NES-Hacks: Your home for Wii and DS Hacking!

For those of you who are interested in running a linux distro on there PC you will probable be wondering which one you should use.

So here is a list of the top 10 with some of their Pro's and Con's and community websites where you can download them from. I think all of these you can boot from a live CD, which means you can boot them from a CD without having to install anything on your HDD

1. Ubuntu     http://www.ubuntu.com/
Pros: Fixed release cycle and support period; novice-friendly; wealth of documentation, both official and user-contributed

Cons: Some of Ubuntu's own software (e.g. Launchpad, Rosetta) are proprietary; lacks compatibility with Debian

2. OpenSuse     www.opensuse.org/
Pros: Comprehensive and intuitive configuration tool; large repository of software packages, excellent web site infrastructure and printed documentation

Cons: Novell's patent deal with Microsoft in November 2006 seemingly legitimised Microsoft's intellectual property claims over Linux; its resource-heavy desktop setup and graphical utilities are sometimes seen as "bloated and slow"

3. Fedora     www.fedoraproject.org/
Pros: Highly innovative; outstanding security features; large number of supported packages; strict adherence to the Free Software philosophy

Cons: Fedora's priorities tend to lean towards enterprise features, rather than desktop usability

4. Debian     www.debian.org
Pros: Very stable; remarkable quality control; includes over 20,000 software packages; supports more processor architectures than any other Linux distribution

Cons: Conservative - due to its support for many processor architectures, newest technologies are not always included; slow release cycle (one stable release every 1 - 3 years); discussions on developer mailing lists and blogs can be uncultured at times

5. Mandriva     www.mandriva.com/
Pros: Beginner-friendly, especially the commercial editions; excellent central configuration utility; very good out-of-the-box support for dozens of languages; installable live CD

Cons: The company's customer service has developed bad reputation over the years; complex, confusing web site infrastructure; dropping popularity due to its commercial nature and unpopular corporate decisions in the past

6. PCLinuxOS     www.pclinuxos.com/
Pros: Out-of-the-box support for graphics drivers, browser plugins and media codecs; fast boot times; up-to-date software

Cons: No 64-bit edition offered; no out-of-the-box support for non-English languages; lacks release planning

7. Mepis     www.mepis.org/
Pros: Beginner-friendly; excellent hardware auto-detection and support; intuitive, installable live CD

Cons: Software in its repositories not always up-to-date, lacks development roadmap

8. Knoppix     www.knoppix.org/
Pros: Unparalleled hardware auto-detection and auto-configuration; portable operating system that can be used for rescue, demonstration and testing tasks; provides a hard-disk installation script

Cons: Recent releases somewhat buggy; lack of polish and unification of menus across the different desktop environments; slow when run from DVD

9. Slackware     www.slackware.com/
Pros: Highly stable, clean and bug-free, strong adherence to UNIX principles

Cons: Limited number of officially supported applications; conservative in terms of base package selection; complex upgrade procedure; no official 64-bit edition

10. Gentoo     www.gentoo.org/
Pros: Excellent software management infrastructure, unparalleled customisation and tweaking options, superb online documentation
 
Cons: Occasional instability and risk of breakdown, the project suffers from lack of directions and frequent infighting between its developers

Honorable Mention

FreeBSD     www.freebsd.org/
Pros: Fast and stable; availability of over 15,000 software applications (or "ports") for installation; very good documentation

Cons: Tends to lag behind Linux in terms of support for exotic hardware, limited availability of commercial applications; lacks graphical configuration tools

Last edited by The_Wii_Nes_Boy (2008-07-07 17:02:48)