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Puppy is a joke. With Puppy, all users runs as root, making Puppy on par with Win9x.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puppy_Linux#Root_user_password
I'm surprized your folks haven't accidentally nuked part of the OS--or they have and you didn't bother to mention that.
Puppy should only be used when it is on non-writable media--and even then the other media on the system is at risk (e.g. a Windoze partition).
...and there are probably better distros for your task e.g. Damn Small Linux, Parted Magic.

For a short time there was a multi-user version of Puppy, but that is gesphincto.
http://distrowatch.com/grafpup

gewg_

"You should infer that I'm trying to avoid arguing pointlessly with people who won't listen."

Right. I won't listen to you claim that forking only helps if you have resources and time to code. I won't listen to that because the entire FOSS world is based on that ability, and many, many, many people have leveraged that ability for you. You didn't have to do a thing except recognize that, choose from the thousands of free solutions out there, and take advantage of that. There is nothing to listen to, because what you claimed is absurd. Here is just one of thousands of places you will see direct evidence of the advantage of that for all people who are smart enough to recognize the advantage.

Furthermore, even if you continue to use Windows you still get the advantage, because Microsoft has recognized that they can't get away with as much with Linux in the picture. Your claim is ridiculous bullshit that ignores the obvious.

Here is a hint for future reference: If you want people to listen, actually have something valid to say. ;-)

Download, install, properly configure Tor:
https://www.torproject.org/

Certainly you should choose an open source and free operating system to
increase your security/privacy: http://www.distrowatch.com/

Use one of the many tools available to build your own Linux liveCD/DVD/USB
with Tor installed/configured and yank out all of your HDDs or unplug them
while using Tor via Linux liveCD/DVD/USB, then while running Tor:

Scroogle SSL:
https://ssl.scroogle.org/

and for mail:

Safe-Mail:
No cookies, no script, no java, no flash required!
https://www.safe-mail.net/

In the words of Woody Woodpecker:
Hah ha ha HAH ha, Hah ha ha HAH ha, HAHAHAHHAHAHHAAH!

Fuck you corporations, fuck you snoopers, I do it MY WAY.

Off the top of my head:

OpenSuse: http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=suse
Linux Mint: http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mint
Macpup Opera: http://macpup.org/

Off the top of my head:

OpenSuse: http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=suse
Linux Mint: http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mint
Macpup Opera: http://macpup.org/

GNUStep hasn't died; they just released version 2.0 of their live CD, and the Etoile project continues to make GNUStep more modern and aesthetically pleasing. The advantage of the open source world is that if the technology's still good, you can start that old girl right up when you need to. I get the impression that the project could move very quickly given some programmers backing it.

In fact, if you took Ubuntu and modified it, then tried to resell or distribute it as "Ubuntu" and not under some other name, you would be at the wrong end of a lawsuit.

You mean like this?
http://distrowatch.com/search.php?category=All&origin=All&basedon=Ubuntu&desktop=All&architecture=All&status=Active

The only real way you could get into trouble would be to call your modified software "Ubuntu" or include some of the logos and artwork, since that is trademarked. Otherwise, you could get into trouble if you didn't distribute the source code for your changes, due to the GPL. Otherwise, you can pretty much modify Ubuntu however you want and redistribute the changes.

*After figuring it out, you have to know for each Windows version where the option is located*
*After figuring it out, you have to know for each desktop environment where the option is located*

Windows 95/98/XP/Vista/7:
Start/Settings/Control Panel
Mandriva/Ubuntu/Fedora/Suse/+299
????

I would actually advocate having a go at a few using VMWare or the likes. I worked my way through many major and a few minor distros that caught my fancy on Distro Watch back when I was working nights doing tech support at a university using an old PIII-500. Ah those were the days *gets a little misty-eyed*. I can, however, honestly say that installing Gentoo was one of the most informative (and yes, frustrating) experiences of my early Linux days. If you want to learn how a system is structured I would advise you do it. But back to your question (a little). The major distros all offer pretty much the same experience just implemented differently. Debian-based distro's (Ubuntu, MEPIS etc) offer a huge amount of installable packages that are easily acquired by using one of several package managers (Synaptic being the main one). Red Hat (or RPM) based distros are similar to Debian based distros in that there is a large amount of software available and it's often easy to find, Mandriva has urpmi which is a neat little package manager but may require additional setup after install (mea culpa: I haven't used Mandriva since Mandrake 9 so this may have changed). Those are the two _main_ categories of distribution but there is so much more. I'm a Slackware guy but that's because I yearn for the more simple days and it is not for everyone. It has a small (comparatively) package repository that is not as easy to use as Debian or the RPM-based distro's repos but there is slackbuilds.org which is pretty easy to use. To be honest, most distros are derivatives of one of these (mostly Debian and Red Hat) but there are oddities like SUSE which uses RPM's (or at least did the last time I checked) but is rather different to other RPM based distros.

