Running Two Distros works for me! (so far)

[blackbelt_jones]

I think I finally figured out that the perfect Linux for me is actually TWO Linuxes. On a two hundred GB hard drive I now run:

138 GB of Mepis 3.3, a nicely souped-up and accessorized version of Debian that provides me with easy access to an endless Christmas morning of packages. Real Player, Acrobat Reader, an NV driver are already installed, everything is brand new from the Sid repositories. It's not terribly stable, but it's about as user-friendly as it gets.

plus:

60 GB of Centos 4.1... Red Hat Enterprise Linux at Fedora prices!

For me, these two distros complement each other perfectly. In the past, when I tried to run Mepis, I had problems with the unstable debian repositories. I discovered that upgrading could cause problems. Once, K3B didn't work after upgrading. Since, at the time, K3B was the only way i knew how to write a CD, recovering my data was a problem-- but now, I'm covered for that. I have a built in rescue disk in the form of my Centos partition.

I love Centos. After trying every Fedora Core distribution, Centos is a throwback to the days when RedHat was RedHat. It's the first Linux distro I ever loved, RedHat 9, all over again. To anyone who doesn't know about Centos, it's basically a clone taken directly from the source code of Red Hat's commercial Enterprise distro. It's stable, it's simple, it's straightforward, it's all business.

I could NOT live on Centos-alone. It's RPM-based, of course, and since it's an enterprise distro there are few multimedia applications, plus there's the usual RedHat problems with MPG and MP3 files. If I didn't have my 138 GB of Mepis, I'd be pulling my proverbial hair out (sadly, just about all the hair I have these days is proverbial) trying to get it to do everything I'd need it to do for my home system. But that's no longer necessary. I can take my time customizing it. Centos is a free version of the most widely-used commercial Linux distro in the US, and for any American who would like to work with Linux, that makes it well worth getting to know.

They're both running with the same (ext3) filesystems-- but even if they didn't, I think shuffling data back and forth between the two partitions would be pretty simple.

[webwolf]

The Multimedia/MP3 problem with centos can be fixed with the right Yum repos. In fact if I remember right the only package I had to build from scratch was dvdrip.

[blackbelt_jones]

I had a problem with the yum repositories in CentOS. One of the major uls was invalid (whether temporarily or permanantly, I do not know) and nearly everything I tried to install couldn't be found... HOWEVER, I was able to use YUM to install apt, and apt worked like a charm. I can't remember if I got mp3s running in xmms, but probably not, because I really didn't care. I was perfectly happy to play mp3s in gxine and kaffeine.

After some further shopping around for the perfect pair of Linuxes for the next couple of months, I settled on SuSE, with good old Debian Sarge, and 20 GB of Windows XP. Someday, I hope to take a whack at slack, but I'm making a public vow not to install or remove any more distros or OSs on this computer until at least election day (November 1).

I just finished setting it all up, once and for all, a few minutes ago. This is my first true multi-boot (no need to mess with the bios to switch distros!) I think I've learned more about Linux in the past two months than in the previoous three years. Like practically all of it, multi-booting isn't really that hard when you know where to find the information you need.

[infiniphunk]

For me its Ubuntu on /dev/hda1, Zenwalk on /dev/hda5 and Slackware on /dev/hda7. Each have there own small home partitions, but they all share yet another partition where data (music, movies..etc.) goes via symlinks. Nicest setup I've made to date. I think when I gain more expertise I'll probably just use one distro, but for now I like the convenience of choice.

[IsaacKuo]

For me it's Debian Sarge and...that's it. BBJ, when will you finally learn that if you can't do it in Debian Sarge, you (in particular) don't need to be doing it! ;)

[blackbelt_jones]

After some further shopping around for the perfect pair of Linuxes for the next couple of months, I settled on SuSE, with good old Debian Sarge, and 20 GB of Windows XP. Someday, I hope to take a whack at slack, but I'm making a public vow not to install or remove any more distros or OSs on this computer until at least election day (November 1).


Well, after about an hour, I've already broken that vow! I couldn't help it... as cool and fascinating as I have come to find SuSE, (after rather cluelessly hating it at first) I had to face that fact that it was crashing on me much too much. Probably cause I like Gnome... and SuSE, I'm guessing, does not. So I replaced SuSE with CentOS.

I should explain that as I've installed my first multiboot and attempted to get my system "settled" it's led to a flurry of intensive installing and reinstalling, as if I am working against some imaginary deadline to get everything just so. I've hardly slept or eaten. Dkeav and ions love to rag me about my constant installing and reinstallling, and they're absolutely right to bust my balls about this... but on another level, they got it all wrong. They think I'm using the install to avoid the work of real system administration. The truth is pure and simple obsessive-compulsive disorder. Seriously, my therapist is going to be hearing about this!

So I'm taking a new pledge, as the two sides of my brain attempt to make peace. The CentOS partition that I've installed on /hda3 as my main Linux system-- barring some horrible technical mishap, that stays where it is until New Year's at the very least... and if I want to change /hdb2 twice a day, that's my prerogative.

That just might work. :rolleyes: