Mike
Well-Known Member
As most of you know, I prefer to use a Linux operating system, rather than Windows or OS X.
This particular machine has almost always been a dual boot machine, from the day it was new. It's had several different flavors of Ubuntu on it, Linux Mint and Linux Mint Debian Edition, in addition to Windows XP. In the last couple years, I don't think this machine has been booted into Windows XP three times. I made the decision I was going to use Linux and Linux applications to do what I needed to do.
I've been running Linux Mint 11 Katya on the other half of the drive, after miserably crashing a Linux Mint Debian Edition install. I loves me some Linux Mint 11, but I've been missing LMDE. I'm not happy unless I'm on the bleeding edge with my Linux install and with most distros, that means a fresh install every 6 months. I liked LMDE, because it was a rolling release, meaning that if something new was developed today, it was moved into the repositories and downloaded. In other words, with every download from the repos, LMDE was brand-new. Unfortunately, this machine choked on a kernel upgrade and crashed. That's the cost of living on the bleeding edge.
Yesterday, I realized I never use Windows XP any more and decided to dump it off this machine. I considered giving Mint 11 the entire drive, but instead decided it was time to really run Debian. I've always wanted to run Debian, because Ian Murdock wrote the Debian Manifesto when he was a student, here at Purdue. Debian is now developing CUT, a Constantly Usable Testing version, which would be similar to rolling releases, only it would roll until a new milestone, Stable release and then CUT would become CUT again, rolling toward the next milestone.
What I have done is downloaded a CUT milestone, which I will be able to continuously upgrade with a simple terminal command, once a day or once a week. It won't be quite as edgy as Debian Testing, in that the testing will already be done, but it will be more up-to-date than the latest 2 year release of Debian Stable. The part I like is that all upgrades to CUT will be tested to ensure they will run as expected.
To that end, they are starting CUT with Monthly Testing Snapshots and that is what I have installed. Which means this machine still dual boots, but now it dual boots two versions of Linux, rather than Linux and Windows.
After nearly 24 hours, the machine seems perfectly stable and Debian flies with the wind. XP seemed fast on this machine until I first ran Ubuntu. And Linux Mint would really zoom, by comparison. But Debian is almost that much faster again. If any of you are running Linux and want a hyper-speed version, I cannot recommend Debian any more strongly. I'm not ready to ditch Linux Mint by any means, but since installing CUT, that's the only operating system I've used. I mean this stuff really rocks.
This particular machine has almost always been a dual boot machine, from the day it was new. It's had several different flavors of Ubuntu on it, Linux Mint and Linux Mint Debian Edition, in addition to Windows XP. In the last couple years, I don't think this machine has been booted into Windows XP three times. I made the decision I was going to use Linux and Linux applications to do what I needed to do.
I've been running Linux Mint 11 Katya on the other half of the drive, after miserably crashing a Linux Mint Debian Edition install. I loves me some Linux Mint 11, but I've been missing LMDE. I'm not happy unless I'm on the bleeding edge with my Linux install and with most distros, that means a fresh install every 6 months. I liked LMDE, because it was a rolling release, meaning that if something new was developed today, it was moved into the repositories and downloaded. In other words, with every download from the repos, LMDE was brand-new. Unfortunately, this machine choked on a kernel upgrade and crashed. That's the cost of living on the bleeding edge.
Yesterday, I realized I never use Windows XP any more and decided to dump it off this machine. I considered giving Mint 11 the entire drive, but instead decided it was time to really run Debian. I've always wanted to run Debian, because Ian Murdock wrote the Debian Manifesto when he was a student, here at Purdue. Debian is now developing CUT, a Constantly Usable Testing version, which would be similar to rolling releases, only it would roll until a new milestone, Stable release and then CUT would become CUT again, rolling toward the next milestone.
What I have done is downloaded a CUT milestone, which I will be able to continuously upgrade with a simple terminal command, once a day or once a week. It won't be quite as edgy as Debian Testing, in that the testing will already be done, but it will be more up-to-date than the latest 2 year release of Debian Stable. The part I like is that all upgrades to CUT will be tested to ensure they will run as expected.
To that end, they are starting CUT with Monthly Testing Snapshots and that is what I have installed. Which means this machine still dual boots, but now it dual boots two versions of Linux, rather than Linux and Windows.
After nearly 24 hours, the machine seems perfectly stable and Debian flies with the wind. XP seemed fast on this machine until I first ran Ubuntu. And Linux Mint would really zoom, by comparison. But Debian is almost that much faster again. If any of you are running Linux and want a hyper-speed version, I cannot recommend Debian any more strongly. I'm not ready to ditch Linux Mint by any means, but since installing CUT, that's the only operating system I've used. I mean this stuff really rocks.
