Tell us why your Linux distro is the best

[N.V.M.]

i just installed Libranet *Classic*, i'm liking it. i'm using it for Protein Folding, and man, it hums. :)

now, to try and figure out how to get my main Windows XP rig to see it. hmmmmm.

[berky]

I have tried many linux distros over the past 2 or so years. some, i have had running for quite a while, and some i had quit after a borked install. my goal with linux is to learn. nothing more. i never intend (since i only have 1 computer at the moment) to have linux as my main OS, since i rely on many things that windowsXP does for me. when i get a new computer, i do, however, have plans to have this one loaded solely with a *nix distro at all times. i should note that because i just want to learn, that is the reason i have tried so many distros. i want to learn linux, as well as the differences between each distro. i am, by no means, going to stop installing new ones once i found one i like.

here is my thoughts on all i have encountered:

Mandrake (http://www.linux-mandrake.com/) - This was my first linux os that i tried. considering i had never run, or even seen, a linux distro before, the installation was quite easy. this was the main reason i chose to try this distro first. it even automatically set up the boot loader to the mbr and had my dual boot set up correctly (i think anyway). Things that turned me off of this distro were that it seemed boring and no different than running another windows and iirc, i couldn't get things set up the way i wanted. the best feature this had was two desktop icons, one that would auto-mount the floppy drive and let you view/write to it, and another that was basically a kill app function that all you had to do was click on it, and then the app you wanted to die. very handy for a newb such as myself.

Redmond, now known as Lycoris (http://www.lycoris.com) - I decided to install this distro because i was still a newb w/linux and they were touting ease of use, just like mandrake, but i figured i'd just see what was different. not too damn much. there's not much else to say about this. i got bored after about a week of screwing with it.

Slackware (http://www.slackware.com/) - This was a great learning experience for me. There were a few kids at school who used this distro, which is what got me to try it. I knew it would be quite an experience as we started to install it. No GUI walkthrough. some of the things i had no idea what to put, which made it good that there was someone else there that did it, so i was able to watch and learn as he installed it on my friend's computer. I was then able to install it on my own comp, and set up the enlightenment window manager. This is where I learned to install apps from tar.gz files and use the the command shell. I also got experience with configuring and installing Lilo to the mbr. I should also mention this is where i got all my experience with configuring X straight from the XF86Config file. I had learned a lot from my experience with slack, and i may someday return to it. I don't remember what led me to uninstall it, but it was most likely because i reinstalled windows, and just never took the time to reset the mbr. either way, my ADD had surely kicked in and it was time to try something new anyway.

On to Red Hat (http://www.redhat.com) - I installed this after slack because I just wanted to get linux running again and not have to worry about all the text stuff. I decided on red hat because i had heard it was easy to install and set up apps, not to mention the support, which seems to have a pretty big community of users willing to help. also, hardware support. I just wanted everything to be configured already since i was being lazy. I had this distro running probalby the longest of any i had installed. it was great once nvidia had combined their drivers from the 2 into the one simple install. i was then able to run ATITD (http://egenesis.centralserver.net/) in linux, and it was MUCH faster than the windows version. i considered that quite an accomplishment for me to get that running since i had problems with X. I enjoyed red hat as a high end learning experience, being able to tweak little things here and there, but nothing major like getting into the kernel. i certainly wouldn't consider this distro if you are wanting to learn the internals of an OS. one thing i hate about redhat is it's red hat network update thing. i thought it was great at first, but i installed a newer version of mozilla than the updater said was available, and it still wanted me to download the damn old version. it has no way of determining what is installed, unless that red hat network updater does it for you. this pissed me off quite much. also, after reinstalling (as i did many times), i had to recreate a new account with the RHN. i couldn't get my old one to work for some reason.

FreeBSD (http://www.freebsd.org) - I tried FreeBSD because I wanted to try a unix based OS instead of a linux distro. in my attempt to install it, i seriously f*cked something up. i could no longer boot into windows, even after i used the recovery console with the fixmbr. fixboot, and chkdsk commands. i have no idea what it did, but i had to reinstall windows. i gave up on freebsd after this since i did not want to have to reinstall windows every time i screwed up the installation of freebsd. please note, however, that i do not attribute this as the fault of freebsd, but rather my own. sure, it woudl've been nice if freebsd was able to protect me from screwing everything up so badly, but it was still my own fault, and i will probably try it again someday.

Peanut (http://www.ibiblio.org/peanut) - I tried Peanut linux for two reasons - it was fairly small and not many people talk about it (i'm always the guy the roots for the underdog in almost any contest). I wanted to give it a try, so i did, and just like freebsd, i gave up during the installation. it claimed to be easy to install, and it was, except for the fact that there was some kind of issue (possibly graphics driver, or maybe X) that when i was testing X (and kde) during the install, the graphics were in what seemed to be 256 color, and 640x480, despite the fact that i had told it to be in 16 bit color and at least 800x600. another weird thing was that none of my windows in kde had the title menus (drag bar). i could not move or resize any window i opened, and a lot of times the window would take up more than just the screen, and i couldn't see the OK and Cancel buttons. i'm sure it was my fault somehow, but regardless, i gave up instead of searching for help because i wanted to try other distros anyway.

Arch Linux (http://archlinux.org) - This is where i currently reside. I have not completed the install yet, but i find this distro very intriguing. Arch is, as it's users and website will tell you, very customizable and it is what you make of it. it is a very young distro, but i like it so far. I'm going to use this as my big learning experience of linux. i attempted the install a few times, but that was only because I have yet to get the grub config file right. everything you do in this install is by editing the config files yourself (after the installer installs your selected packages). if you don't know what the files *should* look like, you're pretty much screwed. which, i didn't, but after reading the grub manual, i will be able to keep my install there, cuz i now know how to make it load windows, rather than the guessing i was doing beforehand. i can already see how this is going to force me to learn things by reading manuals and other documentation. BIG NOTE: the biggest downfall of this distro is it's lack of documentation, since it's not very well known and quite new (i think it started in 2002 iirc). I was about to try gentoo when i came across arch. i think the two are pretty much comparable (from what i've read). both are not geared toward newbs (which i still am, but i'm taking the plunge anyway), both have a package manager (portage vs pacman), and both are highly configurable. i chose arch over gentoo for two reasons: first because i don't have the time to sit and wait while gentoo compiles everything and two (knowing me, probably the biggest reason) was, like i mentioned earlier, i root for the underdogs :). what is nice though from what i've noticed, is that doing a base install (only required packages to get a system running), takes but 10 minutes, and afterwhich i can figure out how to do everything. right now my problem are grub (which, like i said i know how to fix now) and getting my realtek nic set up. once i have that, i'll be in great shape for starting my educational journey into the realm of low-level linux goodness.



I still plan on trying more distros in the future. a list of what distros i want to try and why:

gentoo - strictly to see what all the hype is about. i think i'll get pretty much the same experience as i will with arch, but i will try it anyway just for the hell of it, and to do a comparison.

knoppix - just to have a cd-bootable OS in case i need it for whatever reason.

freebsd (again) - i want to learn the diffs between linux and unix, again, just for the hell of it.

openbsd - when i have my own house in many years, i will probably set up my own firewall/gateway. i like the security this os claims to have and if i can set it up correctly, i will love the security this os claims to have. :p

slackware (again) - i liked slack a lot. i'll give 'er another go sometime just to see what's in the new releases.

smoothwall - just to see how it works as a firewall.

sorcerer - i like the name :)


I highly doubt i'll get around to all of these distros any time soon, if at all, but as of now, these are the ones i'd like to at least try at some point.

one last note, if you are a newb to linux and just want to learn it, just like i am and do, i suggest not setting it up to be your main OS. i know it seems like common sense, but you know you're going to screw shit up, and when you do, you'll be glad you didn't write that 500 page dissertation on your linux box, now gone for good :D

well, i hope someone gets something useful out of this post :)

[Zarathustra[H]]

Originally posted by berky
I have tried many linux distros over the past 2 or so years....

Speaking of 500 page dissertations :P

I'm glad to get your input from so many distros. I disagree with you slightly on the "if you only want to lear, then don't use Linux as your main OS" statement. I feel this is the ONLY way to learn. I dual booted Red Hat 8 as an experiment when I first got into Linux, but since I kept going back to Windows I was never forced to learn the Linux side of things.

Because I realized I wasnt learning anything, I decided to go 100% linux for my normal desktop use, and keep a Windows install for the one thing I couldnt get to run satisfactorily. Counter-Strike. (There should seriously be aonymous support groups for people trying to quit this game)

Anyway, I am curious what Windows apps you find you can't do without, that are keeping you from going 100% *nix. I have found that many apps actually have ports or workalike versions in *nix and most of those that don't actually were easier to do without than I originally thought.

I agree with you on Red Hat. Ease of setup is its only real redeeming quality. I find the package system an absolute nightmare, casue it focuses on ease of use and doesnt give you enough details on dependencies and whatnot. Because of my RedHat experience I have promised myself that I will never touch ANY distribution that uses the rpm system as its primary package manager.

Trying as hard as I can to not sound as a Gentoo zealot, I absolutely love this distribution, and I reccomend you give it a try. Yes it DOES take a bunch of time to setup the first time (if you chose to do it all from source, casue there are grp's in three different stages with pre-built binaries) but it wasnt a huge deal for me. I just started the compiling, and watched a movie, or went to bed. Most of it wasnt bad, but the X,Gnome,KDE,Mozilla, and Openoffice + all dependencies emerge I started took for bloody ever. After your initial setup though, compile times are not a huge issue. Just set your emerge to nice 19, and have it compile while you are doing whatever else you are doing.

In short, considering the sleekness of the portage system, and the fact that it hasnt been too dumbed down by gui configurators, as well as the excellent user forums gentoo has, I couldn't picture myself switching to any other distribution.

--matt

[Chroma]

Gentoo - would be debian but after i recompile a kernel it never see's my NIC!! ARG! i will get it to work. Gentoo gets old after awhile ....recompiling everything - but in a land of tweekers, performace is key.

[berky]

Originally posted by Zarathustra[H]
Speaking of 500 page dissertations :P

LOL. sorry about that. i had a lot to say :D


I'm glad to get your input from so many distros. I disagree with you slightly on the "if you only want to lear, then don't use Linux as your main OS" statement. I feel this is the ONLY way to learn. I dual booted Red Hat 8 as an experiment when I first got into Linux, but since I kept going back to Windows I was never forced to learn the Linux side of things.

Because I realized I wasnt learning anything, I decided to go 100% linux for my normal desktop use, and keep a Windows install for the one thing I couldnt get to run satisfactorily. Counter-Strike. (There should seriously be aonymous support groups for people trying to quit this game)


ok, maybe i should reword what i said, as it didn't come across correctly. I guess i should have said something more along the lines of, "If you're going to use linux as your main OS, be sure to keep EVERYTHING of the SLIGHTEST IMPORTANCE on a separate hard drive, preferably very easily accessible". that's what i do. i have all my important docs and installation files that were nearly impossible to find on my extra hard drive.


Anyway, I am curious what Windows apps you find you can't do without, that are keeping you from going 100% *nix. I have found that many apps actually have ports or workalike versions in *nix and most of those that don't actually were easier to do without than I originally thought.


actually, i really don't think there are any to tell you the truth, well, besides games, and i'm sure there are a few here and there, but nothing off the top of my head anyway. i guess i just fell into the wrong mindset of being too relied on windows. thanks, i think i just realized it now :p. anyway, if you could tell me a prog that i can check my hotmail account from (like i do w/outlook express) so i don't have to go to the website, it would be a big step for me moving to linux. oh yeah, one other thing holding me back. it's quite trivial, but i'm just very accustomed to it i guess. mozilla in linux will not close tabs when i middle click on them. for some reason, it tries to open web pages with the miscellaneous words i highlight on a page (obviously something with copy/paste as i know highlighting does that), but i just want it to close the damn tab, not give me errors that it cannot find the webpage "random words go here".


I agree with you on Red Hat. Ease of setup is its only real redeeming quality. I find the package system an absolute nightmare, casue it focuses on ease of use and doesnt give you enough details on dependencies and whatnot. Because of my RedHat experience I have promised myself that I will never touch ANY distribution that uses the rpm system as its primary package manager.

Trying as hard as I can to not sound as a Gentoo zealot, I absolutely love this distribution, and I reccomend you give it a try. Yes it DOES take a bunch of time to setup the first time (if you chose to do it all from source, casue there are grp's in three different stages with pre-built binaries) but it wasnt a huge deal for me. I just started the compiling, and watched a movie, or went to bed. Most of it wasnt bad, but the X,Gnome,KDE,Mozilla, and Openoffice + all dependencies emerge I started took for bloody ever. After your initial setup though, compile times are not a huge issue. Just set your emerge to nice 19, and have it compile while you are doing whatever else you are doing.

In short, considering the sleekness of the portage system, and the fact that it hasnt been too dumbed down by gui configurators, as well as the excellent user forums gentoo has, I couldn't picture myself switching to any other distribution.

--matt

yeah, all that compiling is really holding me back from gentoo. i like the documentation they have, but i think i'll stick w/arch for the time being.

[Zarathustra[H]]

Originally posted by berky
actually, i really don't think there are any to tell you the truth, well, besides games, and i'm sure there are a few here and there, but nothing off the top of my head anyway. i guess i just fell into the wrong mindset of being too relied on windows. thanks, i think i just realized it now :p. anyway, if you could tell me a prog that i can check my hotmail account from (like i do w/outlook express) so i don't have to go to the website, it would be a big step for me moving to linux.

Hmm I havnt had a hotmail account in almost 6 years. I had no idea Outlook did that. From looking at my email client (Evolution) it doesn't look lik eit can though. There might be one, but I have no idea.

Originally posted by berky
oh yeah, one other thing holding me back. it's quite trivial, but i'm just very accustomed to it i guess. mozilla in linux will not close tabs when i middle click on them. for some reason, it tries to open web pages with the miscellaneous words i highlight on a page (obviously something with copy/paste as i know highlighting does that), but i just want it to close the damn tab, not give me errors that it cannot find the webpage "random words go here".

Hmm Maybe thats a setting? I dont use Mozilla anymore so I can't check. I never even troied middle clicking on a window so I have no idea what it used to do in my Mozilla. I now use firebird, and I just tried middle clicking, and it brings up a scroll dot thingie in the emiddle of the screen. Not what you were looking for. Sorry...

Guess there wasnt anything there I could help you with, Maybe someone else can?

[doh]

Originally posted by berky
Loh yeah, one other thing holding me back. it's quite trivial, but i'm just very accustomed to it i guess. mozilla in linux will not close tabs when i middle click on them.

Opera (http://www.opera.com) does this.

[Roast]

I have used Redhat in the past, and loved it because it was easy to setup and the GRUB bootloader set its self up perfectly. I deleted that partition from my drive becuase I wanted to try a new distro, and went with slackware 9.1. It was a little more difficult for me to instsall, but after reading the documention online, i got through it, and am in hte process of tweaking the way i want it setup. Both are good.

