And Rechil,

Thanks for writing as well and I have been really impressed with the number of distros out there and I like what I see when I actually try them out for the most part. I like the idea of using Linux more and more but do you think the number of distros out there is actually hindering the adoption of Linux? I know there are millions of personal users and corporations that use it, but do you think it would be better and have a larger market share if the number of distort was reduced?

I also noticed on the Linux Mint page that their LXDE distro is based on the Debian architecture and therefore many aspects of that version would not be compatible with various aspects of their other versos that are based on Ubuntu. Do you know why this is? I thought that Linux distributions were based on the same Linux kernel, so why would one distro not be compatible with another?

I just wanted to mention that every time I type "distro," autocorrect makes it "distress." Do you think my MAC is trying to tell me something? :-)

Hey again Tom,

You have assumed correctly as I am using a Mac. And so far, it has been more troublesome that I thought it would be. It of course might be the way that I am choosing to install the different distros that is causing these problems, but I will let you know what I've done and see what you or others might say about it.

I did install both the 32 and 64-bit versions of Mint and Ubuntu and ran them via VirtualBox with all the proper settings and I was disappointed with the performance. That is most likely due to my system because I only have 4GB of RAM and only using half of the available RAM to run each of the Linux OSes is creating the bugs where there shouldn't be any. The menu bars on both of the distros disappear and I lose a lot of functionality which I don't think I would lose if I installed it via bootcamp.

Update: I deleted VirtualBox and will reinstall that at a later date if necessary but I will be installing Linux Mint via BootCamp along with WindowsXP(I need it for school). To make sure it works though and that it actually give e the option to select the Linux partition, I have to install and application called "rEFIt," that modifies the boot menu to allow for more than one bootcamp partition.

I agree with you on the 32 vs 64 bit. When I first got my iMac in 2009, they were just starting to rewrite all of the main system applications to work with the 64-bit architecture and I waited until all of the system apps were done that way before I configured the kernel to boot into 64-bit mode. I didn't see the point otherwise.

And as an aside, what got you interested in Linux in the first place? I am completely happy with my Mac and love the OS but there is just something about Linux that has grabbed my attention and it's almost becoming an obsession. One of the first things(if not the first thing) I do when I boot my computer is check Linux news and search around for distress that I like and things like that. Do you think that a burgeoning interest in coding and other computer stuff actually leads someone to a different OS?

And another aside, I am in college and getting very tired of the Microsoft monopoly in education. Apple might be on the side of the students in that regard, but the teachers and the systems still rely on Windows and Microsoft programs. I am just looking forward to the day when I will no longer need a Windows partition to fulfill class requirements.

-Ryan

Hey Tom,

Thanks for writing back and believe it or not, I only got confused when you started in on the Gnome 2/3 and anti-Unity Desktop manager stuff. So I appreciate you taking the time to type all of that out. I decided to download the distress for both the 32 and 64 bit versions of Mint and Ubuntu. I tried them both out in Virtualbox but I don't think I did them justice by doing that because I noticed a lag that I don't think would have existed if I had just installed them on a partition using Boot Camp. I couldn't find much information on the compatibility with a 2011 MBP other than "install the 32-bit version if you have any doubt about the compatibility." I would do that, but I was also like to take advantage of the 64-bit version and see how it would run under normal conditions when all system resources are available as opposed to only half. Thanks again for the first response and feel free to give me your advice on this.

-Ryan

HI everyone. I just got into looking at the different Linux distress and deciding which one to choose and I have narrowed my choice down to either Mint or Ubuntu. I just don't know the difference between the different versions of each distribution. Thanks a lot for your help.

-Ryan