One of the important aspects for any desktop operating system performance is the amount of system memory available. Even with a fast processor it's important to have enough physical memory to keep that processor utilized, else the system will spend all its time shuffling data between physical memory and swap space.

The default software and codec selection is very nice, it's probably the first time ever that I didn't have to install any codecs. Some examples of the smart choices made by the Mint team are Tomboy, Gimp, Thunderbird, Pidgin, and Gnome Mplayer. Another GREAT decision was the removal of games. These aren't needed by everyone and shouldn't have been installed by default anyway.

For example:

find ~ -mtime -5 -name "*log*"

Will display all the files modified in the past 5 days which include the text 'log' in their filename.

DEFT (Digital Evidence & Forensic Toolkit)

Kicking off our look at useful derivatives is DEFT, a 32bit live CD dedicated to computer forensics and incident response. DEFT is a distribution based in Italy, created and maintained by a dedicated team of seven (plus the community). DEFT had their first release in 2008, with version 5 released in November last year.

Because I liked Ubuntu so much, I decided to install it on my laptop too and also this worked very good. However, these days Ubuntu is way to heavy to run on my laptop. Because I wanted to have a fast system I tried to install Gentoo Linux; the installation took 3 days but I ended up with a very fast and responsible system. However, every time I had to install a program it took ages to compile the software. So then I started searching to a nice and user-friendly lightweight distribution.

It wasn't as easy as I thought, so I decided to write my experiences down in this review. The following distributions were tested:

• Arch 2007.08-2
  
• Damn Small Linux 4.2.5
  
• Puppy 4.0
  
• TinyMe Test7-KD
  
• Xubuntu 8.04
  
• Zenwalk 5.0

They say that good things come in small packages and so it is with Tiny Core Linux, a diminutive but powerful distribution. TCL weighs in at an incredibly petite 11MB when you download it. Yes, it really is that tiny. Tiny Core Linux is based on Busybox, the Linux 2.6 kernel, JWM, Fltk and Tiny X.

The latest version of Knoppix represents a radical remake of the venerable Live CD Linux distribution. Knoppix 6.0 is leaner, faster, and more versatile than ever. In addition to that, the new version brings another significant improvement: the amazingly fast boot process. Even when Knoppix runs from a CD, it takes less than a minute to boot to the graphical desktop. More importantly, the improved boot process doesn’t affect Knoppix’ legendary hardware detection capabilities.

Gentoo, as you may already be aware, has long had a reputation for not being particularly friendly to folks new to it. Although it has shined as a distribution for Linux power users, it has sometimes scared away less tech-savvy users that might have found it somewhat intimidating to deal with.

Sabayon Linux aims to tame Gentoo and make it more accessible to non-power users and it largely succeeds at this goal in this release.

Support for Bluetooth audio devices lets you enjoy audio on your computer without the hassle of wires. That's right - you can stand right up and dance your heart out (or go get a cup of coffee) without losing a beat! Start a voice chat with friends online, or chill out with some tunes in Rhythmbox.

Zenwalk is a France-based distribution originally based on Slackware. It first appeared in 2004 under the name “Minislack”, and changed to the current name in 2005. The current stable version, 6.2, was released in September 2009. At Christmas 2009, Zenwalk was the 19th most popular distro tracked by distrowatch.com, with an average of 375 page views per day. (This placed the distro in roughly the same range as Kubuntu and Knoppix.)

These are organized into separate distributions, (distros) and each one is different. If you've read our previous Beginner's Guide to Linux, you are already familiar with the advice we gave about choosing the right distro for your needs. This guide will shed more light on some of the more common distributions in use today and will cover the distinct advantages or disadvantages of each.

Some of these are more obscure lesser known distros that are quite powerful and very useful. Some of these come from personal use some of them came from the great comments you readers posted the first time I did this.