davs, ako imas dva diska probaj instalacjiu samo na jednom od njih (na onom gdje nemas instalaciju xp-a), ali neces puno puno toga vidjeti novoga, imao sam ga priliku vidjeti na poslu, nije mi bas nesto.

don't run livecd's to test a linux distribution, booting from liveCD is handy when recovering, doing weird shit. to enjoy it, just download a virtuall appliance (linux preinstalled on a virtual machine) and run it with the free vmware player.

to choose what distro go here
http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/

distrowatch.com is useless to the beginners. (imho)

I love gentoo, it's not just about "ricing" shaving off kilobytes and cpu cycles. it's all about choice. and as a "power user" i am able to do anything i like with ease. even if it is running of a svn version of any bleeding edge project. Compile is a set and forget for me. But i would indeed not recommend it to the novice. (But it's fun, and really the best distro out there imho )

all other distro's have their respective strong points use the distro chooser to find your perfect match. Maybe it'll even tell you how many childeren you will have together.

So how many have you got so far?

This peace of crap requires 6.8GB is more that my FREEBSD installation with all the ports present on the site another really anoying thing is that it is really slow, and have an run dialog asking all the times if i want to allow some program that i start with mouse "yes with mouse" if i allow him to start, the filesystem really slow and still have some bugs i got 2GB of files deleted because one download yes my entire /users tree has gone with all the info present there... i still do not recomend windows if you want something safe look to something closer to unix like... by the way anyone have repaired that freebsd has released at least 4 versions of the system while microsoft have only released one.... little joke for the windows guys regards rayden....

I'm going to recommend Ubuntu too. It's good for beginners and advanced users, I personally like the UI, and its package management sources are up-to-date and haven't given me any problems. Basically, it's Debian without the suck.

Linux part of this post:
------------------------------
The only thing i ask, is that if you use ubuntu you are aware of these:

- you chose user friendly over performance
- you accept that your OS is compiled for i386 (and yes you DO notice the difference in performance with an OS that is compiled for i686 (there is a reason why the instruction set changed))
-you accept that you forfit adapdability for usability

Basically you accept all the choices that the ubuntu team makes to produce a "linux for human being", if you consider yourself to be more than a human being (on the system level), I believe there are better choices

The vista part:
-------------------
i've had some more experience, and i'm really disappointed, they promised mountains, and they delivered a foothill. I really get the feeling that they are happy that it's as feature complete as xp. If you strip down the fancy graphics, i really get this feeling it doesn't do anything..., a spyware tool running in the background --> no way there people i trust more than m$ (with an average patch time of 137 days, right now there is still an unpatched critical flaw in word known..) for my security, bitlocker--> huh knowing all this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography , and it's no secret that m$ answers to the US goverment (and that's just common sence, if you were going to create software that is mostlightly going to be used by your enemies ...), so --> truecrypt.

what features do i have left?

-> you chose user friendly over performance:
Yes. Most of the time (with ubuntu) the cpu is idling (2,3%) even with a "low performance" distribution. I can live with a constant 2,3% cpu activity. Btw, if the standard ubuntu gnome desktop is too laggy for someone out there, I would recommend e17 (www.get-e.org). I am currently testing on another machine ... running very smoothly with nice effects.

But, I would have to agree with you on one point: I would not choose ubuntu to install a standard web/email server

-> you accept that your OS is compiled for i386 (and yes you DO notice the difference in performance with
an OS that is compiled for i686 (there is a reason why the instruction set changed))
Do you have any test between these architecture ? I'm not saying you are wrong, I just want to "measure" the difference and see whether it is enough to give it another try.

-> you accept that you forfeit adaptability for usability
Well yes, I don't have to adapt the distribution Most of their package have decent default configuration (for a desktop of course) and don't need any change to run standard personal server (personal server, ie devel server).

~/test $ g++ e.cxx -march=i386
~/test $ time ./a.out >/dev/null

real    0m5.958s
user    0m5.952s
sys     0m0.004s
~/test $ g++ e.cxx -march=i686
~/test $ time ./a.out >/dev/null

real    0m5.587s
user    0m5.560s
sys     0m0.020s

where the user values is the time the code took to execute on cpu, (real is time between start and finish, afaik is affected by system load)

here my code executes 7% faster changing nothing but the instruction set. this is not scientific proof, or rigor testiment. but i know that ubuntu runs sluggisch compared to gentoo, on my old amd 1300 box.

the code itself is a purely cpu intensive task. No IO, and it only uses about 100 bytes of ram so i'm pretty sure that's in L1 cache. to try to make sure i'm measuring the right thing. It's an algo i still had lying around, i don't believe it's the best code to show the differences. but as it worked out at least it collaborates my point

If 7% is insig,ificant for you, well .. it's your right, but to me it's a 7% waste, I bet a 7% increase in wages, would make plenty of strikers happy though. Certainly if it's as cheap as changing a 3 to a 6, and only using binary compatibility with ancient machines. (binary compatibility on linux is a joke anyways).


for the intrested

this is using many optimalisations, that aren't particularly sane, but for this code it works. now it's just to illustrate that the correct compilation, can save more than 50% runtime ...

example:
x+1=1 could be optimised to x=0
this might sound sane in maths, but in the system it isn't. (imagine x is a very small float )

I didn't like Ubuntu when I first tried it about a year ago, but thismorning decided to give it another go..

I wanted to like it, I really did, would make things so much easier when listening to people almost evangelise it.

I still don't think it's as good as a lot of people make it out to be and here is why:

1. No real multimedia 'out of the box'. I know the reason they don't include a lot of the codecs, but is a new user over from windows going to be happy apt-getting the bloody things, or even know where to start, just so they can listen to there mp3s? (granted a small issue, but putting on some tunes is what a lot of people begin playing around with).

2. It wouldn't sync with my palm - kernal recompile required.

3. about 10 services are loaded by default that I don't even want.. they could at least ASK me before enabling them all.

4. Try to boot into a shell... wft is up with that?? There is an option in the graphic to boot to console in safe mode, yet you have to boot into gdm first, piss fart around to get a decnt font setting (default make me strain to see) and then delete a gdm symlink. (Yes I know there must be an easier way)

5. Gnome sucks

Anyway, I am going to try 'Kanotix' which I'd only heard about recently... looks quite good on first impressions; I doubt I'll move away from Debian proper but it's fun testing out different distros and it's been a while! Might even get around to trying Solaris one of the days

Good luck with Solaris

Use solaris express to get all the latest features. Btw the default install needs at least a 5Go partition. On such a partition you will have less than 1Go after the install.