A Linux newbie weighing between Salix and another distro

[djemos]

Inkscape is inluded in salix repos.

[mimosa]

Out of curiosity, I've been having a look at Vector, both the live version and the install disk. The former has an option to install, and though it looks a bit less polished than the Salix equivalent, the process is probably similar. The stumbling-block in both cases is that you have to know at least a little about disk partitioning to do the job. However, this is very widely documented and not really hard In a nutshell, you need perhaps 1GB for swap, and you can put everything else together, but it's common to have a "root" partition (/ ) for the actual distro, 10GB should be ample, and the rest for your data, /home. I believe that's what the Salix installer on the install (non-live) disk does if you ask it to do an autoinstall.

I also tried the Vector install CD in a virtual machine. Unlike Salix, it has a graphical installer, but it seemed pretty rough and ready to me; also unlike Salix, it has no option to "just wipe everything and install". Like the installer on the Live cd for both Salix and Vector, it drops you in Gparted to set up your partitions. If you needed to do that Gparted is definitely a good tool and user-friendly too.

Here is some info on disk partitions:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... rtitioning

... and see the Salix User Guide, available on the homepage.

[springtime]

I want to thank you all for your very detailed and helpful replies. In the end, I've discovered that what thenktor said really put it all in a nutshell for me. I didn't realize that when a distro is described as simple and easy that those words don't equate to "made for a beginner who WANTS ease of install and use." I really never put that together. And in all my visiting of distro forums, not one single person said what Thenktor did - which was just what I needed to hear. I didn't know that I wasn't asking exactly the right questions before this!! Well, I've learned now. Thank you.

After reading those reviews and thinking about what thenktor said, I realize at this point in my learning, I need something like either Mepis, or PCLinuxOS. (I'm staying away from the Ubuntu deriviatives simply due to stability issues that I don't want to cope with.) I think if I had more understanding about programming - more understanding about how Linux works, then Salix would be perfect. But I'm not there yet.

Thank you all again for being so nice. I am sorry I won't be part of your community. Wishing you all the best.

Is Salix easy for a total Linux rookie to install? (I'm used to uber simple Mac installers)

Does Salix make it simple to sort of point and click to install additional software?

Well, after reading your post I want to be honest.
Salix has no graphical installer by default. The text mode installer is IMHO straight forward and easy to use if have a bit computer experience and we also have the Live system with a graphical installer.
Additional software is easy to install as long as it is available via gslapt (our package manager). But neither Salix nor Vector have a really huge repository. I guess with your background your best fitting distribution is Ubuntu or something Ubuntu based.

[mimosa]

Good luck with your conversion to Linux! I hope we'll see you around here again a bit further down the road.