On my Toshiba Satellite 305 laptop I have Microsoft Vista. While Microsoft prefers I think their OS is complete, Microsoft does not think it is until I spend even more money on virus protection. I also would add other programs that I think Vista needs to make it complete. I do not run a virus protection program on Vista and when I boot into Vista, Vista of course makes it known there is a problem with my system.

There is no problem that I am aware of. If I do not have virus protection installed that is not a problem, to me that is an OS that has a deficiency. As I have nothing on my Vista partition except a few games, I am not really concerned about any virus, although Microsoft is.

Which brings me back to Linux. Linux for reasons covered in detail other places is a solid generally virus free OS. For many older computers any distribution or flavor of Linux will work as well as any other. The differences between Linux distributions are small and very individual. Package management, looks, and available programs are the main reasons that make individual preferences the reason for using one Linux distribution over another.

Normally, those are the reasons why one person runs one Linux distribution on their computer and someone else runs another distribution. In the case of new computers, both laptops and desktops, the Linux distribution that handles the newest hardware is generally the Linux distribution people use. I have found this to be true in my particular case, so I am sure it is true for most people who can install Linux, but do not have an in depth understanding of what goes on under the hood so to speak.

I confess, I am something of a Linux distribution junky. If there is a new Linux distribution, I want to try it. I may like it a tiny bit better than the distribution I am using at the moment. My laptop though has thrown a wrench into the works and has caused me to slow down on the amount of Iso’s I burn.

The problem is hardware based. In a year or so when the hardware that Toshiba decided to place in my flavor of the the 305 becomes standard, or at least more prevalent and understood as to how it functions, the world of Linux distributions will open up. In the mean time I have tried the following mostly because I have used them in the past on an older desktop and enjoyed them. I tried to use:

Ubuntu – Loaded and works fine, it is the Linux flavor I am currently using.

Debian – Could not configure my card. The newest live cd never made it past the splash screen.

DreamLinux – Installs and works fine except for shutting down completely. Dies when trying to
accomplish system update.

Fedora – Did not run as a live cd.

Mint – Did not run as a live cd.

Mepis – Did not run as a live cd.

Pardux – Did not run as a live cd.

PCLinuxOS – Did not run as a live cd.

Vector – Ran as a live cd, but could not configure my network card.

Zenwalk – Did not run as a live cd.

Mepis and PCLinuxOS were over a year old when I downloaded them so I expected problems with the hardware configurations.

The Linux distros that would not load all appeared to use the same loader, and the loader seems to have a conflict with the laptop hardware. Debian which was one of my main Linux choices in the past, seems not to have caught up on the hardware end yet, no surprise there.

For now, I am enjoying Ubuntu and have had absolutely no problems that I know of. Generally though I like to change my flavors of Linux frequently, but I am unable to do so now. Ubuntu works well, and does everything I need it to do. I keep watching Distrowatch for updated and new Linux distributions that I wish to try out.