[86reddawg]

yeah, all that compiling is really holding me back from gentoo. i like the documentation they have, but i think i'll stick w/arch for the time being.

you don't have to compile everything... you can add a switch to run out and get binary versions of everything with emerge...

also, if you have a few more computers sitting around, you can install distributed C compiling on them and get much faster build times (even as early as the primary gentoo installation)

[doh]

Originally posted by 86reddawg
also, if you have a few more computers sitting around, you can install distributed C compiling on them and get much faster build times (even as early as the primary gentoo installation)

And the docs for distcc are at http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/distcc.xml - written by your's truly. :cool:

[bradt]

Gentoo = the reason I use GNU/Linux

I started off as almost a complete n00b, having only a little experience with some simple commands (mkdir, mv, cp, etc.) from a computer science class I took. Knoppix got me particularly interested, so I bought "Linux for Dummies" to check everything out. It came with Red Hat version 7 or 8, I can't remember now.

Red Hat was alright, easy to install and all, but it just wasn't what I was looking for, as I realized when I tried to install mplayer. There were several dependencies, and most of the dependencies had their own dependencies. I got tired of trying to sort through it all and remembered hearing about Portage from a friend.

So I gave Gentoo a shot. I got it installed perfectly the very first time. Sure, it wasn't as simple as RH, but it was reeeally well documented. The only hangups I ever had were configuring X, not to mention that I tried to install kde as my first desktop... from source. It took about 24 hours, IIRC.


PROS:

. Incredibly well-documented
. Amazing forum at http://forums.gentoo.org
. Portage > *
. Perfect for semi-n00bs and up
. Uber-configurable

CONS: (I'm being fair and balanced here ;))

. Compiling from source can take a while sometimes
. Setting up Xfree is kinda difficult, cause you don't have a browser you can look at, unless you have two computers (or, on second thought, you emerge a CLI browser... I'll have to look into that)
. If you ever mention Gentoo anywhere online (say, Slashdot), everyone will lash out at you because you're a "Gentoo zealot". Apparently, many non-Gentoo users are very touchy about this?


That's about it. I usually recommend that people who are absolutely new to Linux check out Knoppix until they are kinda comfortable with it, then install Gentoo.

[ShockValue]

Originally posted by bradt
Gentoo = the reason I use GNU/Linux
. If you ever mention Gentoo anywhere online (say, Slashdot), everyone will lash out at you because you're a "Gentoo zealot". Apparently, many non-Gentoo users are very touchy about this?

I always catch shit from people in #Linuxhelp when I mention I use gentoo. "Go to the #gentoo chanel you damn gentoo-user.. Get a real distro...." stuff Like that.. I dunno why.

[bradt]

Originally posted by ShockValue
I always catch shit from people in #Linuxhelp when I mention I use gentoo. "Go to the #gentoo chanel you damn gentoo-user.. Get a real distro...." stuff Like that.. I dunno why.

<shrug> I suppose that the explosive popularity is what draws the criticism. As far as I'm concerned, if Gentoo keeps up the development and continues to improve on Portage, I will never use another distro.

[berky]

Originally posted by ShockValue
I always catch shit from people in #Linuxhelp when I mention I use gentoo. "Go to the #gentoo chanel you damn gentoo-user.. Get a real distro...." stuff Like that.. I dunno why.

my guess is because there are a lot of people out there who are like 'gentoo rules all, if you use anything else you're a moron, blah blah blah"

i know not everyone is like that, but there are quite a few.

i have to try out gentoo sometime so i can post my own experiences on this stuff :)

btw, if anyone cares, i'm using arch at the moment. it rules all! if you use anything else you suck. :D

[XBLiNKX]

I just tried gentoo. I spend a whole night installing it and I thought everything was working fine. Once I made it to the Grub conf I musta messed it up and it started pissing me off, I reformated and through XP back on 15gb of my 40gb drive. I have 10gb for fat. Now the rest I am gonna try with an easier distro to install. How is fedora?

[kleptophobiac]

Slackware and Gentoo

They are the cleanest distributions out there, and the best for anybody looking to have complete control. Great for everything.

OpenBSD

Very secure, but really only good for routing/serving... but that's what I use it for. :D

[doh]

Originally posted by XBLiNKX
I just tried gentoo. I spend a whole night installing it and I thought everything was working fine. Once I made it to the Grub conf I musta messed it up and it started pissing me off, I reformated and through XP back on 15gb of my 40gb drive. I have 10gb for fat. Now the rest I am gonna try with an easier distro to install. How is fedora?

Use lilo. Dead simple to use.

(just remember to run lilo after updating the kernel images.

[LuckyNumber]

u just gotta be careful when you're writing the grub conf files

i personally prefer grub over lilo, but thats just me

[meinzorn]

<-- installed slackware. I love it. i'm a newb don't know what the hell i've been doing . I've learned a lot from it, but havn't been driven away. I've used fedora and mandrake before. Slackware makes me feel like I have a lot more control over what i'm doing. Yeah, I just like it a lot more than anything else i've tried.

[meinzorn]

Originally posted by LuckyNumber
u just gotta be careful when you're writing the grub conf files

i personally prefer grub over lilo, but thats just me

I get along with lilo better, it seems easier to work with. Grub looks a lot better though.

[Zarathustra[H]]

Originally posted by meinzorn
I get along with lilo better, it seems easier to work with. Grub looks a lot better though.

Once you learn the commands, grub really isnt bad. It has a bunch of benefits over lilo, but a number if drawbacks as well.

[meinzorn]

well, I honestly don't know that much about either of them.. My friend was saying something about being able to put images into grub.. I kinda like that idea.. I like to be able to personalize things like that and make them look all nice. thats one of the things that I like about linux is the ability to do that to just about anything.

[m0unds]

fedora needs to mature....bad.. in concept, it's the quintessential linux distro-- you have community support for an almost totally opensource project- but there's almost nonexistent driver support right now, most of the drivers for my server (a p3) are absolute crap. it just needs time, and more users to kick out better drivers and support is all.


I love redhat, debian and gentoo the most.. my buddy uses freebsd at work, and i tried it and liked it as well. as for ease of install, redhat is the best, but it bloats the machine up with a lot of useless crap. im downloading 2.6.2-prerelease kernel now :D

[Zarathustra[H]]

Originally posted by meinzorn
well, I honestly don't know that much about either of them.. My friend was saying something about being able to put images into grub.. I kinda like that idea.. I like to be able to personalize things like that and make them look all nice. thats one of the things that I like about linux is the ability to do that to just about anything.

Yeah Putting a background image in Grub is easy, just use the following command in grub.conf

splashimage=(hd1,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz

or wherever yours is located.

Just compress a 640x480 xpm image and refer to it with that command, and viola, you have a Grub splash image.

--matt
:wq

[Zarathustra[H]]

Originally posted by m0unds
but there's almost nonexistent driver support right now, most of the drivers for my server (a p3) are absolute crap. it just needs time, and more users to kick out better drivers and support is all.

Maybe I am speaking to soon, cause I have never tried it, but why would driver support be a problem?

Most drivers you need are in the kernel which does not depends on the distro.

Other drivers, like the nvidia kernel module, you have to download and compile yourself anyway...

[86reddawg]

another thing to note, if this is your first time, don't install linux on your main machine... find a peice of junk to install it to, because it will not work your first time, you'll be pissed and not have a system to fall back on. Once you figure out how to use it and not destroy the computer, step up to dual booting - you can use your fast main machine and see what everything is like... and eventually, if it's for you, then make the switch and destroy everything that is MS :)

this takes time though, i spent 3 yrs using it occasionally as a server on a slower pc then eventually dual booting (gaming support back then wasn't that great (winex wasn't so mainstream) so i still used the windows os for games) and then eventually i got rid of windows completely (about the time xp came out). No, not cuz xp sucks, on the contrary it's in my opinion that xp is the best OS MS has put out yet, but i didn't like how agressive they made it with activation codes, etc. So i ditched it and never looked back

[Zarathustra[H]]

Originally posted by 86reddawg
another thing to note, if this is your first time, don't install linux on your main machine... find a peice of junk to install it to, because it will not work your first time, you'll be pissed and not have a system to fall back on. Once you figure out how to use it and not destroy the computer, step up to dual booting - you can use your fast main machine and see what everything is like... and eventually, if it's for you, then make the switch and destroy everything that is MS :)

this takes time though, i spent 3 yrs using it occasionally as a server on a slower pc then eventually dual booting (gaming support back then wasn't that great (winex wasn't so mainstream) so i still used the windows os for games) and then eventually i got rid of windows completely (about the time xp came out). No, not cuz xp sucks, on the contrary it's in my opinion that xp is the best OS MS has put out yet, but i didn't like how agressive they made it with activation codes, etc. So i ditched it and never looked back


Hah My switch went like this:

1. Horrible Windows XP crash
2. Hours of cursing
3. Installed 100% Red Hat
4. Realized I missed Counter-Strike too much so I created a dual boot just for CS.
5. Got fed up with Red Hat, and found Gentoo :)

[86reddawg]

hehe, i remember spending 2 weeks getting half life to finally work in linux under wine, and being really damn proud of myself - that was alot of effort... nowadays, just use winex to install halflife, and it works with no tweaking required....:eek:

[Marklar]

Well I have only tried freeBSD and i am totaly new to linux my friend told me to install it on one of my servers so i did. Install was very easy but after that I would find myself staring at the command line for long periods of time and trying to figure out what the manuel was trying to tell me. I did figure out how to spoof mail, setup an ftp, and look around all the directories then i was bored with it because i had no idea what the heck i was doing. I guess im addicted to point and click.

[Zarathustra[H]]

Originally posted by 86reddawg
hehe, i remember spending 2 weeks getting half life to finally work in linux under wine, and being really damn proud of myself - that was alot of effort... nowadays, just use winex to install halflife, and it works with no tweaking required....:eek:

I have tried doing that in Wine with GL support, but I find that Counterstrike sortof feels inexplicably <i>off</i> under Linux compared to Windows. I have never tried Winex though...

[HHunt]

FreeBSD.

Comparing it to the heavier linux distros [1], it feels faster, it's more predictable, and not in the least, it doesn't try to do everything for me. Had I wanted that, I'd have gotten windows XP. However, everything you need to do is easy and very well documented.
Personally, I also think it's easier to work with than most linuxes.
Building a kernel? Comment away the lines you don't need in the generic kernel-config-file, make buildkernel installkernel. [2]
Make sound work (if you didn't build it into the kernel)? kldload snd_driver .

You have to know these things, and there isn't any curses- or X- system to do it for you.
However, as CLI-based systems go, it's a nice one.
Also, a big difference from linux, the whole base system, kernel included, is one system. If you have FreeBSD 5.1, then that includes the base system (buildchain, basic tools) and the kernel. Makes upgrades predictable, as the parts are made for each other.

Others have already mentioned the ports system. I haven't worked too much with gentoos portage, but it's much of the same. You want to install portupgrade, though. [3]
I'm also fond of the slices/partitions-system. In short, every slice (what's usually called a partition) can contain many bsd-partitions. Much like logical partitions.
The last part is the linux layer: You can run almost all apps made for linux, with no speed penalty. (Personally, I use an opera-for-linux binary now and then.)

One of the more common ideas is that it's got worse hardware support that your average linux. It's not completely wrong, 3d-acceleration for some cards is lacking, and some more excotic hardware might not work either. Outside that I've never had any problems, and it's usually a breeze to set up. The mouse daemon (that maps whatever mouse you have to /dev/sysmouse, and works in the console) is just frosting.

It's also stable as little else I've ever tried, more so than any prepacked linux distro I've used.

[1] "Heavy" here refers to how much it installs and sets up for you.
[2] To be exact, make a copy of the GENERIC-file, edit that, and add KERNCONF=(what you called the copy) on the end of that line.
[3] A very nice tool for working with ports. It's not in the base system because it's written in ruby, and adding another language to it for one non-critical tool isn't likely to happen.

[option141]

fedora core 1 with 2.6 kernel.

fedora core 2 beta is out, as soon as it's the full version, i'm going to get it.

i love fedora, i've seen a lot of people unhappy with it here as i quickly read....did you use synaptic to update everything? It's great IMO.

[shramj]

I am a n00b with linux but have tried a view versions of Mandrake. I was unhappy with it since I couldn't get all my drivers loaded. I will give this Gentoo a try, I see that 2004.0 version just came out, hopefully I will have better success with it then I did with Mandrake. Thanks, Shramj

[xbreaka]

dude if your a linux noob dont try gentoo, try suse or redhat

[Zarathustra[H]]

Originally posted by xbreaka
dude if your a linux noob dont try gentoo, try suse or redhat

I disagree...

I find that by using Redhat/Mandrake/Suse, etc. you learn almost nothing about how the OS works.

I started out with Redhat, used it for a few months and found that I knew nothing about Linux. Then I switched to Gentoo, and even thought it was pretty tricky at first it was well documented, and I becasue of that I lerned a lot, very fast.

As far as learning about Linux goes, I found my Red Hat experience a complete and total waste of time.

[Fluxstream]

My friend was trying out Gentoo and he mentioned you need to have a decent connection to download the necessary component. I wonder if 56k is do-able (yeah I'm a 56ker laugh all you want).

Anyway, I took a linux class but forget everything by now. My knowledge about linux is:

Prompt > press any key

Me > Uhmmmm.... where is the any key?


That is the best analogy I could come up with.

[NewBlackDak]

Depending on what processor you have, there might be a stage3 with compiled for your proc that setup pretty well. You could get someone to DL/burn the stage disks, and install that way. What do you have BTW?

[Fluxstream]

I have an M6805.
However I'm planning to build a minimal desktop to try out Linux OS.

[Zarathustra[H]]

Originally posted by Fluxstream
I have an M6805.
However I'm planning to build a minimal desktop to try out Linux OS.

Is that in a Mac, orn in an Amiga? or some other computer based on the motorola 68*** cpu I am not familliar with?

[IceDigger]

It's the new emachines amd 64 laptop.

Get with the times ;)

[Zarathustra[H]]

Originally posted by IceDigger
It's the new emachines amd 64 laptop.

Get with the times ;)

Haha.. Oops.

I've never been one to keep up with emachines...

That product name looks SOO much like an ancient motorola chip it isnt even funny..

[Fluxstream]

Yup. Hard to believe it's an emachine. Most people shake their head when they saw the logo, but who cares. This puppy is a keeper. Got the livecd for x86 and amd64. I'm fire everything up when my school enter spring break.

Sorry about the model vagueness. Must have been a (huge) flash back for ya. :)

[Zarathustra[H]]

Originally posted by Fluxstream
Yup. Hard to believe it's an emachine. Most people shake their head when they saw the logo, but who cares. This puppy is a keeper. Got the livecd for x86 and amd64. I'm fire everything up when my school enter spring break.

Sorry about the model vagueness. Must have been a (huge) flash back for ya. :)

Hah! Yeah. My first thought was, "funny... I didnt think gentoo had support for that platform..."

