Linux Distributions

[zfire89]

My favorite linux is fedora core 4, next to it would be ubuntu

[wmarsh]

SUSE Linux by far. Fedora is too incomplete. Debian is usually obsolescent and a bear to install.

 

SUSE works perfectly out of the box. Currently using 9.3.

 

See opensuse.org to download CD and DVD images

[wmarsh]

SUSE Linux by far. Fedora is too incomplete. Debian is usually obsolescent and a bear to install.

 

SUSE works perfectly out of the box. Currently using 9.3.

 

See opensuse.org to download CD and DVD images

 

Just upgraded to SUSE 10.

Surprised to find it supports hfsplus out of the box. So if you patch something and it won't boot, your Mactel can access your OS X file system and fix it from Linux. Just add the file system to fstab specifying hfsplus.

[DrJägermeister]

Suse 9.3 works fine for me & OSX86:

The bootloader Grub can boot OSX86, XP and Linux. Also it have access to the FAT32, ntfs and hsf+ partitions. Linux is the only OS witch support all file systems.

[Metrogirl]

My vote goes for Suse too. I'm on 9. Didn't know 10 was out so I'm going to have some fun this evening downloading it and no doubt fun tomorrow installing it. Then I will be playing with an HFS+ partition for OSx86 - sounds perfect.

 

No real reason for my preference apart from its compatibility with all my hardware and the fact that I'm comfortable with it after a lot of hassle with other flavours of Linux. I still have Fedora on a laptop which supports a specific app and I don't want to break it or reinstall so it will stay...

[Hagar]

I don't really understand Ubuntu's popularity.. I thought at first that it was due to the fact that it comes in ppc flavour & this comunity has a distinct mac-bias, but it's done great generally, as evidenced by its place in the dstrowatch rankings..

 

Anyhow, just to add to the list, my toolkit is never without knoppix, probably the best LiveCD Distro out there. I took the trouble to download the DVD so I use that, but I've yet to find any reason that it's better than the CD..

 

My wallet is incomplete without a Creditcard CD containing DSL, but in the ca. 50mb category I like Puppylinux, due to it's ability to write back to a CDRW. This allows you to customise the distro to a given machine, (useful to set up a boot cd for a machine whilst it waits for a new harddrive, for instance) and also to download & save files on the CD.

[beaviskob1]

This is my first post so here goes, Slack is sweet but takes some work. For my ease of use and compatiblity with my systems eMachines T3265 AthlonXP 3200 + Nvidia 6800 gt and my Lappy eMachines M6811 Athlon 64 3200 + Mobile 9600, These two obscure ditros ROCK! PcLinuxOnline and Kanotix64.

If you are looking for a KDE based distro I recomend trying these, they are both live-cd's that can be installed. PCLOS for 32 bit is mandriva based that TEXSTAR has done wonders with, ATI and Nvidia 3D versions and a modified synaptic for package management. Kanotix 64 is debian based so it works nicely also.

[zorxd]

if you want full control, install only packages that you want and learn Linux well : Debian

if you want something that looks like Debian but more easy : Ubuntu

if you want to compile all your apps from source : Gentoo

 

do not use something from a company (Fedora, Mandrake, etc)

If you want an OS controlled by a single company use Windows or OS X.

[quixos]

i've been "evaluating" linux distros since Yggdrasil Linux.

 

despite all the bells and whistles of other distros, Slackware is what i come back to again and again. it works out of the box, the documentation is great, the community is mature, and (yes, it stands out) polite.

 

one of the nice things about Slackware is that you pretty much have everything you need to build any application.

 

Slackware is known for being conservative on the kernel side.

 

However, in Slackware 10.2 ...

 

"For the first time, a 2.6 kernel with support for SCSI, RAID, and SATA is offered as a boot option in the installer (called "test26.s")." wow!

[furtivefelon]

i love freebsd.. btw, it's not a linux, freebsd is based on unix code..

 

mainly because of its unhypedness, and also i like to use an os that has proven stability in server environment, as i do alot of development for web, need to be familier with the os i'm using on my server

 

other than that, i see no reason not using ubuntu.. it's a quite good desktop os my vote still goes to freebsd, as it's what i'm using..

[cyrana]

I prefer Ubuntu personally, although I did use gentoo for quite a while. Even though I started on Ygdrassil or whatever back in 1995, I don't have the patience for some things any more.

Edited January 5, 2006 by cyrana

[Revenant]

SuSE 10 rocks .. because it has APT,RPM and YAST ( Best Control Center EveR)..

 

just try it and you will live what I am talking about ! :pirate2:

[DrJägermeister]

SuSE 10 rocks

I just upgrade from Suse 9.3 to Suse 10, here's a Screenshot (with lg3D):

Great Hardware support in Suse 10 (my WLAN was not working in 9.3).

[axept]

you should check this one:

 

http://www.zenwalk.org/

 

It's Slackware based . uses kernel 2.6.14.2 and most important the new reiser4fs that gives a tremendous speed to the system.

