Hey Brad,

Try Freespire 2.0. Does the name ring a bell. IF yes, then it is
because it has sprung out from the Linspire project. Linspire is a
purely commercial distro. I don't find it any different from MS
philosophy-wise. Though Linspire is impressive. But a lot of new
developments took place. The heart of Linspire -CNR (which stands for
Click-N-Run) has now become a free service. Though commercial Linux
softwares are also available at CNR, but that is not too bothersome.
Thne Linspire initiated a community driven project, totally free
called Freespire. Now recently Freespire 2.0 has come out. It is
based on Ubuntu as ts base. CNR client is also there however the CNR
warehouse is being currently ported to an open source platform so the
CNR service is not available yet on it but will soon be.

My strong recommendation if you want a complete Desktop Linux OS would
be to go for Freespire. Its strong Debian foundation, easy and
pleasing Desktop, support for Multimedia (DVDs to Analog Audio CDs) is
exceptional. Freespire, I feel will be a winner. It needs a lot many
refinements. But the process is already on. It is evolving very fast.
I feel you should give it a try. For details and to download follow
this link:
http://freespire.org/

Cheers
-Tarun



--- In SunCityJodhpurLUG@..., "Brad Stone"
<bmestone@...> wrote:
>
> Hey,
> I got a new Laptop, and they would only sell me it with XP.
Annoying. Now,
> nearly a year has passed and I'm getting itchy for Linux again. Getting
> nostalgic for security. So I'm planning to do a partition and run a
> dual-boot. I only wanna give 10-15Gb to Linux (the hard-drive on
this thing
> ain't that big, and windows can be such bloat-ware), so I'm
pondering what
> to get. I had Mandriva before, which was good. I'd happily go with that
> again. But then going with the same thing just cos that's what I did
before
> feels a bit unadventurous. Does anyone have any other
recommendations? What
> are the favourites nowadays?
>
> I'm looking for something:-
> 1) slim (like I said, wanna give Linux about 15Gb. maybe 20Gb MAX);
> 2) which can play CDs without giving me all kinds of hell - Mandriva
used to
> play them silently unless you used this really crappy player which would
> only play one track then stop and wait for you to pick another... >:/
> 3) with Mozilla, firewall, and a decent Open Office, obviously...
> 4) DVDs would be nice too...
>
> Thanks in advance for any help.
> B
>