I was a big Amiga fan back in the day. Its too bad they more or less went under

[eggrock]

have been fighting it to get things running. 99% of my mistakes were made becuase of my ignorance

I'm headed there, gonna fire up my old PII 233 and try and get a firewall/terminal/Apache/e-mail box going. Don't want a desktop (but X capable so I can learn/program/run TK stuff). Only *n*x OS install experience I have is installing Red Hat a few years back (5 or 6) and wound up ENTIRELY PISSED OFF because I couldn't find a frigging driver for a 3com NIC! (WTF?? Eventually found a beta driver set that worked, but seriously...) The other problem was choosing exactly which packages to install out of the hundred-odd available packages. Installing this one makes your box unsecure, not installing that breaks [another thing]. I found the documentation inadequate esp. since I had basically zero knowledge at the time. It was a so-so learning experience--a reason n00bs like me use Windows. Insert CD, click next, enter CD key, install apps, start using. Drivers included or easily found. (Of course Macs were even easier.) Not quite bitching about it, learning is always good--but I'd rather set up a firewall than mess around with kernel mods/upgrades (if those are exclusive of each other--I don't know.) And finding drivers, making a secure box from the get-go (I heard SuSE was pretty tight about that). What's a good fit for me? Remember, no GUI desktop necessary, I like terminal sessions. :D

As an ignorant decision I'd say FreeBSD simply because I'm used to Unix vs. Linux (used FreeBSD, work on Tru64, HP-UX & now AIX with a tiny bit of Sun tossed in). Don't even know what the major differences would be though.

I'm obviously ignorant so indulge me in one more question. ;) Is a DirectX-to-Unix port possible? Or is it a copyright thing...?

[HHunt]

FreeBSD does good in that kind of situation (I've used it on a P2-300 myself for much the same things).
It has a bit fewer precompiled packages, but the basics are there, and compiling something from ports is a complete no-brainer. (Besides, I doubt you'll upgrade the software for every .0.1 - increase, so even if it takes some time, it shouldn't be a problem.)
As for the differences, well, the filesystem layout is quite systematic, and slighly different from most (all?) linux distros, but it's not worse than what you see distro -> distro in linux. It's a whole new kernel, but it has the same functions. There's no native /proc. The default shell is tcsh.

In short: Not that different from an odd linux distro.

And directX-to-unix?
If you've got directX-using code you wish to port, you'll have to rewrite it for openGL/SDL/something anyway, so no copyright problems.
If you want to make directX-for-unix/linux, well, there's always wineX. I don't know about the legality of reimplementing it, but if I had to guess, I'd say it's ok. (They're not actually using anything belonging to MS). Much like Samba, really.

[Kev]

I know this has been said alot, but I am a total and complete Linux n00b. I dled and burned Knoppix V3.3 and that is as far as I have gotten. Id like to get to know Linux but Im a tad gun shy about it. Up untill yesterday I was afriad that Knoppix would screw with my laptop (Dell Inspiron 7500, yeah this thing is old). Now I know better and just have to figure out how to change my bios to get it to boot to CD. I think it's F2 I have to hit but im not sure.
Could anyone tell me what to expect to see when I boot up to Knoppix?

[HHunt]

Originally posted by Kev

Could anyone tell me what to expect to see when I boot up to Knoppix?

To be short:
If you're not unlucky (IOW, if it supports your videocard and mouse/trackpad), you'll have lots of scrolling text, a graphical loader, and end up in KDE (http://www.kde.org).

[Kev]

Is there any way I can boot to Knoppix from windows, or do I have to shut down and rebot.

[Acceptable_Risk]

I've very little proficiency (just enough to operate my university shell account) so I'm pretty much a nüb when it comes to all of this. I've played around with Redhat a bit in the past in an attempt to learn more about it. I chose Redhat because it was supposed to be easy.

It was easy to install and many things were familar to frontal Windows cortex. I think that was my problem. It was just familiar enough to make it very frustrating when I hit the radically foreign bits. Things were nice and Windowy on the outside but as soon as I had to do anything, I was lost. I got caught in RPM dependency hell whenever I wanted to install something. I ended up scrapping it in the end.

I do not recommend Redhat to anyone who want's to learn what they're doing. It's a little too comfortable at first for those coming from a Windows environment.

I'm downloading Gentoo right now and I'm gonna give Linux another shot. The talk of the installation difficulty is a little scary but the description of the thorough documentation and friendly community makes me feel pretty confident.

[XBLiNKX]

Originally posted by Acceptable_Risk

I'm downloading Gentoo right now and I'm gonna give Linux another shot. The talk of the installation difficulty is a little scary but the description of the thorough documentation and friendly community makes me feel pretty confident.

I am a linux newbie and I got Gentoo working just fine. Just follow the directions and search the forums at forumx.gentoo.org. They people there can be very helpful. But if you follow the instructions you have have little or no trouble at all.

[Dude]

Originally posted by Kev
Is there any way I can boot to Knoppix from windows, or do I have to shut down and rebot.

You have to reboot. Don't worry, knoppix runs completely in your ram so as to not screw anything up.

[Kev]

I burned the ISO wrong and now I have no idea what I am trying to burn. Could someone help me out? I don't want to clutter this up to much so AIM me at vettesarethebest

[JohnnyNuke]

hey all, I'm a Linux newbie. I'm currently running Mandrake 10 Community with KDE 3.1, and LOVE it. Mandrake really is a great distro for beginners, I was able to pick it up and go, right from the start. It works beautifly with my hardware, without much fuss or swearing. I hope to try many more distros in the future, but this has been a great start.

[Kev]

I just found out that the Student Book Store (Big Blue for thouse of you who know about PSU) has red hat for like $40. Im not sure of what version of it though. Would that be a good choice for a total linux n00b?

[XBLiNKX]

Originally posted by Kev
I just found out that the Student Book Store (Big Blue for thouse of you who know about PSU) has red hat for like $40. Im not sure of what version of it though. Would that be a good choice for a total linux n00b?

you can get it online free....

[Kev]

I thought they stoped giving it away.

[XBLiNKX]

they call it fedora now.

[Kev]

My roomie is running redhat or atleast he was. He said if he can find the red hat disks he will give them to me. What else should I be looking at? Im gong to turn my old desktop into a linux box.

[HHunt]

Originally posted by Kev
My roomie is running redhat or atleast he was. He said if he can find the red hat disks he will give them to me. What else should I be looking at? Im gong to turn my old desktop into a linux box.

What internet connection do you have?
If it's reasonably fast, some of the more internet-happy ones (gentoo, free/net/open-bsd, to some degree debian) are good alternatives.

I would have gotten the freeBSD boot disks and done an ftp install, but there are things that are easier to set up if you're new to it all.

What do you plan to do with it?

[Kev]

I have a P2 box at home, 400 mghrtz chip, 144 meg of ram, old dell pc that I am going to upgrade to 98 from ME. I don't know what to do with it yet but I know I want to put linux on it.

edit, im on T1 at school and cable at home

[m1garand]

*cough* knoppix *cough* what? *cough*

Fedora is pretty badass as well. Just because its... well... just so... open.

[Kev]

I have knoppix burned and I am gona run it when I get home. I was thinking of doing a dual boot if that is possible with 98.

[BillLeeLee]

Yes, you can dual boot Linux with Windows 98.

On another note, I totally dig Gentoo. Portage is one of the best package managemernt systems I've used, and I really like the freedom of choice I'm given in choosing what I want to install.

[Antheus]

I'm pretty much a linux newb, but i downloaded/fiddled with red hat 9 about a year ago but got very bored very quickly. I then got mandrake about a month ago and found that to be pretty banal as well. Not long after i decided to load up slackware which was a lot more fun than the previous two. This is currently where i reside but i plan to move on to gentoo soon enough.

[LinuxRocks]

I used Redhat and Mandrake and then switched to Gentoo.

One thing I didnt like about Red Hat or Mandrake was the RPM. The concept is great, but there are really not that many packages avalible and there is no way to (Natively) cause RPM to download and install dependent packages. With Portage, all you have to do is emerge the package you want and it will install what ever that package needs to run.

Another thing I like about Gentoo is the freedom to compile your packages using what ever compiler optimizations (SP?) you want. So, you can compile for an athlon-xp, mp, i686, what ever, and you can also specify compiler flags. So you can optimize the whole system for your computer.

Of the distros I have tried, on my system, non are as fast as my Gentoo.

Oh, and the kernel is not bloated with tons of features you dont need. I compile my kernel to use any scheduler I want, and hardware I want, and what ever options I want. And, I'm no kernel hacker, its just simple with Gentoo.

Love 2.6.7-rc3-love1 kernel is the FASTEST kernel I have ever ran. Sooo smooth, and my Fluxbox is great and tons of eye candy while being extreamly fast :)

Joe

[ser1al]

I myself have tried Mandrake, Red Hat, Slackware, and I'm in hour 2 of installing Gentoo. I really liked Slackware, but I kept hearing about Gentoo so I figured I'd give it a try.

[Clockwork]

I've played with RedHat, IcePick, Mandrake, Debian, Progeny, Gentus, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and a few other specialty distros. FreeBSD was the best out of all of them, at least as a desktop. There hasn't been anything that I haven't been able to get going on FreeBSD. As for exotic hardware, usually, I find FreeBSD handles exotic SCSI RAID controllers and server class hardware better than Linux does. The ports tree is wonderful, maintainable, you can specify compile options, and it just never seems to stop. Whereas certain versions of certain programs don't seem to be in a maintainable package format depending on what version of what distro you are using, chances are the latest and greatest version of that software will make it to the FreeBSD ports tree faster than an RPM will be assembled.

Yes, it still sticks to Unixy commandline heritage, but all the tools are available if you want to install them. I know everyone will tell me the TCP/IP stack in the 2.6 kernel is the greatest, but c'mon, TCP/IP was invented by BSD. For example, NetBSD just set the latest Internet land speed record, most of Cisco's software was derived from BSD, and Juniper runs a cutdown version of NetBSD in their enterprise class switches and routers.

FreeBSD is easier to admin, I can't stand all that SysV startup script complexity, it just seems unecessary. With the handbook, you can do almost everything, it's that well documented. I like the fact that I know where software gets installed, I like the fact that the ports tree has over 11000 software packages that can either be compiled or installed. I like the fact that no FreeBSD user will tell me his OS is the greatest thing ever, and brook no discussion with others (Gentoo fanboys, are you listening?).

It feels polished and complete, it's fast as hell, it runs solid, it takes anything I throw at it, that's why I use it. I read somewhere that FreeBSD is what you get when you get a bunch of Unix hackers trying to make an OS for the PC. Linux is what you get when you get a bunch of PC hackers trying to write a Unix for the PC. Try it and perhaps you'll agree.

[BillLeeLee]

I tried FreeBSD, and I didn't have the same enlightening experience you did. While there wasn't anything in particular that really got to me, I think I'm so caught in the Linux way that a non-Linux Unix-derivative just didn't sit well with me. Also, I kept getting a strange error about how I only a few megs left of hard drive space, although I dedicated my entire 20 gig drive to FreeBSD during the install.

Also, I think FreeBSD feels more 'professional' because only the developers can implement fixes or something. Linux fixes generally are quick fix hacks to begin with and then tested and worked upon, whereas FreeBSD fixes are tested to ensure that they function properly before being integrated into FreeBSD. No clue.

Anyways, I'll stick with my Gentoo; it seems Unix-like enough, and has Portage, somewhat similar to FreeBSD's ports system (compile from source, repositories, etc.).

[cv643d]

FreeBSD is easier to admin, I can't stand all that SysV startup script complexity, it just seems unecessary. With the handbook, you can do almost everything, it's that well documented. I like the fact that I know where software gets installed, I like the fact that the ports tree has over 11000 software packages that can either be compiled or installed. I like the fact that no FreeBSD user will tell me his OS is the greatest thing ever, and brook no discussion with others (Gentoo fanboys, are you listening?).

It feels polished and complete, it's fast as hell, it runs solid, it takes anything I throw at it, that's why I use it. I read somewhere that FreeBSD is what you get when you get a bunch of Unix hackers trying to make an OS for the PC. Linux is what you get when you get a bunch of PC hackers trying to write a Unix for the PC. Try it and perhaps you'll agree.

I enjoyed reading what you said since I like NetBSD and have after many times trying Linux went back to it. But to me you sound just like the ordinary bitter and fanatic BSD user I have run into on the web and on IRC.
To tell you the truth I cant stand visiting places where BSD people discuss things anymore because in the end everything discussed seems to be about BSD beeing better than Linux and the world doesnt notice it so you must be a really bitter and angry BSD user because the world doesnt notice all the BSD systems that are better than Linux.

[cjcox]

SUSE. They do things the right way most of the time. I need something that I can deploy quickly and know it is going to work long term without much direct attention. I have to babysit Red Hat (tm).

SUSE is not perfect... so you who like to play with your machine for days on end will find that SUSE has some flaws. It just has fewer flaws.

[Clockwork]

I enjoyed reading what you said since I like NetBSD and have after many times trying Linux went back to it. But to me you sound just like the ordinary bitter and fanatic BSD user I have run into on the web and on IRC.
To tell you the truth I cant stand visiting places where BSD people discuss things anymore because in the end everything discussed seems to be about BSD beeing better than Linux and the world doesnt notice it so you must be a really bitter and angry BSD user because the world doesnt notice all the BSD systems that are better than Linux.

Ok, so perhaps the Gentoo fanboy comment was over the top, I'll admit. Naw, I'm not bitter, I just found what I needed out of an OS. I spend most of my work time adminning Windows boxes, and Linux, I don't mind working with Linux at all, it's just not as polished, and the gear shifting from one distro to another can be frustrating. Younger BSD users, perhaps they are just as bad as some Penguinistas, I haven't noticed. I've actually noticed the opposite, BSD users tend to be more openminded about OS discussion, but YMMV.

[cv643d]

It feels good to fall back on BSD (in my case NetBSD) when running Linux on PC's. Many times I have decided to try out Linux (again) and face the question which distro do I choose. Its not easy to pick a distro. And depending on what distro I pick I need to learn how this distro differs from the last one I used.
It was easier in the 90'ies, then you picked Slackware because it was the "standard". Or Red Hat because that was what companies running Linux used. Or Mandrake because that was the distro newbies should use.

I dont have anything against Linux really, there is just one thing and its Tux the Linux mascot, I think he looks really gay :)

[odoe]

I just have to say that recently I have switched over to ClarkConnect for my file server and it is fantastic. I'm still a Linux novice and have found that I really don't need Linux as a desktop OS, but simply for a server platform. After fiddling with slackware (an incredible distro, I would reccomend above Red Hat any day), a bunch of failed gentoo installs (gentoo hates me, there is no other explanation) and Red Hat (nice and simple) and looking into setting up samba manually, I found ClarkConnect. I had heard of ClarkConnect, but never really gave it a try, instead opting to try and "do it from scratch". Well, I finally through it in and it works flawlessly. Samba & FTP install automatically and the WebConfig interface is excellent. There is a bug with the SSH java applet, to I have to use putty to SSH to the box, but other than that, I have found that it serves all my needs. There is no KDE/Gnome environment to play with if you attach a monitor to the box, but eveything can be controlled through a browser and any config file editing can be done via SSH, so I never have to hook a monitor up to this box ever again. I think I have finally found a simple, yet effective distro that meets all my needs. I might even install some custom modules and use it for a photo gallery.

