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Re bloat as I said I run an 8 year or older desktop, which if it had to run the latest Windoze, would take a week to boot up!!!!! whereas it has all the latest Mepis updates and is as fast as ever !!!! I believe that as the chipmakers increase speed, MSFT/Apple write more code, in a never ending loop, so you have to upgrade hardware, or run obsolete sofware.
You can of course get Mepis for free, but i like haveing the Disc as a backup/troubleshooter and think paying the guy who created it, is only fair.
As you have coded with Unix then any Linux distro will be a doddle, but Mepis is definetly the easiest transition.
Cheers and have fun my friend.
Ps Mepis will boot from the DVD, ie off the CD/DVD-Rom drive, so you can test what you have built !!!!