So I'd like to wade back into the world of Linux. I had used Ubuntu a bit in college (2004-8) and again a few years ago, but I've always needed to stay with Windows (video editing and Serato). I built a new workstation for the video editing, but I'd like to dual boot Linux on my laptop. I'd use it for general web browsing, getting back into coding (it'll help with using my Pi for more than just a Plex box) and some network testing and the like. I'm going back and forth on Fedora and OpenSUSE; either way I think I'll use Cinnamon for the desktop. Any reason I should go with one over the other?
The other question I have is, is for a rather lightweight installation of either distro, how big of a partition should I create? I only have a 120GB SSD in my laptop, so I was thinking about 10-20GB for Linux? I know I could just run a live USB, but I'd rather not have to have a USB drive sticking out of my laptop whenever I want to use Linux.. Any recommendations on any 'must have' applications/tweaks that I may have missed in the past few years are welcome as well.
Fedora Vs. SUSE is kind of complicated. If you need a rock solid system, SUSE 13.2. I'm not saying Factory or Fedora isn't rock solid, cause they are, but the latest and greatest faces issues. Fedora seems to be better for a system dealing with virtualization. Boxes offers unique functionality, and KVM is found baked into the kernel. SUSE is more so less development oriented, and in my experience AppArmor is better than SELinux. They're like comparing cake to cake really. The first cake is not baked enturely but tastes good. The second cake is good too, but has been baked to more of a mature state. Try them both. It's not like it costs ya anything :)
I still prefer Adobe for video editing; though once I get a new laptop (probably next summer/fall) my current laptop will be a straight Linux machine. I had tried a lot of those Linux programs, but they still fell short of what I needed. I think I'm going to just run OpenSUSE. Is 20GB a big enough partition? Smaller? Bigger?
Well, I kind of gave up on the whole Linux thing for now. OpenSUSE couldn't repartition the drive after Windows was installed, even though was a UEFI/GPT installation for both OS's. I'll be getting a second hard drive in the laptop (replacing the DVD drive with a HDD caddy) at some point, so I'll just load it on there. Thanks for the help.
I created a ~95GB partition for Windows and left the rest unallocated. When it came time to install OpenSUSE, I couldn't create new partitions on the disk; the only option was to repartition the whole drive, killing the Windows installation. So after using GParted to completely wipe the drive, repartition, reinstall Windows and try to install OpenSUSE, even from BIOS and not UEFI, it still wouldn't work. I was getting sick of it, so I'll just get to it when I get a new hard drive.
The option to partion the drive are under advance options make a / (root) partition of around 40 gbs using BTRFS /home with however much you want a using XFS and setup /boot using fat32 and choose what drive you want the boot loader to go in.
Mint Cinnamon or the new Fedora Workstation are good choices for my style. I prefer the Cinnamon environment (Gnome 3 is ok for me too)... but all that doesn't really matter as much. What are you planning to do with Linux? That's what really matters. Don't spend too long picking your version. Answer questions regarding your core needs, make sure your hardware is supported, and go for it. You can always mess with the environment after the fact... just get some stuff done.
I like OpenSuse with lxde for desktop work. I run Windows 10 Enterprise as my host OS and OpenSuse VMs. Running Linux in a VM instead of duel booting is advantageous because if you fuck up the VM you can blow it away and start over no problem. As long as your CPU supports VT-x extensions, performance will comparable to the host OS.
Both great choices, Cinnamon is great for users already familiar with the NTFS (M$ Windows) desktop environment. Like Logan said, just go for it! It's free to experiment and see what works best for you. Best of luck!
I just want to mess around with Linux again for something to do. I liked it when I had used it before, and I've loaded it onto a few older/under-powered computers in the past, but I haven't done anything recent with it. Except for my Raspberry Pi. But all I have it doing now is running a Plex Media Server build just for simplicity. I had re-written/modified a build to make it a Bluetooth audio receiver, but it was redundant when I got my music library on Plex.