I'd still like to learn how to tweak the samba config, which can be done, but I no longer have to worry about hosing the system, because the install only takes about 10-15 minutes.

[QuakerOatz]

I think DEBIAN is the best choice for everyone, minus the source tweakers who can handle 48 hour installs and want to squeeze that extra % out of every process.

Debian, it's not simple but there's loads of free support and it updates with one command, you will learn to love.

apt-get update

[kleptophobiac]

What: Arch Linux
Why:
- very minimalist
- simple install (CD or FTP)
- excellent packaging system (pacman -Syu updates the whole system, pacman -S package gets you a new proggy)
- packages get updated extremely quickly
- cleanest rc system I have ever seen
- extremely easy configure (everything is in /etc)
- Good (not excellent) docs at http://wiki.archlinux.org
- Nice community at bbs.archlinux.org
Where: http://www.archlinux.org

[[H]EMI_426]

I'm a FreeBSD user. Why? Cause it works how I want it to and works consistently. It's not the best tool for every job, but for my *nix-y needs FreeBSD fits the bill 99% of the time.

I wrote a little page (http://www.puresimplicity.net/~hemi/freebsd/) about FreeBSD that might help explain why I like the OS so much.

I ran Linux for five years before starting to run FreeBSD (four years ago).

In the past I've used SuSE, Red Hat, Mandrake, Slackware and currently my work machine is FC2. My Dreamcast and a few old Sun machines I have run NetBSD. I installed Debian on my Alpha, but during the upgrade process the bootloader managed to get hosed and honestly I just don't care enough to bother fixing it. I'm not used to bootloaders breaking...I'm used to things "just working" under FreeBSD.

cv643d: most *BSD users probably come off as elitists cause they are probably tired of all the n00bs coming over from Linux and expecting the answers to be handed to them. I'm "guilty" (but have no remorse for my actions) of kicking new users that ask simple questions that are quickly answered by a trip through the Handbook or just an instant spent with Google. I like it that way. :D

[kleptophobiac]

I used freebsd for a couple of years, still use openbsd (admittedly just for a router / server), though I'm starting to abandon it too.

The BSD's move slower than my grandmother through the grocery store, and just feel ancient. I loved FreeBSD until 4.7 came out and I felt that the ball had been dropped (4.6.2 was the best fbsd ever)

OpenBSD makes a fine router, but so does a hacked WRT54G. :D

Try linux again. :D

[[H]EMI_426]

I continually use Linux every day at work, and every day the sheer relief of having to take care of FreeBSD machines at home instead of Linux is a refreshing reminder of why I don't run Linux on my personal machines.

FreeBSD may move slow at times, but it moves deliberately, carefully and with a purpose. IMHO, that beats the hell out of the rather spastic, unmanaged Linux development process. I don't think any of the FreeBSD -RELEASEs have ever corrupted file systems on unmount (Hello, anyone ever heard of QA?), nor have there been any -RELEASEs cause one of the main developers went on vacation for a month.

Don't tell me to try Linux again. I've been there, and unfortunately I have to keep at it for work.

[Snugglebear]

EMI_426']FreeBSD may move slow at times, but it moves deliberately, carefully and with a purpose. IMHO, that beats the hell out of the rather spastic, unmanaged Linux development process. I don't think any of the FreeBSD -RELEASEs have ever corrupted file systems on unmount (Hello, anyone ever heard of QA?), nor have there been any -RELEASEs cause one of the main developers went on vacation for a month.

And that's why I have a soft spot in my heart for both FreeBSD and Solaris. Open is quite useful as well, but feels cramped with heavy security and fewer scripted features than Free. I need to call up a buddy of mine and see if he still has a spare RS6000; he's always going on and on about how AIX blows everything away, but I've yet to really dig around inside its head.

[DR_K13]

Suse 9.1 :D

[devourment77]

slackware 10 :P

I am not a fan of rpm's.. although i do think precompiled binaries do have there place. Give slack a chance, if you can get through the install and use cfdisk, you will be ok :)

Gentoo is pretty sweet too, although portage gets big, and until there is a standardized why to empty portage, you install will get bigger and bigger the more you emerge >.<

[Snugglebear]

You'd think if they had done a decent job copying FreeBSD ports they'd have added that, too.

[[H]EMI_426]

You'd think if they had done a decent job copying FreeBSD ports they'd have added that, too.No kidding...Can't they rip off something right? :)

[siegecraft4]

Suse 9.1 :D

Yep. I'm starting with this also. Ive had it for about a day and I''m not really sure what to think yet. Its seems more feature rich than Windows, and simple enough to use. I can see though, what peope are saying about not teaching you too much about the workings of the OS itself. Nevertheless, for me, putting any flavor of Linux on my machine was terrifying enough, being Windoze brainwashed my whole life. So I guess its a great place to start before I delve deeper into the kernel and other distros. :cool:

[MEfreak]

What: Arch Linux
Why:
- very minimalist
- simple install (CD or FTP)
- excellent packaging system (pacman -Syu updates the whole system, pacman -S package gets you a new proggy)
- packages get updated extremely quickly
- cleanest rc system I have ever seen
- extremely easy configure (everything is in /etc)
- Good (not excellent) docs at http://wiki.archlinux.org
- Nice community at bbs.archlinux.org
Where: http://www.archlinux.org

I installed Arch last week based on your suggestion. It's fitting my personality quite well so far. Arch seems to satisfy my geek need for a minimalist install, configurability, and somewhat intuitive directory system. The graphical installer was a nice touch, and it gave me the chance to study some proper boot configuration files (grub, fstab, etc) and actually learn and fix the mistakes I was making in previous manual installs.

So far so good. I'm not exactly a noobie to linux (i've successfully installed a functional Gentoo workstation from stage 1, and I've dabbled in Mandrake and Red-Hat), but I think even the most basic user will gain some great experience and develop necessary linux skills with the Arch distro. At the same time, it's sufficiently powerful such that I don't forsee moving away from Arch any time soon.

[Arkaine23]

Yoper- fastest out of the box linux

0.) Performance patches from Con Kolivas, i686 2.6.7 kernel, reiserfs
1.) All original sources, minimal patches.
2.) Compiled with i686 against latest gcc
3.) Stripping
4.) Prelinking
5.) Latest gcc and glibc and other sources
6.) Keep everything only dependent to what it really needs not what the ./configure happens to find.
7.) Hdparm on install

All things you can do with other distros, but it requires knowledge and a lot of time. And if you reinstall them, the result is gone. Instead, if you do a quick Yoper install (minutes is all it takes), you can have a really fast and fully functional distribution running on your desktop in no time.

[kleptophobiac]

I installed Arch last week based on your suggestion. It's fitting my personality quite well so far. Arch seems to satisfy my geek need for a minimalist install, configurability, and somewhat intuitive directory system. The graphical installer was a nice touch, and it gave me the chance to study some proper boot configuration files (grub, fstab, etc) and actually learn and fix the mistakes I was making in previous manual installs.

So far so good. I'm not exactly a noobie to linux (i've successfully installed a functional Gentoo workstation from stage 1, and I've dabbled in Mandrake and Red-Hat), but I think even the most basic user will gain some great experience and develop necessary linux skills with the Arch distro. At the same time, it's sufficiently powerful such that I don't forsee moving away from Arch any time soon.

Glad to have made another Archer! I love the distro too. I used to be a Slackware person, but Arch took everything I liked from Slack and improved. :)

Yoper- fastest out of the box linux

0.) Performance patches from Con Kolivas, i686 2.6.7 kernel, reiserfs
1.) All original sources, minimal patches.
2.) Compiled with i686 against latest gcc
3.) Stripping
4.) Prelinking
5.) Latest gcc and glibc and other sources
6.) Keep everything only dependent to what it really needs not what the ./configure happens to find.
7.) Hdparm on install

All things you can do with other distros, but it requires knowledge and a lot of time. And if you reinstall them, the result is gone. Instead, if you do a quick Yoper install (minutes is all it takes), you can have a really fast and fully functional distribution running on your desktop in no time.

I'll have to give this one a shot, but it does sound quite a bit like Arch. Arch is also i686 compiled and is extremely zippy "out of the box"

If you haven't tried it, please do! Give us a report on how the two compare. I'll likely be doing the same when I find the time.

[Thetargos]

I'm a Linux lover, yeah!

For all of you who say that with Red Hat you can't learn, and that RPM is a hell, you are right... to some extent, and also wrong... Let me explain: You can learn as much or as less as you choose with any Linux distro, Gentoo, Red Hat, Slackware, Debian are no exceptions. In fact Gentoo and its portage makes you as lazy as Red Hat with its RPMs and yum or Debian with its DEBs and apt, why? because people (and I'm not excluding myself from this) tend to get contempted, you get used to it, and because of that you forget about other stuff you can also do. You don't like RPMs and are tied to an RPM distro? Install the old way, via source and ./configure! Sooner or later you'll forget most of what you learnt during your glorious Gentoo install, not all, but most. I've known people who just ask about how to install a program from a tarball in Gentoo, because they're used to find all in portage and portage does all for them.

Basically documentation is available virtually everywhere! You can even get a generic Linux book and you'll be able to get around virtually around all distros, the man pages are your friend, and also may look as your worst enemy (they may seem more like a computer science degree thesis than a simple help file or manual documentation for a program, true, but you'll be able to understand it). The point is, if it is knowledge you seek, you'll find it if (and only if) you really seek it. Some may say that you can't learn with a distro that does everything for you, but in reality if you really want to learn you'll find your way. I'd rather have a friendly environment to which I feel comfortable with than a totally hostile environmet that forces me to look for a way to get around.

I've come to the conclusion that no distro is better than another, they are just more convenient for a certain task. And all distros are as configurable as you want them to be. I've seen people complain about how much does a distro like Mandy or Red Hat or SuSE or Debian installs for them in order to satisfy deps, when you can just install what you need, a basic system and add all from source if you want later, just as Gentoo or LFS. Heck, if you don't like a certain package manager, just install the old fashioned way. Even tools like File-Rolller will allow you to extract and entire .deb or .rpm if you really dislike them, but have to use them. Don't get me wrong, but if something is clear is that package managment in Linux is far from perfrect. Each package format tries to tackle this in very different ways, and each has flaws. From ease of use to reliability to real usefulness, and nothing seems better than old tarlballs (maybe that's why the packages for Slack are TGZs :D )

I personally run Fedora Core2, I've tweaked it to my heart's content. I installed it after a careless error I made with Gentoo that trashed the whole installation which I could not recover from. I've come to find that FC2 fills all my needs with excellence. In the course of the years (I've used Linux since Nov1996, exclusively three years ago) I have also tried many distros and never found one which really satisfied me until I realized that a distro would fill only basic needs and that if I really wanted it to make it work the way I wnated, I had to get my hands dirty by digging in its insides. That's why Gentoo is an excellent distro, but not the panacea, because in the end you can do so with any distro as long as you have GCC or whatever compiler you choose.

So what distro is best? NONE. What do you want the distro for? Would be the right question to ask, the way I see it. In the end, amongst this chaotic freedom this GNU/Linux amalgam is, you get to choose whatever you want, and to me that's what's important. Alas it may be staggering and frustrating at times... But then again, that's what makes it fun (IMO). :D

Peace.


Gian Paolo Mureddu
AKA Thetargos.

[HHunt]

Indeed. You can force any distro to do what you want, the question is how much work it is, and how easy it is to maintain.

[kleptophobiac]

Just out of curiousity, what was your careless error?

[Thetargos]

Just out of curiousity, what was your careless error?
:lol: I trashed my Gentoo with an unemerge of sed, along with its deps (portage included) and trying to re-do my steps from the boot disk did not work. I'm still puzzled at what could I have done wrong, becuase even if I re-did a stage3 "re-install" I could not get the computer to wrok right any more, thus I was forced to re-install :D

EDIT: And since it took me more than 3 weeks to have computer just the way it was before I did my stupid move, I decided to install FC1, which I coiuld take to the same degree of customization in less than ONE week ;)

[Thetargos]

Indeed. You can force any distro to do what you want, the question is how much work it is, and how easy it is to maintain.
When you know what you are doing, not much work, and depending how you do it, it can be VERY simple to keep it updated and mantained ;)

[hitman_forhire]

I like many of you; I have tried a ton of linux distro's from day 1 of "Newly Released" redhat 7 to running "Hackin9" I've as well had my share of fun with them. But one day while @ a local LUG [Linux User Group] Meeting I discovered FreeBSD. One of the graciously knowledged users was playing with FreeBSD and it looked challenging. Mostly cli @ the time and I wanted to give it a whirl. After 2 weeks had I formatted all 3 of my machines with it. It was clean, fast, and made great use of old hardware and even better use of the blazing fast p4 i had. Custom kernels were fun and can really be optimized. Tools like portupgrade and cvsup give you the latest fastest code out there and let you rebuild every program on the box so it's optimized to the max. After a few months I was very fluent with the BSD OS and had X running great and a great Fluxbox setup. After finally getting kde setup, it was over; this machine is comparable to no other in my opinion; fast, super-stable, and always presenting further indepth learning via the mailing lists.

If I had to suggest any piece of F.O.S.S. or O.S.S. it would be FreeBSD 5.2.1; it's great and it's easy to install like slackware. It utilized that C based gui/text mode installer.The FreeBSD handbook [the ultimate online FreeBSD reference manual] is super documented and the mailing lists have great support. I'd recommend everyone who hasn't to Check it out
http://www.freebsd.org/

[kleptophobiac]

has freebsd recovered from the royal piece of shit that was 4.7-4.8? If it has, I might have to give it another whirl on my router. :)

[[H]EMI_426]

I've been using it since 3.4 and I've never noticed anything bad in the 4.x-RELEASE branches...Which is honestly what you should be running on machines you care about. If you didn't, well, that's your mistake and not FreeBSD's.

[HHunt]

I can't say I remember any specific problems with 4.8, but I do suggest you try 5.2.1 . There has gone a lot of work into it since 4.8 .

Oh, I think I forgot my favourite FreeBSD thing: A devfs that just works.

[shieldforyoureyes]

I've been using unix since the mid 80s and have dealt with a
very wide range of unix flavours & clones. By preference, I run
OpenBSD. If that's not available, NetBSD or FreeBSD is fine.
Unfortunately most of my computers aren't supported by any
of those, so I find myself running Solaris on my Sparcserver-1000,
Irix on my Indigo 2, and AIX (UGH!) on my RS/6000s.
I recommend Linux to friends & family who are fed up with
Windows, but I don't really like to use it myself. It feels
pc-ish to me.
Also, I'm a ultra-minimalist about my environment. I don't
like complex, flashy desktops, and in fact, I sit in front of
a black & white monitor.

[MEfreak]

I recommend Linux to friends & family who are fed up with
Windows, but I don't really like to use it myself. It feels
pc-ish to me. Forgive my ignorance, but what exactly is "pc-ish?" How do you avoid a "pc-ish" feel when running a *nix or Windows platform on a PC? Does the descriptor not imply an innate characteristic of the platform rather than the OS?

