-date and provide large repositories of software.

Answer 1

i'd recommend OpenSuSE

SuSE, which is still backing up OpenSuSE a lot more then RedHat does Fedora (as the name suggests) has a proven reputation for hardware support; i myself used to be a RedHat fan and tried (very) hard to get every release of Fedora to work on my conifg but never got a satisfactory result for X, whereas with SuSE, the ATI driver installs itself with working defaults :D

)have a Desktop w/ an ATI Radeon 9800 & dual display; nothing fancy, you'd think, but never got it to work on FC x(



you can get the latest stable OpenSuSE release (10.1) from

http://en.opensuse.org/Download (includes advice about installation

a good FTP link: ftp://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/opensuse/distribution/SL-10.1/non-oss-dvd-iso/SUSE-Linux-10.1-GM-DVD-i386.iso

or, alternatively, use the bittorent, from http://en.opensuse.org/Released_Version



also follow the advice about package manager, on the 1st page (BEFORE YOU INSTALL READ THIS:)



a page which gives generic insturctions, for the X30

http://augustin.vidovic.org/pages/x30/



if you run into problems (and still have a Win32 pc available :-" ) Google for openSuSE "thinkpad X30" adding the troublesome HW / part.

Answer 2

It's hard to get a straight answer to this, because if you ask ten people you'll probably get twelve different answers :)

I can tell you what worked best for me: Fedora Core, to be found at http://fedora.redhat.com.

I failed on installing Suse, and I couldn't connect to the Internet on Mandrake/Mandriva, but with Fedora I'm doing fine. I'm running it on an old AMD K6 (266 Mhz), and it works pretty well. It'll give you Gnome and KDE if you choose so during installation (which I'd recommend).

I'd also recommend a system check with Knoppix before you try to install anything. In case you don't know, Knoppix is a so-called Linux Live Distribution that runs completely from CD, no installation required. You can get an ISO at http://www.knopper.net.

Hope this will give you a starting point. If you need more help, http://www.linuxquestions.org usually is a could place to look for answers to your questions.

Answer 3

no