Which Linux Distro?

[RampantAndroid]

OK, can we get a little back to the topic this thread was started to answer? Which distro is best....

So far, I've seen things for Fedora Core 4, Suse, Mandiva aka Mandrake, Gentoo.


I am simply looking for what might be considered the best Linux to install on my computer. All I want is a simple pointer as to which will do best. Will running 64-bit do better (I can get fedora, and mandriva in 64 bit from what I've seen, maybe suse too, as well as gentoo?)

I am relativly new to the linux scene, although I have used it in past, so I'm not a complete noob. But there are soo many frigging distros that my head is spiining. Could someone give me a straight assessment of the distros I listed?

Thanks!

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: RampantAndroid
OK, can we get a little back to the topic this thread was started to answer? Which distro is best....

So far, I've seen things for Fedora Core 4, Suse, Mandiva aka Mandrake, Gentoo.


I am simply looking for what might be considered the best Linux to install on my computer. All I want is a simple pointer as to which will do best. Will running 64-bit do better (I can get fedora, and mandriva in 64 bit from what I've seen, maybe suse too, as well as gentoo?)

I am relativly new to the linux scene, although I have used it in past, so I'm not a complete noob. But there are soo many frigging distros that my head is spiining. Could someone give me a straight assessment of the distros I listed?

Thanks!

Slackware is without a doubt the best. Anyone that disagrees must have a different opinion.

 

[RampantAndroid]

Yeah, well slackware isnt the best for guis I have read....

 

[RampantAndroid]

I'll put it this way...I am looking at Gentoo, Fedora Core 4, and Mandrake 10.1, with intentions to use WINE on it (meaning no 64 bit)

Which is the best? I read about Gentoo's "portage"....but is this better than Mandrake's and Fedora's own update agents?

Does the fact you compile Gentoo yourself give any real advantage, and how hard is it to compile?

Does Gentoo Support Disdruid or some similar method of playing with already partitioned drives? If not...then I won't even bother, since I will need to alter my partiton on my drive I will install on.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: RampantAndroid
I'll put it this way...I am looking at Gentoo, Fedora Core 4, and Mandrake 10.1, with intentions to use WINE on it (meaning no 64 bit)

Which is the best? I read about Gentoo's "portage"....but is this better than Mandrake's and Fedora's own update agents?

Maybe. They're free, try them all.

Does the fact you compile Gentoo yourself give any real advantage, and how hard is it to compile?

No, not very.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: RampantAndroid
Yeah, well slackware isnt the best for guis I have read....

No you have it wrong. GUIs aren't the best for slackware.

 

[RampantAndroid]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: RampantAndroid
Yeah, well slackware isnt the best for guis I have read....

No you have it wrong. GUIs aren't the best for slackware.

Haha, yes...the whole GUI thing has been overdone for people who are too lazy to learn command promps such as MS-DOS or Linux.

I think I will then go with Fedora Core 4, since I'm seeing a lot of good things about it....its that or mandrake....partially because they both have disk druid and allow me to mess with my already partitioned HD.

 

[djnsmith7]

I don't know what decisions you've made as of yet, but I'm going to put in my .02 for the heck of it. I've been a Linux user off & on for about 4 years now. I loved it when I installed Red Hat 5.2 & I still love it now. All of these guys in this thread whom are praising Linux & giving it its full credit due are right on the money. Linux can do just about everything MS can do & then some. In order to get to that point though, you do have to invest time, energy & a whole lot of effort.

I highly recommend you take the least expensive route to introduce yourself to Linux. I don't know how many different books I've purchased in Used, but Excellent condition from Amazon.com. If you go on Amazon.com & search for Linux Books, you'd be amazed at the results. I probably spent a total of $50 for about 7 or 8 books just from that site. The cool thing is, most of the books come with Complete Installation discs, so you don't have to spend anymore $$$. When I first started Linux, I think I spent $30 on an awesome book (at the time) & got all my discs with the book.

For a novice Linux User, I highly recommend starting out with one of the "Teach Yourself Linux in 24 Hours" books. Sure, I might get flamed on here for recommending these books, as some of the more experienced users here may say those books aren't useful, but I'll completely disagree in advance. For those that agree, cheers!

If you decide to move up a notch from those books, which you probably will once you start to see the potential of Linux first hand, I also recommend you look into some of the Linux Bibles. Another great resource for a lot of very useful material, ranging from as much Command Line sequences as you could ask for, to some very extensive information on running Linux Apache Server. Red Hat editions from 5.2 through 9.0 all come with Apache Server on the discs. If you choose to do a Complete Install from the discs, you'll automatically have your very own Web & Email Server built into your Linux Box. Pretty cool stuff.