[HHunt]

Regarding FreeBSD, btw: CURRENT just hit 6.0, and seems to have gotten all the experimental things they were holding back while trying to make a 5-STABLE. It's ... interesting. And needs some time to mature.

5.2.1 is still fine, and I expect a 5-STABLE sometime soon.

[[H]EMI_426]

Code freeze for RELENG_5 happened about a week ago and the schedule says a release should happen in October. I doubt they'll make it, but I'd rather them hold off and do it right than turn out something with problems.

[HHunt]

EMI_426']Code freeze for RELENG_5 happened about a week ago and the schedule says a release should happen in October. I doubt they'll make it, but I'd rather them hold off and do it right than turn out something with problems.

That would be the FreeBSD way, yes.
(Though 5.2.0 supposedly should have gotten a few more days).

[shieldforyoureyes]

Forgive my ignorance, but what exactly is "pc-ish?" How do you avoid a "pc-ish" feel when running a *nix or Windows platform on a PC? Does the descriptor not imply an innate characteristic of the platform rather than the OS?

I never use Windows. "PC-ish feel" basicly means a lot of Linux
utilities look like they were written by someone who grew up
on PCs & DOS, rather than Unix. Command line utilities that
have a status line that makes them hard to use in pipelines,
things like that. To anyone from a traditional Unix background
(VAX & Sun in the 80s, etc) Linux has subtle PCisms scattered
throughout.

[kleptophobiac]

...isn't that what verbosity and quiet levels are good for?

[HHunt]

...isn't that what verbosity and quiet levels are good for?

It's not so much the problems (they are fixable) as the mindset it's a symptom of . :D
(Eliteist bastards? Oh yes. And we like it.)

[shieldforyoureyes]

...isn't that what verbosity and quiet levels are good for?

When they exist. But it's PC-ish to default to verbose.
Look at ffmpeg - it "cleverly" lets you type "q" at any point
to halt it. Even though "^C" would work, and looking for that
"q" means it's waiting on stdin, so you can't run it in the
background from the shell. Oh, *thanks*. (Actually, I have
no idea where ffmpeg came from, but that's what I mean by
"PC-ism". It looks like a DOS utility. (Actually, ffmpeg has
mostly been generating corrupt files for me recently, so it
*really* looks like a DOS utility. Ha ha.))

[Trooper4985]

Downloaded and burned Slack 10 and all I get is 'install failed' from CD and from bootdisk. The Redhat distro I have (downloaded it a year ago but never installed it) will install great but I want to try something new. My goal is a system to play an evil game (that I sent many days in the computer lab playing instead of going to class) called Moria (Well MUDDog killed my GPA too but that is a diffrent story) and as a general 'toy' to play with and maybe even take a stab at learning C (or Fortran ;) ) The whole 'window feel' is last on my list of wants.

[berky]

Downloaded and burned Slack 10 and all I get is 'install failed' from CD and from bootdisk. The Redhat distro I have (downloaded it a year ago but never installed it) will install great but I want to try something new. My goal is a system to play an evil game (that I sent many days in the computer lab playing instead of going to class) called Moria (Well MUDDog killed my GPA too but that is a diffrent story) and as a general 'toy' to play with and maybe even take a stab at learning C (or Fortran ;) ) The whole 'window feel' is last on my list of wants.


give Arch (http://archlinux.org) a shot. it's very basic, installs in 10 minutes, and pacman (package manager, not the game) is unbelievably awesome. great for 'toying' with.

of course, that is all just my opinion.

[odoe]

This was on /. and I thought it was quite amusing.
link (http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/10/30/1322227)

[DR_K13]

anyone try Gentoo yet?
I have used Suse and Fedora, and redhat

[Thetargos]

Excellent distro if you don't mind doing pretty much everything by yourslef with the aid of the excellent tool called portage. I really like Gentoo, though I couldn't get it as integrated as I found SuSE's or RH's and FC's desktops.

[DR_K13]

Dosent gentoo take days ( or a day ) to load?
Suse took me under an hour, Redhat took me 4 hours :mad:

[Uncle Toxie]

Dosent gentoo take days ( or a day ) to load?
Suse took me under an hour, Redhat took me 4 hours :mad:

I just installed Gentoo on an old K6-2 500 that I had laying around. The only part that took awhile on the core install was my own ignorance. Now KDE is a whole other story, I am on 2 1/2 days of compiling that puppy :eek: . You don't have to compile from source if you don't want to, I was just curious as to how the old girl would take to it.

[HHunt]

I just installed Gentoo on an old K6-2 500 that I had laying around. The only part that took awhile on the core install was my own ignorance. Now KDE is a whole other story, I am on 2 1/2 days of compiling that puppy :eek: . You don't have to compile from source if you don't want to, I was just curious as to how the old girl would take to it.

It's like someone said about FreeBSD: You don't have to compile anything, it just happens to be the easiest way.

[HotBBQ]

Gentoo is the way to go if you really want to learn about Linux and have a smokin' hot distro. The learning curve is steep, but once you've got it down you won't want to go back. If you have brand new technology you should also give Gentoo a try as you will find the help forums full of people in the same boat you are.

[Wolf31o2]

I can tell you exactly why my Linux distribution is the best.

I made it.

Well, not without some help of the other Gentoo developers, but for the 2004.3 release (which comes out in about 3 hours and 40 minutes), I was the primary developer in working out new features and old bugs in catalyst, our LiveCD building tool.

I really have grown to love Gentoo. I was once a Gentoo basher, like many of the slashbots you see trolling slashdot, but then I decided to give it a real try. I found that my main distaste for Gentoo at the time was the management, not the actual technical details of the distribution. After being a good member of the community for a few months and submitting ebuilds for new packages and patches for bugs in existing packages, I was tapped to become a developer for the games team. Ever since, I have been working to make Gentoo better for everyone that uses it and I can say that our biggest asset is the community around the distribution.

[CestusGW]

LFS 5.1 ... I did it months, ago, and haven't looked back, as that's looking back at (shudder) WinXP. My LFS box has to compile everything manually, I have no idea about the versions of software it's using or the versions currently available, heck I don't even really know what software is loaded on it. The kernel only has modules for the bits of hardware that are currently attached. When I want to change something, it always involves tweaking a text file somewhere. I've grown to know and love the nVidia driver installation screen. I willingly run release kernels, and even try to compile software for them (yes, I do fix my own source code problems :D ) So in the end, what am I saying? The distro that's the best it the one that gives you the best return on time. The functionality of my LFS box grows with leaps and bounds when I put time into it; Fedora just looks purdier when I put time into it. Nothing like the feeling of accomplishment to make you love your distro, no matter how badly you've broken it.

[drowbot]

I started out with Slackware 10. I thought it was great, but was still curious about other distros. I tried Fedora Core 2, hated it because it was too polished and too much like Windows. I wanted total control over the OS internals. Then I found LFS. It has been a learning experience, and it has caused me quite a few headaches over the last month or so, but I love this distro. I just finished building from the LFS 6.0 book and I'm working through parts of BLFS now. It is great. I have leard a lot more in a day of working on this OS than I did in all my time with the others.

[swatbat]

All this talk about BSD and no one said they like MacOSX? ;) I have used linux in the past a good amount on servers. On destops I have to say redhat and suse are good but really any of the big ones have good docs to back them up so it isn't that big of a deal. Gentoo is showing signs of being somthing great too. I personaly like running freebsd on my servers now as I have found it faster in a lot of cases and overall more secure then most linux distros. OpenBSD also is real good at this aspect. And as far as netbsd goes when am I going to see a toaster running it :D

[HHunt]

All this talk about BSD and no one said they like MacOSX? ;) I have used linux in the past a good amount on servers. On destops I have to say redhat and suse are good but really any of the big ones have good docs to back them up so it isn't that big of a deal. Gentoo is showing signs of being somthing great too. I personaly like running freebsd on my servers now as I have found it faster in a lot of cases and overall more secure then most linux distros. OpenBSD also is real good at this aspect. And as far as netbsd goes when am I going to see a toaster running it :D

I would almost bet that someone has found a toaster with a CPU and ported NetBSD to it, just for the hell of it. :)
(I remember seeing a toaster that toasted the symbol for todays weather onto the bread, so it's not completely unrealistic.)

Besides, FreeBSD does work fine as a desktop as well, in my experience. (I'm just not a linux man. :D )

[abudhu]

Hi:

Being somewhat new to Linux I have found SuSE 9.1 to be a very good starting point. I use the Command line prompt more than anything and I feel that I am learning about the OS. Though, I suppose I am not in comparsion to what other people are saying. However, you must realize from a new persons perspective to Linux, diving right into compiling kernels and madly learning command prompts can be a bit overwhelming. I have found that SuSE 9.1 offers the best mix of GUI and Command Line Interface for a new person like myself. Where the Command Line fails, the GUI can be helpful (YaST for RPMs) and the where the GUI fails (Installing programs i.e. Make/Make Install) the command line takes the day.

However, I also do not see myself diving into the OS any further than SuSE offers. For, at this point, I see no need to learn about the OS in detail nor do I have any reason to. Being a Native Windows user, making this change has been easy to do with SuSE.

All in SuSE for me, offers the best mix of an easy transition from a Windows based user to a on-and-off Linux user. If there is one thing that I 'love' about SuSE was the extremely easy install. Though windows has certainly come a long way from Windows 95 installing it always seems scary at first. You never know what might go wrong. Though I had no clue what to expect from SuSE, I was pleased when it simply recognized, installed all my Hardware and booted up nicely.

If there is one thing I 'Hate' about Linux/SuSE is upgrading hardware. For instance, according to Nvidia the new Linux Drivers add support for 6800 series, yet when YaST/YOU found them/installed them it added no support for my 6800. And currently I am very very annoyed with the Wireless drivers/installation of drivers. For the Love of god I can't get my LinkSys Wireless internet to work on SuSE.

And there you have it. My 2 Cents on SuSE 9.1 and why its working for me.

[Imbroglio]

i've been running linux for about the past 3 years or so....

when i started out venturing down the linux path, i first tried out mandrake, which i hated with a passion. after the install and being led and walked through everything like a complete moron i got pissed that it was too much like winblows, the one thing i was trying to escape

from mandrake, i then tried out the knoppix live-cd, just to see what the distro had to offer for me, seemed too much like mandrake to me, so i then continued on my venture

that's when a kid from one of my programming classes recommended slack to me, after installing slack 9 i was in love, i was in love with fluxbox and i love the complete control i had over every single aspect of the machine, (to realize what you have, you have to do a lot of reading, and have to be patient, usually that is what most ppl lack), but then my mobo died

after replacing the mobo, i tried out ubuntu, i liked it a little, default desktop is gnome, not kde and everything seems to 'just work' after the install, no tweaking required, just wasn't for me

atm i have yet to re-install any linux on my primary drive, still using winblows, but i'm leaning towards arch this time around. i've only heard positives about it, and it is actually a derivative of slack, so i'm thinking i'm gonna give it a go soon, i'll let you know how i make out :D

[Carloswill]

Is there a nice walk through that helps me install Slack?

[MEfreak]

... i'm leaning towards arch this time around. i've only heard positives about it, and it is actually a derivative of slack, so i'm thinking i'm gonna give it a go soon, i'll let you know how i make out :DI think Arch is actually inspired by Crux...I've never heard it said that it's a derivative of Slackware. There are negatives...package maintainers are overworked, I personally think the desktop packages are a bit bloated due to over the top dependencies, some bugs can take quite a while to be fixed, if an updated package breaks your system (and you've cleaned the cache) rolling back to an earlier version can be a challenge. Like all distros, it has it's drawbacks.

I've been using Arch for several months now, and my experience has been great. A few snags along the way, but nothing that has brought the file/game server down, and nothing that I couldn't fix in a trip to the forum and about 1/2 hour of basic work.

I really dig ABS/PKGBUILDs as well. A very nice way to compile/install your own programs or custom versions of base programs, easily maintained with the built in package manager Pacman.
EDIT: Some more feedback on ABS. I've been using it more and more over the past couple of weeks, mostly for rolling custom package with leaned out dependencies, and outdated packages that some obscure piece of software I use needs. I was digging it before, and now I'm raving about it. At this point, it feels like there's nothing I can't do with Arch (extremely powerful, binary by default, compile if desired), and at the same time, it feels very natural (I'm talking overall structure, not gui interfaces and the like).

I will be interested to hear your feedback when you've given it a shot.

Is there a nice walk through that helps me install Slack?I think this thread is about discussing and comparing attributes of linux distros, not tutorials on how to install them ;) I'd try asking this question in one of the existing Slackware threads or starting one of your own.

[HHunt]

Just as an aside: You might also like BSD ports, which this sounds like a relative of. Take a look at freshports (http://www.freshports.org/categories.php) to see what's available over here.
(I'm not really suggesting you should switch to FreeBSD, I just like showing off ports whenever possible. :D )

[locutus24]

I'm sorta new to linux sorta not, but for now im on mandrake its ok but i really want to go to something better. Any suggestions towards what would be a better distro choice, i was thinking fedora but then i read that it was a testing platform for redhat, and im not much of a tester. Gentoo but i dont want to compile everything i know i would mess up, so for now im just hanging out on Mandrake 10 its treating me alright. So if anybody wants to say what might be better thanks.

[abudhu]

I'm sorta new to linux sorta not, but for now im on mandrake its ok but i really want to go to something better. Any suggestions towards what would be a better distro choice, i was thinking fedora but then i read that it was a testing platform for redhat, and im not much of a tester. Gentoo but i dont want to compile everything i know i would mess up, so for now im just hanging out on Mandrake 10 its treating me alright. So if anybody wants to say what might be better thanks.

SuSE 9.2

[locutus24]

Was looking into that, saw some screenshots looks fairly sexy. But i dont know, that would be the 4th time i think installing a linux distro this week.
Is that free cause i know suse was taken over by novell, so is that distro free
Well the network install for that failed, so for now i give up im sticking with mandrake for another 3months then i will buy the cd's from somewhere.

[ixce]

Gentoo all the way. With portage, you always have the latest software (if you don't mind instability) and you have complete control over your computer. Second would be debian, i use both. Debian is a bit more stable and apt-get is very gentoo like.

[locutus24]

Gentoo all the way. With portage, you always have the latest software (if you don't mind instability) and you have complete control over your computer. Second would be debian, i use both. Debian is a bit more stable and apt-get is very gentoo like.
Dont you have to compile all the stuff for gentoo, i was considering gentoo but then i went to their home page and read about compiling all the stuff. Is it a difficult thing to compile all your owns packages, and i dont know if i want to switch now cause mandrake is finally set-up properly.

[HHunt]

Compiling things yourself is dead simple, if you have a nice system to arrange things. Portage in gentoo, for instance. (It's no harder than adding a package, it only takes longer.)

[buzzard34]

Was looking into that, saw some screenshots looks fairly sexy. But i dont know, that would be the 4th time i think installing a linux distro this week.
Is that free cause i know suse was taken over by novell, so is that distro free
Well the network install for that failed, so for now i give up im sticking with mandrake for another 3months then i will buy the cd's from somewhere.

Yes, Novell plans on keeping SuSe open-source :p
I do believe they will charge money however for Open Enterprise Server, which might be free still since its still in beta stages.

