[ltp] Best distribution for an A30P = ?

[Richard Neill]

SOTL wrote:
> Hi All
> 
> I know that asking which is the best distribution is an easy way to 
> start a flame war but that is exactly what I need to know.
> 
> I need to know which of the following three Linux distributions for an 
> IBM A30P Thinkpad.
> SuSE 10.1
> Fedora Core 5
> Mandriva  2006
> I have exactly no interest in any other distribution, especially Debian, 
> haven tried most on my desk top and failing to find anything that out 
> weighs the disadvantage of their not being one of the excepted standards 
> in the engineering and scientific technical world. To emphasize Ubuto is 
> a great distribution but for serious technical types either Scientific 
> Linux or Biological Linus would be a much more desirable choice. Since I 
> do not travel in either of those circles Fedora or SuSE for me is a 
> better choice depending on which I can make work on the laptop easiest. 
> If neither one of these is doable then how difficult is it to install 
> Mandriva 2006. If one can not install any one of these three easily then 
> I will stick with my current distribution of Mandrake 10.1 which is now 
> 3 years old.


All 3 are easy to install. You missed one out of the list: Mandriva 2007 
alpha. 2006 is near end of life, whereas 2007 will be released in about 
2 months. 2 advantages of it:

1)If you have any issues with the distro, you can file a bug report, and 
have a decent chance of a fix.

2)You can upgrade seamlessly with
    urpmi.update -a; urpmi --auto-select

One thing you may also consider: Fedora principally uses GNOME, whereas 
you are most likely a KDE user.

Regards,

Richard