I really don't think you can just read about a distro to figure out if you'll like it or not as if you are using it for general computing then any of the majors will do you just fine. It's a matter of personal taste and, to a certain extent, what you get used to. I started off as a Debian guy so I was, until about 3 years ago, comfortable with most Debian derivatives. But I ran out of things to break so I switched to Slackware! Have a go at a few and play around under the hood to see if you like how things are laid out. It's fun, I promise!

Xubuntu installs more RAM-consuming daemons than some other XFCE-based distro installs such as Debian's - see http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20090504#feature for a guide on how to slim down Xubuntu, resulting in about half the memory usage before starting applications. Distrowatch also did a similar guide on how to slim down the main Ubuntu distro here: http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20081215#feature

You could also try Crunchbang, an Ubuntu derivative that uses OpenBox: http://crunchbanglinux.org/ - or U-Lite which is even lighter, or see this thread for discussion of Linux distros for 192 MB RAM: http://www.linux.com/archive/forums/topic/4908

Xubuntu installs more RAM-consuming daemons than some other XFCE-based distro installs such as Debian's - see http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20090504#feature for a guide on how to slim down Xubuntu, resulting in about half the memory usage before starting applications. Distrowatch also did a similar guide on how to slim down the main Ubuntu distro here: http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20081215#feature

You could also try Crunchbang, an Ubuntu derivative that uses OpenBox: http://crunchbanglinux.org/ - or U-Lite which is even lighter, or see this thread for discussion of Linux distros for 192 MB RAM: http://www.linux.com/archive/forums/topic/4908

Here's distributions that boot from floppy: http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=links#floppy http://bootdisk.com/linux.htm Then, you can install whatever you want via PPPoE.\: http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/apds05.html.en http://marc.herbert.free.fr/linux/win2linstall.html Here's some recommendations from a 486'er: http://www.ipt.ntnu.no/~knutb/linux486/linux486.html

Ubuntu is nowhere near ready for prime time

Ubuntu is already being used by businesses.

Go and spend 24 hours or so on Ubuntu's forums before you try and tell me it is stable.

Because I plan on installing Ubuntu on my Mac I have spent more than 100 hours in the the Ubuntu forums, photo.net, and elsewhere. In all this tyme I haven't run into any complaints about Ubuntu not being stable. I have however run into incompatibilities, and the fixes for them. Then again maybe it's just because of what I'm looking for, how to install Ubuntu on my Mac. I've been researching how to before I do it so I can make a plan which includes any problems that may come up.

Instead of Windows, they went with OS/2, which bombed, at least in mainstream terms.

It wasn't IBM's bomb. IBM and MS was working on OS/2 together when MS pulled out and did Windows instead.

Ubuntu is the proverbial dog with fleas, of Linux distributions.

Then why has Ubuntu been the most popular Linux distro this past year? Of course that link is just for those who visit Distro Watch. Starry Hope asks Ubuntu: Still Popular? Using metrics from various sites it concludes Ubuntu is still popular.

Falcon

And when you've cut your teeth on Ubuntu you can go to DistroWatch and download one of the many other superb Linux flavours that are on offer, one of which might actually suit your way of working better than "starter Linux".

Well done on getting a troll mod for advertising Linux on /.
That takes pure skill!

Imagine what would a PC user who wants to try Linux reacts if he sees 50+ different distributions of Linux on the shelf!

But, that *is* how it's like. There really are 50+ distributions of Linux out there. DistroWatch is proof enough of that.

I have to say that I feel like you've got it a little bit backwards. It's more like the 50+ *brands* of PCs out there running Windows. That's to say many different brands of hardware, but they're all running the same OS. Granted they've all got their own tweaks and slight differences depending on how the manufacturer configures the software, but anyone used to using Windows on a Dell isn't going to have much trouble using Windows on an HP. This is more or less what Android is doing for the handheld market. Folks that have gotten used to the G1 are going to feel well enough at home on a Samsung Moment or HTC Hero.

Encouraging people to provide Email addresses for ones ISP, potentially for sending electronic bills, would likely be more secure than web-site visits that can be hijacked. Who can't setup an email account to sort bills if you want to ignore them?