[locutus24]

Yes, Novell plans on keeping SuSe open-source :p
I do believe they will charge money however for Open Enterprise Server, which might be free still since its still in beta stages.
Keeping the open source dream alive :D cause lately alot of "Commercial" linux based os's have been coming out. AKA Redhat which isnt to shaby, but paying money for linux kernel is

[Wolf31o2]

Dont you have to compile all the stuff for gentoo, i was considering gentoo but then i went to their home page and read about compiling all the stuff. Is it a difficult thing to compile all your owns packages, and i dont know if i want to switch now cause mandrake is finally set-up properly.
You don't compile things by hand. If you want Gnome, you don't have to download each package and do the "./configure && make && make install" for them. Instead you type "emerge gnome" and portage does all the grunt work for you.

Like people have said before, it takes a little longer to get packages this way, but with a modern machine, it isn't much of a difference, really. Also, it gives you much more flexibility than a binary distribution can on what is installed on your system.

Other than that, they're really all about the same. ;)

[locutus24]

Well sounds nice then, i may now setup gentoo over the summer when i have more time to spare to compile packages. For now im enjoying using mandrake, it is a nice set-up now that i finally got my dual Xservers going :) Wine though thats what is getting to me, i have read tutorial after tutorial on how to set-up wine but it always fails to work.

[locutus24]

Edit: Im actually doing suse 9.1 :) read through some reviews seems descent enough for what i need
No wait maybe not suse sounds scary, ahh what distro Debian is way to uber hardcore for me at this present moment. Mandrake is working but it seems to be like windows to much sometimes i dont know there are way to many distro's. I cant decide what would be better, i guess i will test run suse since its at 71% download.

[abudhu]

Edit: Im actually doing suse 9.1 :) read through some reviews seems descent enough for what i need
No wait maybe not suse sounds scary, ahh what distro Debian is way to uber hardcore for me at this present moment. Mandrake is working but it seems to be like windows to much sometimes i dont know there are way to many distro's. I cant decide what would be better, i guess i will test run suse since its at 71% download.

SuSE...scary? What now...
SuSE is by far one of the easiest/most wonderful distro's out there for someone switching from Windows.

[locutus24]

Well i have already ditched windows, im wanting to shed myself of mandrake and venture further into linux

[AdamW]

locutus: please do yourself a favour and learn how to use MDK properly first. Right now, you're clearly not doing this.

[locutus24]

I did im quite profficient at mdk, tried to use suse that was the worst expierence of my life the dam thing kept putting my keyboard as something else y was z. MDK owns all your bones, anyways everything is done up properly my dual-mons are running aight cedega/point to play is kicking it out, MDk mixes konsole work and desktop work most beautifully.

[AdamW]

glad you got everything sorted out! I don't want to discourage you from trying other distros, of course, just wanted to make sure you give MDK a fair shot :)

[starbuck8968]

glad you got everything sorted out! I don't want to discourage you from trying other distros, of course, just wanted to make sure you give MDK a fair shot :)

No!! Not a Mandrake zealot!
I use Redhat EL4 AS for stability purposes. And for what I do its pretty damn fast as well (no GUI).

If you want something that just works, not have to deal with configuring all the time I'd say use Redhat, Fedora or Suse. If you want to get your hands dirty try out Slackware or Debian. If your masochistic, use Gentoo. I think its kinda dumb when gentoo people say that they learned alot how to use Linux because of it. Hm... emerge *whatever* That sure is learning a lot :rolleyes:

If you really want to learn Linux don't use any package managers, build from source, edit the makefiles yourself, know your /etc by heart, and learn some C!

[contrefait]

I currently use Gentoo, Ubuntu, and Gnoppix( Thats knoppix just with Gnome instead of KDE) Ubuntu is my laptop install because it is a god send for detecting wireless nics.

Between the 5-10 people I know who've installed Ubuntu, each time it has completely detected all of their necessary hardware without any need for input on their part. It has a graphical interface to apt-get which is good but nowhere up to gentoo's portage. Oh how I love portage. When you can do an emerge for scorched earth.. pure bliss.

Back to Ubuntu, its just freaking awesome if you want a linux distro that will work right after its installed as opposed to gentoo which even if you have a stable booting system you probably still have a long way to go to get it functional to your standards.

[Wildfire]

Well I have been running a stage-1 install of Gentoo for a while now and my other buddy above me is right: Portage is the simply the best! Other than the fact that it took me the better part of a whole frickin weekend to compile my Gentoo (hey it was on my PIII 733) I love it.

Otherwise if your a Linux noob I love "Pc Linux OS", try the Live-CD and if you like it, its cake to install. It has some pretty good hardware auto detection which is always a plus when your new to Linux.

[RGFrog]

Mepis

[DR_K13]

ubuntu is great at installing/detecting printers.

[satriani5902]

I had an itch to install Slackware today. My 2nd linux ever. Very nice. 10.1

[locutus24]

I couldnt get that going on, wouldnt detect my cd drive i dont know whats going on with that. Im now going to try gentoo using packages from my knoppix live cd. I also tried debian but the apt packages i got always failed to work, MDK is nice for general desktop work, suse is crap cause it wont work with my keyboard, SME is good ip masq and gateway/firewall stuff, knoppix for stealing windows pswds, and im considering trying nature linux from the distrowatch site.

[visaris]

I have to say Gentoo is the best. I guess this is why:

Pros:

-- Portage / emerge
Portage is the best package manager I have ever used. No manual downloads needed, no dependency issues ever. Totally tweakable. Handles source installation well. You can use it to constantly keep your system up to date. With a lot of distros, if a new version comes out, you may need a reinstall. With Gentoo and portage, your system is always the latest version. You should never need to do a clean install of a new version.
-- Source based
I like installing from source, it keeps my system nice and fast. Also, I am a C/C++ developer. Having a sourced based distro means I can easily change things I don't like. I tweak the source every once in a while to suit my needs.
-- No GUI config
I really love being able to set any settings I need to by the CLI. Editing text files is, IMHO, the best way to administer a system. I don't need to learn any custom GUIs, and I don't need X running to change anything. Text files are searchable, easy to backup, easy to post online, etc. KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is the model Gentoo uses to change system settings.
-- Total control
I used SuSE before, and I had to fight it the whole time. I didn't want to use modules, but all the tools were built for a module based system. I finally gave in. I couldn't edit .conf files by hand, because the GUI tools often overwrote my changes from some copy they hid from me. It was just a nightmare. With gentoo, you are in complete control, and there is no GUI layer to work through. If you like modules, great. If you want to build everything into the kernel, that's fine too. You edit the files, and you always know what settings they hold. Gentoo is built for tweaking. USE flags, the FEATURES variable, etc, really are all they're cracked up to be.

-- Secure and clean
Gentoo doesn't install anything unless you tell it to. Also, Gentoo will not add anything to the startup scripts without you asking it to. Gentoo isn't full of bloated packages you don't need and will not use, and Gentoo doesn't have any services left on by default. Because you set it up, you get what you need, and nothing more.


Cons:

-- Source based
It can take a long time to compile things. Some people don't like that. I don't really mind. I can compile all my 300+ packages from source in 24H, but then, I have a nice dual Opteron system. If you have a really slow system, Gentoo may not be for you. On the other hand, you don't really compile stuff very often, and can always run it in the background.
-- No GUI config
Some people are not comfortable with a text file and emacs/nano/vi. Some people just can't get it, and some people just don't like it. If you are looking for a windows-like "control panel" then Gentoo isn't for you.
-- Total controll
Gentoo doesn't do a whole lot for you. It compiles and installs packages, but it is frequently up to the user to read the manpage and edit the appropriate files. Some packages (I've only hit one so far) don't even come with a default or example config at all. I had to write the config file, by hand, from scratch. If you want a system to set up everything for you, Gentoo isn't for you.
-- Clean
Because Gentoo doesn't install and turn on services for you, you may have to do it yourself. You may not have the software you need, when you need it, and you may not want to wait for it to compile. If you want a distro with everything and the kitchen sink included in the base install, Gentoo isn't for you. I like a lean, clean system, but some people (my father for example) think everything should be ready and waiting just in case.

Summary:
I think it's clear to see that for a lot of things, the pros and cons are the same. That's why people usually say it is either the best thing since sliced bread (like me) or they say it is too hard, impossible to use and it sucks. Maybe it's not too hard, but it feels like work to some people. Maybe some people can't wait for the compiles, I don't know. I think the main reason people hate Gentoo is because it's too hard to intall/use, and I think the main reason most people hate Gentoo users/zelots is because they can install/use it.

So, what about the hype? Yeah, I think it lives up to the hype and then some. Portage is the main reason Gentoo is so great. If you're in RPM-land, and have never tried anything else, you can't possibly understand how great portage really is. Debian's apt-get is a lot better than RPMs but it still doesn't hold a candle to portage IMHO. I have converted everyone I can to Gentoo, and I'll try to convert everyone else I can. I have my dad, my brother, my boss, and three friends on Gentoo. Of course, I don't think they would have made it if I wasn't there to help them through it. Lol, not I'm starting to sound like the stuck-up Gentoo zealot. Maybe I am ;)

[HHunt]

More or less the points I make for FreeBSD, that. Except that we have binary packages, too. :p
I really, really like ports. You get the managed compiles of portage, but every port can also be compiled to a package, and there's a central source of fairly new packages. Given the right tool (portupgrade), I can ask for "firefox+dependencies, and use packages whenever they're not older than the matching port".

To be fair, gentoo is perhaps the most BSDish distro out there, and being a linux has its benefits.

[visaris]

I have never used the BSD ports, but from what I have heard it is another great tool and similar to portage for Gentoo. I'll have to give it a try somtime. I think Gentoo can use binary packages as well, but I have never tried setting that part up as it doesn't appeal to me. Maybe someone else can post some more information on the subject.

[ThreeDee]

..I've been your average brainwashed , spoon-fed windows user since my inseption (SP?) into pc's. I have always enjoyed trying to tweak windows and got into overclocking for a time and all that ...

Recently I got a job at a private school as the resident 'grunt' techie guy .. remove spyware here .. replace a nic there .. pack some monitors to this classroom .. take some pics here and there and post them on school website ...

...I also get to run and maintain a computer lab for the students of which I have invested alot of my "dusty" comp parts so I could make 5 of the comps able to play halo and all 8 of my "gamer" comps able to play counterstrike ...

anyways ...aside from the windows parts of the lab .. I got my feet wet with Linux by setting up K12LTSP (basically Fedora Core 3) server and thin clients ... and I must say that I am thouroghly enjoying the learning process.... the more I learn , the more I realize how much I dont know ..lol , but the answers are all out here on the net somewhere , so it hasnt been to overwhelming.(plus my boss is an avid llnux user , but I only go to him as a last resort as I'm determined to try and find the answers on my own instead of being spoon fed anymore ...thanks uncle bill :p )

...I have read thru this whole thread and will venture out to other distros as a result to expand my horizons ..

I have also been setting up alot of Smoothwall boxes for our school and myself and been having a grand ol time with that as well...

I am currently researching what flavor of linux I could put on an old P233 w/64megs of ram Metrobook laptop that would be extremely easy to use and not bloated so it would run fairly decently speed wise ...this is for an older lady in my church that doesnt know diddley about computers or windows for that matter ...just wants to turn the lappie on , go online and surf a bit and check email .. I could throw win98 back on it , but I would like to go with a linux OS for increased security and not have to worry so much about spyware and/or viruses (of which is why I have her laptop in the first place :rolleyes: )

I currently have FC 3 installed on it and it runs good ...but just super duper slow ..so am looking for another alternative.

so ..if you have any suggestions ..I would sure love to hear them .

[[H]EMI_426]

I think Gentoo can use binary packages as well, but I have never tried setting that part up as it doesn't appeal to me.It would if you had hundreds of machines to administer. :)

I'm a FreeBSD user. I love ports. However, if I were to roll out FreeBSD in any large capacity, you can bet your ass I wouldn't be building ports on every single machine. I'd use pkgs when provided by the FreeBSD folks; otherwise I'd have one package build machine and roll any special or non-packaged apps myself, then distribute them to the other machines.

Local package repositories are great for just that reason...You don't waste network bandwidth, you don't waste time compiling for each machine, etc. You build one package that does everything you want (and if you're smart about the way you set things up, one package can do everything you want as far as that application is concerned) and distribute that.

On FreeBSD, a pkg and a port are handled identically once they are installed, cause for all intents and purposes they are the same thing. The only difference is who and where it was built.

[HHunt]

Besides, setting up a FreeBSD package repository is dead simple. Going from memory and manpages (because I've never tried) :

On the server:
Set up an ftp-server with /usr/ports/packages as the root directory, readable by an anonymous user.
Compile the neccesary ports with "make package" instead of the normal "make install", or add the -p switch to portinstall.

On the clients:
Set PACKAGESITE to "ftp://server/All/" [1].
Install the packages with pkg_add -r or portinstall -PP .


[1] It might be nicer to set PACKAGEROOT to "ftp://server", but that requires a certain directory structure on the server. It's not much work, but if all the clients can use the same packages, why bother.

[DaturaX]

I am currently researching what flavor of linux I could put on an old P233 w/64megs of ram Metrobook laptop that would be extremely easy to use and not bloated so it would run fairly decently speed wise ...this is for an older lady in my church that doesnt know diddley about computers or windows for that matter ...just wants to turn the lappie on , go online and surf a bit and check email .. I could throw win98 back on it , but I would like to go with a linux OS for increased security and not have to worry so much about spyware and/or viruses (of which is why I have her laptop in the first place :rolleyes: )


Slackware with XFCE4 or fluxbox as the windows manager. I ran Ubuntu with XFCE4 on a PII 233mhz laptop with 192MB RAM. It was usable.

[HHunt]

IceWM would probably work, too. It's light, and vaguely resembles Win95, which might be a plus.

[Carnival Forces]

Damn Small Linux (www.damnsmalllinux.org) would always be a good choice...

http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/145.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&id=145)

[velusip]

It does not matter what Linux distro you use. It does not matter. It runs with a Linux kernel, you can configure yourself, and then you install exactly what software and drivers you want to run. There is no difference from one Linux distro to another.

On top of that, if you think you need to run Linux over X or Windows, you're going to have to learn a few things, so don't bother finding an "easy" distro as it will just blanket you from important details.

EXCEPTION: Debian sucks. ;)

[HHunt]

It does not matter what Linux distro you use. It does not matter. It runs with a Linux kernel, you can configure yourself, and then you install exactly what software and drivers you want to run. There is no difference from one Linux distro to another.

On top of that, if you think you need to run Linux over X or Windows, you're going to have to learn a few things, so don't bother finding an "easy" distro as it will just blanket you from important details.

EXCEPTION: Debian sucks. ;)


It does matter. Just not for the end result. :)
(It's more work to strip a large distro than to expand a light one, if you want a light result. At least if the "large" one doesn't also have an install option for a minimal install.)

[Carloswill]

I want to give Slackware a try on my machine but am not sur eif it will run with my Intel Pentium 4 system which will require a SMP kernel.