It has XFCE as gui instead of KDE/Gnome

 

http://www.xfce.org/index.php?page=screenshots&lang=en

 

After this, i confess that Mac OSX86 it´s not so desirable like it was 3 months ago.

[quixos]

i loved it when it was called MiniSlack. the whole ZenWalk thing stopped the growing buzz in it's tracks. nothing against the distro or people using it. but such a strange decision to exchange such a descriptive name for something so ornamental and indistinct, so ungoogleable if you know what i mean.

 

will have to try it out again. god i hate that name! /me flip flops.

Edited January 11, 2006 by quixos

[DarkCarnival]

Saying a specific linux is the best hands-down would be kind of stupid now wouldn't it

 

It's like argueing over which sort of clothing you should wear which also is a heavily subjective debate. I think you should just nail down which kind of person you are and then most people would probably be able to name about 3 offerings that may sound like a sure fit

 

Personal favorites may be:

Slackware

(Definatly the hardest one to use, despite what people may say about Gentoo, this is definatly roll-your-own, but great fun too ) --Also this is a very BSD-like system as I understand it, I really enjoyed the simplicity of it.

Gentoo

(Different stages take different amounts of time, with Stage 1 installs being the "I have no life at all" warning. If you can stand a two days install though, it can end up being really fast and flexible, just don't use a slow CPU or harddrive)

Ubuntu

The worlds easiest way of installing, uninstalling and upgrading software (Debians APT) combined with the money of a nutty millionaire and the ease of use to make it user-friendly (My stepdad can use this and he's the kind of person who can't even open a new document once he's inside the word processor!)

[antiflag1980]

I've used gentoo on all of my machines for a couple years now and it's the way to go for me, but when I have friends or family that are tired of having me try to fix or reinstall windows for them all the time and are willing to give linux a try, I usually set them up with ubuntu since it's a lot easier to set up for the most part and easier for them to understand how to maintain themselves once set up. It sucks that proprietary things like mp3, divx and dvds don't work out of the box until you run something like easy ubuntu or easy kubuntu or automatix, but if you can get those things working it's okay. I personally think gentoo is actually much easier to maintain as long as the person your installing for is proficient enough to be able to understand things like /etc/portage/package.mask and /etc/portage/package.keywords and revdep-rebuild and stuff when they run into a dependency problem with an emerge -uDva world or something.

[-.-]

I vote for ExTiX

 

I installed (live cd but whith hd installer on it) with the option to keep the Knoppix look that is on the live cd once, and another time I installed it with the debian style. I like both ways so much it is hard do decide which is the best. There was a third option can't remember what it was though.

 

It has several different destops you choose at login including x and whatever that newest one is I don't recall the name, the same one that is on elive, it's not completed though so you can customize it to your liking and forced to learn it to do that, it has the tutor. The one called rat doesn't work though you will freeze and have to reset.

 

I give it five stars and I have tried at least about 40 different distros.

[Baliw]

SimplyMepis for me is by far the easiest and best distro ever, imho

[jbjonas]

Meh,

 

I prefer FreeBSD to Linux. Anyway, it shouldn't even be among the list of linux variants, as FreeBSD is actually UNIX. The nice thing about it is that it also has compatibility options for running things compiled for linux...

[-.-]

Meh,

 

I prefer FreeBSD to Linux. Anyway, it shouldn't even be among the list of linux variants, as FreeBSD is actually UNIX. The nice thing about it is that it also has compatibility options for running things compiled for linux...

I think it is included because you FreeBSD people are like the blacksheep of the family, but we still consider you family. :censored2:

[jbjonas]

well thanks for the friendliness, brother :censored2:

[lord_muad_dib]

gentoo all the way!

gentoo is not only compile from source, it's the most clean distro i've ever seen.

no dirty dependances, no apps installed randomly on the filesystem

 

and... you're not forced to compile the whole system you can use precompiled packages and have a fully funcional system in 30 minutes

 

after that you can compile binaries to fit your needs

 

and last but not the last... you can use the laaaaaaaaaatest version of your favourite software

 

with gentooo you can truly understand the core of linux!

[TA_Superman]

I can't swear by Gentoo. I went through the whole damn process of compiling everything from scratch. Took me about 20 something hours. In the end the thing still took almost a minute to boot into pretty plain GDM/Gnome desktop. The apps do start up slightly faster but was the 0.2s that every app gains in speed worth the 20 hours install? I don't think so. It's not really a desktop distribution, more like a server distro. I did learn a few things about linux by going through the whole thing, but in the end it was frustrating spending 20 hours just to uninstall the damn thing because it wasn't as "l337" as people claim it is.

 

My favorite OS hands down is now SUSE. This is the closest thing to a desktop OS there is out there. Suse 10.0 looks amazing and supports alot of the things most Linux distro's fail to such as integrated WPA management with the wireless config. The package manager is not my favorite but it works.

 

Suse 10.1 is going to be amazing. I tried out beta3 and the whole look is so impressive even without 3d acceleration it was beatiful. Can't wait till they integrate compiz and xgl. Now the only thing left for desktop linux is multimedia support and of course the "killer apps" that will make you want to switch.

[sulfo]

SARGE