Now, that said I would not object to ISPs sending customer's email notices, or potentially even initial browser connection/request "popup" notices, of the form -- "Your machine has demonstrated Internet usage patterns that suggest that it has been infected by a virus". Your machine's access of various Microsoft web sites and/or browser agent fields demonstrate that you are using Microsoft Windows. You could end your enslavement to the Microsoft pseudo-monopoly by upgrading to one of the various Linux based operating systems, see http://www.distrowatch.com/ for various sources of free Linux distributions which would eliminate this problem."

Comcast would benefit because the machines would discontinue loading down the network with various Microsoft and/or virus manufacturer update requests.

The basis for this is that the Internet is a "shared public resource", just like the roads, the atmosphere, the public airwaves, etc. are. And just as it is reasonable for society to say "Friends don't let friends drive drunk," or "you cannot spew out atmospheric pollutants which are potentially harmful to others," or "you cannot build a house that represents a fire hazard to your family or neighborhood," or children which have potentially come down with H1N1 can be banned from school, etc. it is *NOT* unreasonable for society (and ISPs acting as the observers for society) to enact policies which make the Internet a safer place. Presumably that means a documented shared database of "typical" and "infected" usage patterns.

That said, obviously Comcast had better be intelligent about it what they are screening for, if I choose to contact lots of sites to download gigabytes of genetics databases (FTP, HTTP), get software updates (SVN), support various software pakages of interest (Folding@Home, Freenet, SecondLife, gaming, cloud computing), or even continuously download P2P Linux distributions (or anything else for that matter) up to the bandwidth I am paying for 24/7, then I should be free to do that. Any actions have to be based on public safety rationales and not on network load minimization rationales (or even worse "police-state" restriction rationales). Though it might be reasonable to switch 24/7 Internet pricing to 18/6/7 Internet pricing. Using the Internet significantly more than 75% of the other users during the 18 hour "peak" window could subject you to "peak period" user fees. (Either that or one moves to metered usage payment plans (just like other public utilities).) But metered payment plans are not likely to reduce the level of virus/bot infected machines given the sophistication of viruses/bots today [1].

Ultimately the bandwidth problem isn't going to get corrected until one has 3-4 ISPs in any region and that is going to require some combination of DSL + Cable + 4G wireless + WiMax + Satellite -- *then* one ought to see competitive rather than monopolistic pricing.

1. Truth be told, I doubt anything will eliminate the viruses short of replacing the installed Windows OS base with non-Windows systems.

[...]but as far as DistroWatch is concerned, SCO/Caldera is no longer a Linux distribution.

Totally off-topic, of course, but always interesting.

TPB really helps me find my torrents. This kind of file sharing is exactly what BT is great for.

I've used DistroWatch since the first time someone told me to try out Debian in college and it turned out I needed a different distribution because Debian was for me to start out on. Very memorable learning experience.

Even today, the site does a really good job of keeping up to date. An example is Slackware 13.0 that was released today and there in one paragraph with all the links you could want and direct links to mirrors for torrents and the MD5s.

A lot of times when I want to know what a distro is up to, I click that pull down bar -- like say Fedora -- and get a convenient history of recent releases with a paragraph about the release. Hats off to the people who maintain that site.

TPB really helps me find my torrents. This kind of file sharing is exactly what BT is great for.

I've used DistroWatch since the first time someone told me to try out Debian in college and it turned out I needed a different distribution because Debian was for me to start out on. Very memorable learning experience.

Even today, the site does a really good job of keeping up to date. An example is Slackware 13.0 that was released today and there in one paragraph with all the links you could want and direct links to mirrors for torrents and the MD5s.

A lot of times when I want to know what a distro is up to, I click that pull down bar -- like say Fedora -- and get a convenient history of recent releases with a paragraph about the release. Hats off to the people who maintain that site.

Really.

My God! It's full of anti-worms.

I reckon you should install them with Puppy Linux, perhaps modified with a Christmas-themed desktop and a short Christmas message and introduction to GNU / Linux that is displayed at login time.

I mean, when was the last time you received a gift of a better operating system for Christmas? :-)

Thanks for the permission to post.

Did you read the rest of the post where I laid out that the NIC, the printer, and multiple monitors failed to work? Using the nv driver by default yields crap results. Yes, I know you can change the driver out, but even having done so, how can I easily get my ancillary monitors to extend my desktop nicely? Windows does it in a few mouse clicks and works very well. I am, of course, completely capable of editing the xorg.conf file myself, because I know how to do such things.. but that isn't really the point is it? The point is that these are things that don't work properly. So, yes, I consider that the inability for either Ubuntu or Debian to easily understand my graphics cards and monitor setup to be a failure in usability.