[HHunt]

I would guess that a non-SMP kernel would boot fine on an SMP system, though it'll of course ignore the second CPU. As for compiling an SMP kernel, slack shouldn't handle it any worse than anything else.

[DaturaX]

EXCEPTION: Debian sucks. ;)

Debian dont suck. Its package manager apt-get is a god-send from heaven for administrators with lotsa systems. With just apt-get update and apt-get upgrade, i can get the latest security updates.

And debian distro cycle is 3 years which goes to say theres a lot of testing done prior to its release.

[locutus24]

Debian dont suck. Its package manager apt-get is a god-send from heaven for administrators with lotsa systems. With just apt-get update and apt-get upgrade, i can get the latest security updates.

And debian distro cycle is 3 years which goes to say theres a lot of testing done prior to its release.
I must concur with you, when i was a linux noobie who didnt know how to compile files then run them apt-get always had my back. Arguing that Debian sucks is a pointless argument, cause i doesnt suck it is just one of the many well to do distros

[alexyang]

I think Ubuntu is the best because it works.

Slackware probably forces you to learn Linux more than any other distribution, but Ubuntu workss.

[Shadowchild]

Time for my story.

Right now I'm currently a bit of a fan of Yoper, mainly because it actually worked with *all* of my hardware, no problems. Still working on getting my vid card to 100%, but it still works just fine. As for setup, it was unbelievably easy. Even managed my dual-boot just fine, configured Lilo for Windows and everything. Package management has been an absolute breeze, and everything just glides along. Plus, this sucker runs FAST.

Past experiences include Slackware 10.1, which I ditched off my laptop after about a week. One week only, because that was how long I spent trying to get my Linmodem to work. Still never managed to swing that one by, and right now it's sitting and gathering dust while my power brick is MIA, but once I find it/get a new one, it's probably going to get Yoper as well. My only problems with Slackware were the absolute beast of a setup to get the thing running, and I never could manage to get the kernel to compile. Yeah, yeah, I know it should be easy, it just never worked, and I probably jammed through 20 different tutorials on it, read Running Linux , Linux for Dummies , and about 5 other books cover to cover to learn a bit more, and actually be able to use it. It just got too tiring after a while. I figure eventually I'll get irritated with Yoper and switch to Slackware/Gentoo, but for right now this thing is *great* to learn Linux with. Plus, I could never get F@H to work with Slackware quite right, but I got it up and running with Yoper in less than 5 minutes, including reboot time for double-checking.

[velusip]

*bite bite* Geez you guys.

I'm just being funny. However there is some truth from my POV. Debian is the only distro I ever had problems with and it was because of apt-get. Either there would not be a preconfigured copy of the software I was looking to install, or the software installed wouldn't work (probably due to non-standard system configuration on my part), or the newly installed software would break something else (version problems). I'm guessing this is because of the lack of prompt updating due to a long release cycle.

I agree with starting light rather than chopping up a heavy distro. A tiny Slack might weigh 40MB and then jump to about 250MB once I have everything I want installed.

[Zecora]

No even though i am kind of new to linux. I started out with the basic beginner distros. Like redhat and Mandrake. I then moved to Gentoo and haven't looked back. The reason i have kept using Gentoo is becuase i like the user customization ability. I also like the portage system. It becomes very useful.

[locutus24]

Cant decide right now, i like mandrake for its use of RPMs since the ATI drivers are RPMs for xorg at least i also like mandrake cause my usb headset works with it. Ubuntu isnt much different from mandrake except that my headset and video card are both refusing to work under unubuntu, but ubuntu is good cause it actually sees my correct CD drives. Mandrake sees an imaginary drive hdc which i have in but it doesnt work, so then when i want to install a file i need to do it manually from the CD. Right now though i am not sure what i want to do, i might go back to my cheap nvidia pci card just so i can use ubuntu again, but just to be nice ill give mandrake a week :rolleyes:

[obsolete]

anyone else like using mepis? or even used this distro before?

[I(illa Bee]

I just installed Fedora! So far I seem to like it? I think?

Not sure if I did the boot loader right? Both XP and Fedora work, but it has to boot Fedora first then I have to hit a key in like 3 secounds to tell it to boot other...

+ Fedora dosnt work with my docking station at work??? I have to leave the pannel open (up) and since fedora boot loader comed up first, i can properly get my screen to come on when i dock it an close the lid...

[Carloswill]

I am suprised I did not see as much Debian on here.

I tried Slackware 10.1 and it was not right for me. I had a hell of a time installing Gnome and nothing felt very polished as it should.

Debian is something I am just learning but I hear nothing but good things about. I will wait till I get a GUI before I make my own comments about how good a distro it is.

Fedora for me was always hands down a very simple and well put together package.

[Carloswill]

I just installed Fedora! So far I seem to like it? I think?

Not sure if I did the boot loader right? Both XP and Fedora work, but it has to boot Fedora first then I have to hit a key in like 3 secounds to tell it to boot other...

+ Fedora dosnt work with my docking station at work??? I have to leave the pannel open (up) and since fedora boot loader comed up first, i can properly get my screen to come on when i dock it an close the lid...

You can change the boot order to have Windows XP be 1st and also extend the auto select so that you can actually blink before selecting an OS.

IIRC it was /boot/grub.conf file that you need to edit but that may vary depeding on your version of Fedora. If you're not using FC4 - then you should be!

[I(illa Bee]

You can change the boot order to have Windows XP be 1st and also extend the auto select so that you can actually blink before selecting an OS.

IIRC it was /boot/grub.conf file that you need to edit but that may vary depeding on your version of Fedora. If you're not using FC4 - then you should be!

I am on FC4, ill have to look at that thanks!

[Carloswill]

Yes - I am not very strong with Linux but I do have a strong love for it and must say I think Fedora 4 is great for people who want something to work straight out of the box.

From installation to everyday functions, to system administration: Fedora just works.

I now would like to get my hands dirty and did not like Slackware so decided to go to Debian and so far it's cool. I just have CLI with no GUI but I hope that will all change soon.

[deuce868]

Debian/Debian based

From laptop to desktop to server I can use various debian distros and it all just works. Someone said that installing a package broken something, well in debian stable that's NEVER happened to me on my servers (2+years) and that's why it's the only thing I'll put on there. I never fear upgrading or installing on there.

It's nice that there are other distros (Libranet/Mepis/Ubuntu) that work on newer hardware keyed to the desktop more so that I can learn one system and use it on both of my desktops, my laptop, and my servers at work with one knowledge base.

Oh, and the debian logo is just cooler than everyone elses. :D

[1c3d0g]

...

I tried Slackware 10.1 and it was not right for me. I had a hell of a time installing Gnome and nothing felt very polished as it should.

...
Slackware was never really GNOME-centric in the first place. Pat said this many times himself. GNOME was becoming such a pain to integrate that it's now officially not part of Slackware anymore. If you prefer GNOME, there are plenty of other distro's which offer a better integration of that DE (Ubuntu is one distro that comes to my mind). :)

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ubuntu

[velusip]

It's probably important for me to add my bias: I don't use GUIs! I once tried RatPoison and thought it to be excellent, but in the end I just ripped all that nonsense out. I agree that it is a pain to get a GUI going on a distro not prepared for it, but of course it is possible.

[HHunt]

It's probably important for me to add my bias: I don't use GUIs! I once tried RatPoison and thought it to be excellent, but in the end I just ripped all that nonsense out. I agree that it is a pain to get a GUI going on a distro not prepared for it, but of course it is possible.

Out of curiosity, what do you use your installations for?

[velusip]

Out of curiosity, what do you use your installations for?
Well over the past few years it went like this:

Familiar for school notes, postscripts, and listening to music and playing games while commuting on my iPaq. (Eiwaz)
Slack for web and ventrilo servers (Ansuz, Raido, Gebo, Glitch) and Slack for warwalking (I don't have a car) on a 50Mhz satellite pro (Mannaz)
ELKS for rcon workbench, a Toshiba T1000. (Inguz)
TinySlack for iptables, dns, and file server on an old triple proc Eisa machine. (Uruz)
WinXP on the fun fun silly willy machine. (Wunjo)


Unfortunately Eiwaz and Ansuz recently died, Uruz went through a shredder, gave Gebo and Glitch to my sister, and Inguz is a fire hazard so I'm down a few, but was graciously donated console access to several others which will remain nameless. I need to start getting newer, smaller, quiet computers. ;)

[1c3d0g]

Well over the past few years it went like this:
...
Slack for web and ventrilo servers (Ansuz, Raido, Gebo, Glitch) and Slack for warwalking (I don't have a car) ...

...
ROFL!!! :p Now THAT is funny! Warwalking...I gotta remember that! :D

[SiathLinux]

I'll keep this short...yeah short..

98 bought a comp..with Win98, and a ton of other software - nice package deal...
99 by this time 98 had crashed so many times that I'd lost count so I bought RH 6.0.
00 missed my windows games, and set up dual boot with 98se/RH 6.0
04 d/l copy of Mandrake 10, set up triple boot - later that year I lost my windows hdd..so when I replace the hdd, I just dual boot Win98/Mandrake
05 d/l copy of FC4, was given the update ME disk ... so the dual boot is now ME/FC4
Hopefully later this year I'll get a copy of XP and dual boot it with FC4 until FC5 final comes out...

I only play my games on Windows, I do EVERYTHING else on LInux (and actually I play some games on Linux too....ksirtet, tuxracer, mahjongg, etc..)

I do plan on eventually finishing the dream behind getting my dual processor PIII, it has onboard scsi, and i wanted to run a massive multiboot on it..- with Mandrake, FC, Debian, Gentoo, FreeBSD, and at least on more....and WindowsXP = 6 scsi drives with a linux/bsd/unix based os on each, 2 ide drives - one with XP and a small one as the primary ide drive (aka the C drive in Windows) as the boot drive - with its mbr having Lilo on it to control the multiboot.

[Worminater]

um.............


DEBIAN!!!

:D

I ran rh 9 dual booted on my laptop a few years back before the fedorah switch; liked that. I screwed around with a few other distros (slack, mandrake mainly i think) and a buddy of mine started telling me how great apt was. So i installed it on my server box(p3 450 mhz) and its sat there purring since day one. I literally installed nothing at install, including X (i remember opening up a man page and saying "wtf? why cant i scroll easily.."

ah, the good ol' days. i currently ahve ubuntu 64 dual booted on the rig in sig; with a fresh debian stable on my p3 due to a hard drive upgrade (old one too noisy).

Apt has been good to me; no dependency hell and everything just seems to work (2 years running it now)

I should use my Ubuntu partition more but school keeps me too busy

[abudhu]

Still a SuSE guy. Downloaded SuSE 10 RC 1 about a week ago. Its pretty darn nice. Has some problems though, but its a RC so I expected that.

I did have FC 4 for a while, which I thought was one helluva Distro, but everytime I updated the kernel + OpenOffice through Up2Date, OpenOffice refused to load after I restarted the computer. Not sure why...so I went back to SuSE. That's not to say I didn't try to fix it, but I got way to frustrated so I went back.

Dual Booting XPx64 / SuSE RC 1

[thuper]

Slackware

Very fast and minimal, but I get everything I need. I can get it to boot in about 20 seconds and it runs asterisk right away. The only thing it *used to be missing* was slapt-get.

[Carloswill]

Have you tried 10.2? How do you like it if so?

[FSCDiablo]

http://www.frinkadelic.com/images/misc/zen3.png (http://zenwalk.org)

Zenwalk, has been wonderful for me. It has a KISS philosphy and 1 tool for the job setup. A full install takes about 1.1Gb HD, from 1 400MB iso, very light on mem usage, and gives you all the basics you need for a desktop environment. It's exactly what I want in my desktop.

[draconius]

well I finally made the desktop OS switch...

I used to use FreeBSD exclusively, but I have been bashing my head against the wall with lots of little problems that all were adding up to a big headache for me on my workstation.

I had the opportunity to try out Ubuntu linux the other day, and I thought it was slick, so I installed it on my workstation.

I have to admit, that out of the box, and with ~5 hours worth of playing around, I am doing everything I used to do on my FreeBSD workstation, and also I am able to do alot of the things I couldn't do on the FreeBSD install (again, just lots and lots of little things that didnt work right)

I am thoroughly impressed. I have been a BSD guy since I started with computers, and I still swear by BSD on servers...but hot damn, it sure is nice to have a fast, fully functional desktop machine that is stable, reliable, and open source!

[lovelyx]

SuSE 10.0 work perfectly for me, although a dual boot is works best for me.
I use windows only for gaming and designing websites with Macromedia Studio.
I use linux for everything else.

[HopePoisoned]

there is no perfect distro

everything is for everyone else - I like FC and Ubuntu, Slackware is also excellent along with a very small not so popular distro called GoblinX, I know the creater - great look, too

they all have charms - all very stable

FC allows you to specify all the right things, very great interface - Ubuntu is very easy and great to use, you might prefer FC just because of the specifications they ask you to specify by default - and slackware is the hardest to use out of all I named, but the skills you get from Slackware will make you a very self sufficient Linux user, as well as being a very powerful and stable distro

i did a bad job of explaining my choices, but eh...eahy

[FoxhoundOp]

I'm a Linux newbie, but I'm using Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE desktop) and I'm lovin it. The only reason I haven't uninstalled Windows XP is because I love BF2 so much, but the thought of giving up my games, and ridding myself of Windows has crossed my mind a couple of times :) (not gonna happen, though..)

[qb4ever]

I pick Ubuntu because of the hardware detection, It all the hardware on my notebook when suse and mandrake couldn't.


oh yeah, one other thing holding me back. it's quite trivial, but i'm just very accustomed to it i guess. mozilla in linux will not close tabs when i middle click on them. for some reason, it tries to open web pages with the miscellaneous words i highlight on a page (obviously something with copy/paste as i know highlighting does that), but i just want it to close the damn tab, not give me errors that it cannot find the webpage "random words go here".

I've been having the same problem since I upgraded from Ubuntu 5.04 to 5.10, I have looked through all the menus and settings but can't find anything on it, It's driving me nuts. :mad: Off to google I go to figure this out..

[The_Mage18]

Speaking from my personal experiance here and adding my 2 cents to it.

Mandrake = *spits on that damn star wand in Tux's hand* Any distro that makes you jump through hoops to login as root and throws up errors even when editing the fstab for the floppy drive, is crap.

Suse = Not bad, not my personal preference but definitly one of the easier to use distros. Nearly everything configuration wise goes through YAST making it simple to change and configure things. You can still do things the old fasioned /etc/configfile way. I had to use Professional 9.3 due to licensing reasons at work and I'm honestly not upset at all now.

RedHat = Old school, 9 or below. Loved em They're pretty bare starting out but oh so configurable. Even when I was still using Lilo I had an animated Lilo loading screen.

Fedora Core = I stopped trying after the disaster that was core 3. It just wasn't stable on my box. Core 2 had a known issue with Asus P4P and P4C motherboards that was never patched to my knowledge. Core 4 from what I've read has changed dramatically now that Red Hat has pulled their head out of their ass and not turned their backs on it anymore.