Wow, I could talk all night about Linux, but I'll let you discover some really cool stuff on your own. I can't count the nights I stayed up all night reading all these darn books. LOL.

BTW, I chose RH at the time because from what I found, they had the most support & their literature was on almost every book shelf. I knew I had almost unlimited resources for what I needed. Sure, there are countless distrobutions to choose from, but which distros offer the most support? That's a very important question for a novice. For the older stuff, RH books are very easy to find. BTW, RH9 isn't that old.

Have fun!

 

[sourceninja]

For newbies, I would recomend ubuntu. Its rock solid and synaptic helps with installing and managing your software. After that you should have the basics down. You could stay with ubuntu (which is a very fine OS) or if you crave more control over your OS, look at the more advanced types of linux (LFS, Gentoo, etc). Although, the headache is rarely worth it for most people, but some of us like the fine grain control you get with souce based (and the fine headache you get from compile times) I personally would stay away from RPM based distros (Fedora, redhat, mandrake, etc). Its not that they are not good distros, I just feel that managing rpm's is a lot harder then managing apt or portage. Plus, I've never had a gentoo/ubuntu/debian system break, but I've broke fedora 3 a few times (to the point I had to use a live cd to fix it).

When your just getting started though, you want a system where you dont have to compile your kernel, or worry about modules. You want a system were nvidia 3D support just works. And a system were cedega supplys install files for (wine for video games). Ubuntu has all of that.

You can install their desktop build, and have 90% of what you need already installed. Then go into Synaptic search for nvidia-glx and install that. Boom your 3d support is working with about 3 clicks of the mouse. Then you can go to transgamings website and download the point2play-2.0.2 .deb file and install it with dpkg -i filename on the command line. Boom now you can play a lot of windows games.

On top of that, dont forget Neverwinter nights, UT2004, Doom3, quake 3, and a huge list of open souce games (some of them just as good as some commercial games.) that work native on linux.

Other things to remember. If you use Ubuntu, check out www.ubuntuguide.org and follow the instructions on how to install what you need. And remember, just because your using one distro, doesn't mean you only have their forum to help. I've asked ubuntu questions in the gentoo forums before and got good anwers.

So in conclusion. I suggest ubuntu to learn on. Then once your happy that you have a good grasp of linux, look at gentoo, or arch linux and see if you can benifit from your knowledge by building your system up yourself a little more. For most people out there (the sane one's at least) ubuntu is perfect for them. The only reason I dont use ubuntu myself is because I find their AMD64 support lacking and gentoo's AMD64 support is a lot better.

 

[TGS]

Actually, if you have pre-partitioned volumes the Slackware installer is fairly painless. It was the first distro to completely configure my on-board sound on my Nforce2 spdif output. Granted it was using OSS on the 2.4 kernel I was still surprised.

I figure the hardest part of installing a Linux distro is creating the partitions. I recommend Gentoo for this. It will give you a step-by-step on what exactly the partitioning GUIs are doing in the background. Once you get a handle on the workings of the Linux partitioning, it all was straight forward for other installers. It also gave me confidence while manually partitoning under other OSes.

I figure if you can do it the hardest way possible, when you choose the easier routes later it's that much easier.

Just jump in and try Gentoo or Slack.

 

[nweaver]

Gentoo is good for understanding what the gui's are doing on many things. I am trying to find a replacement, as portage breaks a bit too often, and I don't want to compile. I was thinking of slackware, as I hate to install and have to clean the crud from the distro, I like clean boxes, with no services and then I start putting on what I need. Rogue net services are bad.

 

[rasczak]

i am using unbuntu atm, yet i find it's desktop fairly ugly. are there themes available similar to style xp for ubuntu?

 

[Seeruk]

Originally posted by: RampantAndroid

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: RampantAndroid
Yeah, well slackware isnt the best for guis I have read....

No you have it wrong. GUIs aren't the best for slackware.

Haha, yes...the whole GUI thing has been overdone for people who are too lazy to learn command promps such as MS-DOS or Linux.

Pah CLI is for w00sies who know nuttin bout computers and are just the dumb users of the megacult.

I hand carve every command in binary and compile on the fly just to prove my nuts are the size of watermelons...

 

[Pythias]

Fedora Core 4
Gentoo
Linux From Scratch