Don't get me wrong, please. I use Debian at the house for quite a bit, as well as my beloved FreeBSD box, but I recognize the shortcomings in them. To make a blanket statement about the amazing "just works" of desktop linux is just laughable. My Wacom Intuos begs to differ.

Now, to address your anecdotes:
XP was released Aug 24 2001
Vista was released Jan 30 2007

Which you are comparing to:
Fedora Core 11 which has not been released yet according to both:
http://fedoraproject.org/
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=fedora

So, I am not sure what you are looking for here. It seems rather silly to debate stability and feature sets of operating systems that are at a minumum over 2 years apart, and the benchmark is a distribution that has yet to release.

If the US government did more to encourage people to keep their computers secure -- by .. subsidizing the purchase of anti-virus software

Get your anti-virus software here and here ..

Madriva uses rpm packages. Ubuntu uses deb packages. While ubuntu is mostly optimized for GNOME (with kubuntu being an official derivative), I THINK mandriva is mostly optimized for KDE. For major package version differences, check out here for mandriva and here for kubuntu In Mandriva you can have a root account, while in *buntu you "can't" (or, to be precise, it's strongly advised not to)

Madriva uses rpm packages. Ubuntu uses deb packages. While ubuntu is mostly optimized for GNOME (with kubuntu being an official derivative), I THINK mandriva is mostly optimized for KDE. For major package version differences, check out here for mandriva and here for kubuntu In Mandriva you can have a root account, while in *buntu you "can't" (or, to be precise, it's strongly advised not to)

It's been a while since I used mandriva, here's a review of the latest:
http://adventuresinopensource.blogspot.com/2008/11/distro-review-mandriva-one-2009.html

And more timely reviews here under 2009:
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mandriva

I concede your point. I'm not sure what I was thinking. I probably shouldn't post when I'm drunk ;-)

Don't be a target. Use some system that doesn't have these problems.

If there were only one Linux. There's not. There are thousands. The kernel itself doesn't require services that need open ports and application level security is a per-distribution thing so no two are going to have the same set of vulnerabilities. Linux is not a "monoculture".

We live in the world as it is, not as it might be. What-ifs really aren't worth spit. You can choose to run an OS that was vulnerable to Conficker, Koobface, Torpig, Storm, Antivirus 2009, Bitfrost, Sasser, MyDoom, Sober, Sobig, Welchia, Blaster, Nimda and Code Red and will be the target of the next six. Or not. It's up to you. Don't try to pretend that there's no functional security difference between the two because that's absurd. Add up the amount of data that was and will be compromised by that list of malware and you have enough to bring the world economy to a screaming halt. Between them those computers probably had access to financial or personal data on a majority of people who've had a digital record and more corporate secrets than should be in a hundred data pools.

What the other guy does shouldn't matter. It should be about being responsible with the data entrusted to you, about being a good steward of your own gear. If you are in IT then your customers are counting on your professional expertise to save them from inadvertently disclosing information via system compromise, and that's a solemn duty. From that perspective the choice is clear. If you can choose to not be a target why would you not leap at that option?

The .iso is only 30 MB. You can install it on a memory stick and boot from it. It loads itself into memory at boot so it is pretty fast. Booting takes about 30 sec on my old hardware with a celeron cpu. Check other distros at http://distrowatch.com/

How does this get modded +5 informative?

There are scads of free options.

Try a linux alternative

NoScript says: "Do not want".

Try a linux alternative

Like this.

Dormant (see: Distrowatch).

Or this.

$$, intended for corporate use, but thanks for the link, It might be worth the money in my repair business (I currently move the disks to a windows machine and scan from there if I can't clean in place).

Hell even an online scan may work well enough, http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

This might actually work, though I haven't tested it myself. Probably not as good as Malwarebytes, though.

One only needs to visit distrowatch and look at #315. 1 page hit for Nepa Linux! Woohoo!

NepaLinux, a localized Linux Distribution in Nepali developed by Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya (MPP) [...]

One only needs to visit distrowatch and look at #315. 1 page hit for Nepa Linux! Woohoo!

NepaLinux, a localized Linux Distribution in Nepali developed by Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya (MPP) [...]

I wish we had fewer distros of linux. And, irony of ironies, probably the same people going HAHAHAHA here are to be found in the recent post where prophet Linus declared that billions of distros were greatest thing around on the monkeysphere.

