The point is that just because something is legal somewhere in the world it doesn't make it any more or less legitimate.

It does when you live in a country where such a law doesn't exist. If I started telling everyone that they had to include an "Impressum" on their websites, I'm sure people who live in other countries would point out that it didn't apply to them, too.

By "any less legitimate" I'm specifically talking about the reason it's not distributed in ubuntu. So I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

Well, we aren't really talking about legitimacy here. Talking about legalities.

This is really no different then grabbing the mp3 codecs after you download Ubuntu. However, if Ubuntu did package itself with it, it'd be liable.
This is not the case for Mint as it is not illegal where they release it. And comparing human rights violations to copyright/patent laws… really!?

Sure we are. The whole thing was "why isn't ubuntu packaging that?" .. not "Who here likes this law?"

So I have a bit of a question regarding linux mint. I tried to ask on their forums though apparently I the activation e-mail won't be sent to me. While I wait for that to be fixed I'm asking here in case anyone knows or has perhaps experienced this sort of problem.

Attempting to install Linux Mint on my computer. I downloaded the .iso file and burned it to a disc, popped that bad boy in and went for the install. Everything goes fine but when I dual boot into Linux and it starts configuring it's stuff I get this error message.

"No root file system defined.

Please correct this from the partitioning menu."

This problem happens both when I try to set up a system partition and also when I download it into windows as a normal program.

Anyone know what's up?

I must be one of those -not- 'almost everyone' people. I hate mint. I'll take pure ubuntu any day of the week. I've been using ubuntu since its first public release, and I have loved it every step of the way. Before Ubuntu, I used Slackware, which was also pretty damn awesome but I don't suggest that linux newbies use Slackware IF they're coming from an exclusively Windows background experience. On the other hand, starting with Slackware does give one a crash-course in how to use linux, as every step of the installation and configuration is 'hands-on'.

Re-burn ISO at slowest speed possible, and make sure at the boot menu to use to option that checks the install medium for errors (IF retarded mint didn't remove that as one of the options when booting from a disc)

The reason I say this is because the installer clearly didn't set your root partition's mount point to / like it's supposed to, and I can't imagine they'd release an installer that makes THAT big of a mistake. So it's either A) a bad burn of the disc. or B) YOU might have changed some options if you chose to partition manually and didn't set your main partition's mount point as /.

Alternately, for the EASIEST install… and I mean you REALLY can't possibly mess this up in ANY way: Use Ubuntu, and select the Wubi installer. The installer runs INSIDE of Windows and automagically sets up your system for dual-boot. All you do is run the installer, select how much space you want to give to Ubuntu, select your username, enter a password, and select your desktop environment (KDE is KUbuntu - KDE functions more like Windows, GNOME is Regular Ubuntu Desktop, XUbuntu is XFCE4.)

As far as all the "Fluff" that Ubuntu installs by default… you can EASILY remove it all without anything breaking your system. Ubuntu is not "slower" than Mint… they're both the same thing. Both running the same kernel options, both installing the same way, etc. Linux is not like Windows. In Windows, the more crap you install… the crappier your system runs. In Linux, the more crap you install… the more crap you have. That's it. It doesn't make your computer run like dookie, and doesn't install a ton of garbage tray and desktop icons, etc.

The only thing I can really say about mint is that if anything it tends to run slower than ubuntu on my system because it didn't have PAE support enabled out-of-the-box like my Ubuntu-Server installation did. (PAE is what enables you to use more than 2.2GB RAM in a 32bit environment. I would not suggest installing 64 bit, as that tends to cause some issues with trying to compile MU*s.)

I don't recommend wubi. In the past I have had issues with it and it's a *real* headache if you ever need to put it in its own partition or move partitions. Also, their claim of only slightly less performance for disk io is understated. It made a considerable difference for me for multimedia.

So I decided to put linux on my main desktop computer. (It was just on my laptop before.) In the process I decided I would check out some other Linux distros.

openSUSE
Mandriva
Fedora
Kubuntu
Linux Mint

These were all the disros I played with this weekend.

Mandriva is my favorite. It seems to be the most user friendly and professional in appearance but it doesn't make it easy to download codecs or music or videos. It wants me to buy them! :stare:

openSUSE I liked second best, though trying to watch youtube videos was a horrible and painful experience. I never did get it to work. Though I did manage to get the driver for my apparently legacy nvidia video card.

Fedora was nice, actually, though I wasn't able to download chromium and that was essentially a deal breaker for me. It didn't seem entirely friendly to the linux newbie either.

LinuxMint/Kubuntu are essentially my least favorite but Mint plays youtube, music, and HD content right after I download it. So that's pretty sweet.

My main question is this: How compatible is software between different linux distributions? There are parts and features that I like about all of them, and I would love to take one and add my favorite parts of the others to create (to me) the ultimate OS.

Most software you compile-as-you-go to suit the libraries in your individual OS; so provided the software you want provides source – they're entirely interchangeable.

Hm. So what would be the best way to go about this? Could I just add the repository of other distro's to my main distro's repository without issue?

If you're just looking to easily install from a repository, no, you typically can't add another distro's to your list as those will be pre-compiled binaries most of the time. Usually if you see an interesting project, though, you can find their website on SourceForge, Freshmeat, or another site and download the source to compile and install instead. There are also tools like Alien which may let you convert between some of the repository formats like .rpm, .deb, etc.

How would one go about manually compiling and installing these programs?

I have yet to manually install a linux program yet. I suppose I should hit up some google…

Normally you get a bunch of source in a .tar.gz file. You extract it, enter the directory and type './configure'*. This runs a local configuration script that checks for dependencies and creates your Makefile. You then just punch in 'make; make install' and you're done! This of course must be done as root (the make install part, at least).

* Sometimes a configuration script must be generated first. In which case, you'd use autoconf first.

If it has a scons script, all you have to do is go "scons" in the source directory and it will get automagically made by SConstruct.

I heart that NakedMud does this.

Maya/Rudha

Two words about Ubuntu: grub rescue. :/

I recently went over to the linux side and after updating, rebooted my machine, only to find out that my bootloader (GRUB) was screwed. No way to recover from that other than reinstalling. Great fun. Couldn't even try and dual boot into Windows. Was not a happy day for me.

Where should I extract them to? The current download directory? Does it matter? Could I just delete them all after I type make install ?

Btw, thanks. This is a load of help. I've learned so damn much about linux in the past few days, and about partitions.

Typically, it doesn't matter where you extract the source and the extracted directory can be tossed after you compile and install the software. Still, be sure to check out any README/INSTALL/etc docs for the individual bit of software to make sure it doesn't have any special installation requirements. I would also suggest making use of the installation prefix option of most configure/build scripts ("./configure –prefix=/some/path/", e.g.) to install custom built packages in /usr/local. This may help you down the road when you want to upgrade or uninstall that self-built software, and can also minimize conflicts if you wind up installing the same software via your distribution's package management system.