Need some help on a distro...

Alright, I use to run Ubuntu on an older machine and liked it quite a bit - however, Ubuntu doesn't play well on my newer machine (The LiveCD locks up at the GUI, the alt text based installer goes fine but locks up at the GUI as well), I've spent hours on the help forums and searching how to get it to run on this machine to no avail, I've tried running it with the noacpi, nolapic, acpi=off and every other way, just won't run right on rthis PC, but knoppix and stuff runs fine off the livecd... anyways on to my main question:

I want a fairly easy to use distro like ubuntu, that I can run from a LiveCD first to test out, and then install alongside windows on my other hard drive, so far I've looked at, but haven't tested out both PCLinux and MEPIS, so I'm just looking for suggestions, hardware shouldn't be a problem, 2.0Ghz Athlon 64, 1GB RAM on this machine. So any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, and thanks.

 

IMO, you have two of the best already. I like PCLinuxOS (better control panel & wireless setup) more than Mepis. Try both and see what you like.

BTW, I'm a KDE guy but the PCLOS Gnome version is making me re-think things....its faster and setup better than the Ubuntu 8.04 LTS I've been using.

 

You tried everything but the right thing to get Ubuntu to boot. If it is hanging at the GUI, then the problem is the video card. Use the Vesa option to boot the LiveCD. Once you've install it, you can then activate the restricted drivers to get full video options.

 

I suspect this could be compiz. To stop it loading on the livecd use the compatibility mode during boot, then once installed, removing compiz ("sudo apt-get remove compiz") from the commandline OR if can you get to your desktop to the settings disabled from display settings applet.

 

If you like Ubuntu, give Mint a try, also check out Sidux.

 

By the criteria you give I say PCLinuxOS hands down.

 

Looks like some distro hopping is in order. People can recommend many that are a good out of the box experience. Any on the top 10 at Distrowatch would probably be fine also. Ubuntu IS the easiest IMO. PCLOS is easy also. Mint, mentioned above, is nice. Many many choices. Just start downloading and sampling some.

 

Come on people. Distro hopping isn't going to help if the video card fails to boot the LiveCD. Choosing VESA will cure this no matter which distro you're trying to boot. Rather than spending hours downloading different distros, try finding out what's causing the problem in the first place. You can download a half dozen distros, and if you have an nVdia 6100 or similar video chip, none of them are going to work unless you choose to boot with the VESA option. And if you do find one that happens to work, it will probably be a very poor choice of distro in every other regard.

 

Yeah, that's true, if he can't get Ubuntu going, then odds are nothing else will do either. Ubuntu is the easiest by far and should be a piece of cake. First things first I guess.....

 

Alright, well I am running a 6600 nVidia PCI-E (onboard is 6100) with a nForce chipset, so how would I go about booting up in vesa?

 

Safe graphics mode.
It's one of the options in the GRUB menu.
Mrk

 

Check here for a complete list of boot options.

 

Safe graphics still locks up on me... so does booting up with almost every other switch too

 

You need to add vga=xxx to the end of the boot option line, where xxx is a number indicating the resolution.

You can find a table of the number here. Scroll down till you come to the table. vga=792 is 1024x768 24bit. That should work OK for your system.