The thing with Linux distributions is that while there are a huge number of them, there are only a few major ones (note how the 'popularity' rapidly drops off on DistroWatch). In fact, there are probably no more major Linux distros than Vista/Win7 versions. And even among those, they aren't all equally popular; see Google Trends There has basically been a single distro leading the pack since mid-2006: Ubuntu. So without forced interference, a single distro has emerged as the leader. A positive feedback loop with OEMs (e.g. Dell) should keep it in first place unless there is a major disruption. Now as for Vista/Win7... Really, all there is is Ultimate and various crippleware versions of it.

I screwed up the link try this

All we have to do is learn to set aside our infighting because we want things to be scientifically "perfect) and market some form of Linux, anything, and unify behind it for the user base at large.

I think we are already doing exactly that.

Yes there should be lots of distros for niche markets.

And that too.

Apparently "Calls from the linux community have been growing" translates to "an interview question where someone asked the question on Distrowatch"

I can see how the submitter got these confused, the two being so similar and all.

Should be: here

I never said it was identical, I was just pointing out that if you say to the average joe "Install linux!"

Then don't say that. Say "install Ubuntu", or "install Fedora". There, problem solved. I mean, why the hell would you even bother to point them at "50 different variants" when the vast majority of those are either poorly or completely unmaintained, have no long term support option, or aren't targeted at new users?

Oh, and for the record, there most certainly is *not* 50 different popular variants of Linux. I can count *maybe* five... Ubuntu, SuSE, Fedora, Mandriva, and Debian. That's *it*. Of course, there are a couple other niche products out there, like Gentoo, but what idiot would recommend that to a newbie? Hell, even DistroWatch only lists 10 "major" distributions, and I would strongly suggest they're reaching after #5. I mean, who the hell has heard of Linux Mint or PCLinuxOS?

There is only one Linux kernel. The different distributions, to oversimplify, are like software bundles. Different window managers etc. And for telling the difference, there's always distrowatch. It even highlights beta components in red.

There is only one Windows kernel. The different editions, to oversimplify, are like software bundles. Home Premium and Ultimate include Media Centre, but Home Basic and Business don't, etc. And for telling the difference, there's always Microsoft's website.

There is only one Linux kernel. The different distributions, to oversimplify, are like software bundles. Different window managers etc. And for telling the difference, there's always distrowatch. It even highlights beta components in red.

Seems like reinventing the wheel here.

I suppose you've never heard of the WGA (Windows Genuine "Avantage") issues that have occured throughout XP's life? Try entire campuses de-authenticating simply because of a faulty WGA update. Couple this with Vista's well known "cripple the pirates" features, and you have a recipe for disaster. With the way corporations are moving (Microsoft in particular) I suspect this is only the beginning.

How exactly do you access your data if the OS you "Own" does not let you? (READ: http://distrowatch.com/ )

Thus, I've also tagged this article windows. Though perhaps the pejorative microsoft has also been earned.

Seriously, this is largely a problem with a single product line. If you work with the various Linuces, BSDs (including OS X) or Solaris, then the job is mostly fun and productive. One of the things that has always rocked in IT has been doing cool things and finding cool ways to automate uncool things or at least do them faster, better and cheaper. But that means do you own evaluation and under no circumstances for any reason ever ever ever accept crap products, no matter what. The M-word products are not, in my book, "IT" for me they are politics and bullshit that block IT. put the fun back into computing. Avoid them and your stress level will be fine.

Also, suckers for MS products bring it on themselves: think about it. MS products are marketed as so simple even and untrained monkey can use them. Then when said products don't work (because they can't) as advertised or even as needed, who do you think gets the blame, the product or the monkey?

Don't just switch browsers, switch Desktop Distros. If fact, for any kind of online financial activity use a bootable CD. Before you say it, you won't have to pay rent on these Live CDs

You need to totally remove the Windows partition from the harddrive and install one of these distros ..

You can compare the softwares (and versions) distributed by each one on http://distrowatch.com/

Or, download the Live CD for both of them and try out :-)

Tip: if you don't want to burn a CD just to test a distro, you can write the Live CD images to a USB stick. Just look at the livecd-iso-to-disk script in Fedora's ISO.

"The idea that bobs_your_uncle_32.exe, installed on a user account, runs as a superuser and can modify important system files is completely idiotic."

This isn't a Windows-only problem any more.

I bought myself a Linux powered Acer Aspire One, which has Linpus installed by default. The default user can sudo anything without having to enter a password, which I think is a serious security risk.

"Their idea for many different "tiers" to their operating system should have been the first clue to their management team that it is time to reign things in and refocus efforts."

Said with a straight face by a community that doesn't know when to quit.