Ubuntu = Installed it once but couldn't get my USB devices to work worth anything. It also didn't let me login as root. After that I never tried it again. It was probably a bad install but I didn't have the time to play around with it so I moved on.

[HopePoisoned]

Speaking from my personal experiance here and adding my 2 cents to it.

Mandrake = *spits on that damn star wand in Tux's hand* Any distro that makes you jump through hoops to login as root and throws up errors even when editing the fstab for the floppy drive, is crap.

Suse = Not bad, not my personal preference but definitly one of the easier to use distros. Nearly everything configuration wise goes through YAST making it simple to change and configure things. You can still do things the old fasioned /etc/configfile way. I had to use Professional 9.3 due to licensing reasons at work and I'm honestly not upset at all now.

RedHat = Old school, 9 or below. Loved em They're pretty bare starting out but oh so configurable. Even when I was still using Lilo I had an animated Lilo loading screen.

Fedora Core = I stopped trying after the disaster that was core 3. It just wasn't stable on my box. Core 2 had a known issue with Asus P4P and P4C motherboards that was never patched to my knowledge. Core 4 from what I've read has changed dramatically now that Red Hat has pulled their head out of their ass and not turned their backs on it anymore.

Ubuntu = Installed it once but couldn't get my USB devices to work worth anything. It also didn't let me login as root. After that I never tried it again. It was probably a bad install but I didn't have the time to play around with it so I moved on.

I can relate to what you're saying - but FC4 is a VAST improvement worth a shot, and your Ubuntu problems are odd...never had a problem with that, and never heard of it, try 5.04 and 5.10 (dont use 64 bit edition, use the standard PC ones - makes a big difference), and between 5.04 and 5.10 you'll get what you need - for some people 5.10 wasn't as successful and for some the other way around

they are great distros if you really evaluate them, but I do know what you're talking about and can agree

what distro are you on now?

[berky]

I pick Ubuntu because of the hardware detection, It all the hardware on my notebook when suse and mandrake couldn't.


I've been having the same problem since I upgraded from Ubuntu 5.04 to 5.10, I have looked through all the menus and settings but can't find anything on it, It's driving me nuts. :mad: Off to google I go to figure this out..


I have since found a solution to the problem... download the extension "tab mix plus". there is an option in there to change the functionality.

sorry for being off-topic

[nigerian_businessman]

I'm gonna put in my vote for SimplyMEPIS. I'm not a big linux guy and although I've used it before, I always used windows as my primary machine because linux never quite met my needs. Well, for the first time ever, in I don't know how many years since I started messing around with Linux, I can finally say that I've got a desktop I can live with in Linux. The install was easy, hell I could browse the web while it installed due to the Live CD. Everything just works. the KDE desktop is extremely slick after a little customizing, dare I say I like this BETTER than my windows desktop and that's saying a lot. The only thing I'm missing is my games, and they're just a dual boot away. The audio player amaroK is one of the slickest apps I've ever had the pleasure of using. Apt-get is wonderful, updating to KDE 3.5 took all of 5 minutes,

The only complaint I can come up with is that firefox doesn't retain my minimum font size requirements. Konquerer does but it doesnt like the color scheme I've come up with. Minor annoyance and something Im sure I can fix when I get sick of it. This isn't a problem in Windows, for what it's worth. Oh, and the default linux fonts aren't that great, although that was a simple enough fix -- copied over all the truetype fonts from windows and I'm good to go.

[Ghettobox]

My vote is BSD...not a linux distro..but hell where else am I going to go with this. PCbsd to be exact. Easier install than ANY linux distro..great hardware detection..Ports..PBI's. KDE 3.5, Running Opera 8.5 with flash, Gaim, Ktorrent, Openoffice etc. Cant get enough of it. Replaced my windows box.

[Xipher]

This one isn't actually mine, but one of my teachers put it together and manages it.
BCCD (http://bccd.cs.uni.edu/)

[Carloswill]

because I can apt-get porn... ;)

[SirViro]

I've had some experience with several distributions as well.. I guess I'll relate my experience here, hehe.

I really started messing with *nix for about 3 years now.

Red Hat - My initial thought was, wow, nice install, easy to use. Then came the dependancy hell. Told myself, ok, fsck this (nix joke) and went on my merry way.

Mandrake - Installed this, nice and quick, easy to use. Wait a sec, nothing works right! Dependancy hell again! God dammit!! :P

Analogy time folks: Red Hat breaks, and Mandrake is packaged broken. (This stands from 3 years ago, and I've never used them both since then)

Fedora Core 2 - I loved this, nice, stable, works and plays nice with Winblows. Don't care for RPM craptasticness, yay for yum.
Fedora Core 3 - I didn't know they could mess it up.
Fedora Core 4 - It gets worse, dag yo. It feels very sluggish, I'm positive something has been borked.

FreeBSD - Ok, I messed up the installation and then got it working. Had one hell of a time with the X install and gave up. I plan to try again in the future, but I've abused myself enough this year.

Knoppix - Woot, bootable CD for when I hose something. I do like the functionality of this distro.

Lindows/Linspire - I'm impressed with the effort to get a smooth, stable experience. It's a very nice transition for Windows users who want to get a feel for a working distro. Five-O has nice functionality and is simple to use. The package management, the custom software, etc.. It's nice, but not for hardcore linux folks. They should call it Spoonfed Loonucks.

Debian - I like it. It's stable, pretty, and easy to use.

Slackware - A good distro as well, but not for lightweights. It does take some effort to install and whatnot, but it's a very nice OS.

Ubuntu/Kubuntu - I have to say that I love this distro, it functions perfectly out of the box on EVERYTHING I've installed it on. The support and community is wonderful, and the 6 month cycle is a work of art. I've been using this distro for about 4 months now as the primary OS for my laptop and I'm posting from it now.

I've been stuck on Ubuntu and will continue with it. I've even compiled my own kernal for it.

Anywho, my 2 cents.

[locutus24]

Slacware 10.2 ftw, just cause of how close it comes to being like gentoo as far as speed is concerned. The lack of package management is a small problem, thus far my only problems have been dealing with missing libraries and building them. Other then that, everything builds flawlessly using ./configure make make install those three commands have yet to fail me.

[Carloswill]

Slackware = text junkies.

[BillLeeLee]

Slackware is very text-based, because its design philosophy was focused on simplicity. Many do think that the text based configurations, lack of GUI installers and the like, but for those that are willing to learn, Slackware can be a very rewarding learning experience. It does have somewhat of a steeper learning curve, but it's a very transparent system.

That said, I really like Slackware and ZenWalk (mini-Slack), after my venture into the Debian world.

[draconius]

I am going to throw *another* vote in for ubuntu as a good n00bie distrobution because of the "Automatix" package that you can install....it allows a linux n00bie to install a multitude of useful software through a GUI and also automatically configures some options that people unfamiliar with linux may not know how to change...

check it at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=66563

[rubasu]

Slackware is very text-based, because its design philosophy was focused on simplicity. Many do think that the text based configurations, lack of GUI installers and the like, but for those that are willing to learn, Slackware can be a very rewarding learning experience. It does have somewhat of a steeper learning curve, but it's a very transparent system.

That said, I really like Slackware and ZenWalk (mini-Slack), after my venture into the Debian world.

so true, I've been using slackware since the day one when I made the move to linux back in 1998 and I love it. I enjoy downloading just the source of any application, compiling it myself and making changes that suit my needs. I tried redhat, ubuntu, mandrake (mandriva?) and debian and I still keep on coming back to my slackware <3

I think everyone who is really interested in learning linux should use slackware or distros alike since its the best way to learn and expirience linux like it was meant to be IMHO ;)

[osalcido]

suse 10 - yast, packman, novell backing, etc.

[Jake]

I guess my opinion won't really add much for some people, but I prefer Redhat. I don't use linux at home, just at work.

Redhat, in my opinion, has the best support out of the two major players. We have Novell in house because we used to use NDS (switched to AD) but we will continue using groupwise. Novell tried to tempt us to go to SLESand OES instead of RHEL. We didn't get anywhere near the support from Novell as we have Redhat. Redhat also has the best relationship with Dell (we are pretty much exclusive Dell servers), SLES was supposed to have OpenManage last summer but they still have nothing from what I've seen. Redhat also is aquiring JBoss which is what we have been planning on switching to for our java app server needs. That should make our purchasing people happy.

We have a Redhat Satellite that was a breeze to setup. Novell's ZLM is a nightmare in comparison (though it should do more).

One thing I like about SUSE is YAST. I don't really need all the tools together, but searching for one .so or rpm I need is much nicer in YAST than on Redhat.

[fibroptikl]

Here's a bit of my overview:

FreeBSD: Nice overall BSD distro. We used this as our OS for our appliances where we worked. It did/does osme goofy things. It's funny cause the one developer would often sit in the back trying to figure something out and go on a complete rant. They were very funny.

OpenBSD: Love it as a server OS. Secure, and simple. Was told about it by the one ranting developer I mentioned above.

Ubuntu: I like it as a desktop OS.

FC4: Won't install on my computer. Perhaps I'll try with FC5.

[ne0-reloaded]

I'd have to go with Debian for me. I was using it exclusively on my laptop for a couple months and loving it. I stopped using it because I coudn't get sound working on my laptop (couldn't find any drivers for em). Outside of a few smaller APIC related issues, it worked flawlessly. apt-get/synaptic is the greatest thing I've seen in linux (used it off and on for a few years).

plus debian is cooler than the rest

http://www.ox.compsoc.net/events/docs/coollinux-tt01/debian.jpg

[bob]

Freesco.

I give freesco my vote for an award, since their support forum is excellent, and its the most feature-packed router 486-friendly linux distro ive tried. Plus a total linux-noob can just about use it, due to it having wizards (no GUI). PnP support for NICs, and it has many add-on packages that are fairly simple to install.

[Xipher]

Slacware 10.2 ftw, just cause of how close it comes to being like gentoo as far as speed is concerned. The lack of package management is a small problem, thus far my only problems have been dealing with missing libraries and building them. Other then that, everything builds flawlessly using ./configure make make install those three commands have yet to fail me.
Slackware has package managment, but the manager doesn't include dep checking (what every one seems to think is required for something to be called a package manager).

[ne0-reloaded]

Slackware has package managment, but the manager doesn't include dep checking (what every one seems to think is required for something to be called a package manager).

don't you think that should be required of a package manager though? i mean the last thing you wanna do when installing some app is hunt down dependency after dependency. not bahsing or anything, but was just curious as to why u think that that shouldnt be included

[XOR != OR]

I guess my opinion won't really add much for some people, but I prefer Redhat. I don't use linux at home, just at work. Another vote for RH.

Don't get me wrong, it has it's quirks. However, they are workable. And some of the bigger software packages I run were written primarly with RH in mind ( asterisk is one ).

As long as it works, does what I want, with the least amount of headaches, that's all I'm after.

[Xipher]

don't you think that should be required of a package manager though? i mean the last thing you wanna do when installing some app is hunt down dependency after dependency. not bahsing or anything, but was just curious as to why u think that that shouldnt be included
If your using Slackware, I assume you know what something depends on, or how to find out. Most 3rd party packages tell you what they depend on any ways. Dep checking is what causes so much overhead for all the other package managers, while slackwares .tgz's are tarballs with a couple install scripts, and the pkg tools are just shell scripts.

K.I.S.S.

[eth00]

RH works pretty good for servers and what I deploy everywhere I can. There are some issues/bugs with it but there are just as many work arounds if needed.

For a desktop I like Ubuntu/Debian, the package management system is great and there is support for a LOT of hardware.

[Child of Wonder]

My two cents has to go with Debian. Ever since I started work as a consultant for a small company that had a Debian server, I've really grown to like it.

I've dealt mostly with RH in the past but I've found Debian and Ubuntu to be great.

Soon we'll be installing RH Enterprise on all our mail servers at work so I'll be working with that a lot more.

[enelson125]

I really like Ubuntu myself, Kubuntu in particular. It's a very easy to use distro, and you can still do a lot of neat stuff with it. The new Dapper Drake release is fantastic, being very easy to install. Though the options on the live cd installer leave a bit to be desired (like reiserfs as a filesystem formatting option).

Synaptic is one of the best package management systems I've seen thusfar. The community for Ubuntu is just amazing, so if you choose ubuntu make sure to go to the forums regularly.

[velusip]

I just tried Ubuntu. It's Debian. So that's neat. Lots of small and annoying problems just like any other distro. I realize more and more that they (distros) are all the same with their own set of pissers and there is no such thing as a distro that stays true to standards. Even it's own standards. If there was, the popular software you would run breaks all that anyway. It's such a mess.

[[H]EMI_426]

I just tried Ubuntu. It's Debian. So that's neat. Lots of small and annoying problems just like any other distro. I realize more and more that they (distros) are all the same with their own set of pissers and there is no such thing as a distro that stays true to standards. Even it's own standards. If there was, the popular software you would run breaks all that anyway. It's such a mess.Sounds like you're looking for FreeBSD. If they do change the way they do things it's well-documented. :)

[HHunt]

EMI_426']Sounds like you're looking for FreeBSD. If they do change the way they do things it's well-documented. :)

Indeed. Or the other BSDs, from what I've heard, though being even less mainstream than FreeBSD leads to certain other quirks and problems.

[lordurza]

well I think its interesting I seen libranet which btw is a Debian clone =)

im sure had I read all of them id have seen over a dozen other debian clones mentioned as well

as a 10 year Linux/UNIX admin and user going on 11 years now for UNIX
I have been since 1994 a Debian user for both personal use and recomended for servers.

and a 12 node amdxp 3200+/12 nodes amdxp 2500+ cluster running Debian 3(woody) testing at the time with PVM-Condore and OpenMosix
dpkg/Apt-get are by far obviously the best the Debian Security team is tops imo and in the Linux community as a whole

I fail to see how one can compare other packaged distros to debian imo anyways but for starters lets go with the packaging utilitys apt-get and dpkg used by debian and its many many clones

rpms by mostly rh(redhat/redhat enterprise) based systems over the years iv used many redhat ent loaded servers its pretty common and I dispise rpms and the apt-rpm they tried to get going which imo is a failure iv had loads of trouble using it with dependencies same for rpms them selves and what is the point of its package managment if im forced to simply either make my own rpm from source or build from source?

flame all you want, I will always dispise rpms

all distros of Linux are somewhat similar using the same kernel which is Linux it self and some use various boot loaders lilo and grub few other lesser used ones come to mind

any devlopers reading will know what I mean when I say redhat is dirty do I even need to mention its rpcs? and its booting processes or its patched to hell kernel? its just dirty and the commented sections in such config files as (## not sure why this works fast patch but it does work so keep it in place)

for GUIs they pretty much all use KDE/Gnome tho I am seeing less and less of Gnome as a main installed GUI and just KDE these days I will agree KDE is much nicer looking all around.

and to the user who first commented on this discussion listing various linux dists most of those use rpms and would have been around 80% the same not a very good selection

libranet is old and lacks updating imo go with Debian =)

[smizack]

Damn that's hard to read. Use periods (.) and Capitol Letters where they should be.

And my vote is for Debian also. I got started on RH 7.2 running some email servers and have tried many distros, but I keep going back to Debian.