Debian / YDL/ or Suse????

[Cyberus]

I was still waiting for a friend to download one of the Mandrake CDs for me, but these sound like a good idea...
So morphix or knoppix?

Cheers,
Cyberus

[holbromf]

Hi,
      I have used linux since October02 (i.e. I was pretty faithfull to my amiga forsome  fourteen years from 88).
 Linux Format (remember Amiga Format) has Mandrake 9p1 on June03 mag and I have upgraded this on Mandrake 8p2  (Linux Format May02) and am pretty happy with it.  We get a pretty comprehensive development kit from KDE and Qt in C++ which is my area of interest but there is much much more to play with.
                                                         Cheers    Mike

holbromf@hotmail.com

                                               

[DethKnight]

t runs from CD, autodetects all your hardware, and can easily be installed to hard disk. It's also Debian based, so when you want to upgrade it just type 'apt-get update;apt-get upgrade' et voila! you have the latest version of everything you already have installed.

this also applies to JAMD linux , which I *replaced* my morphix with, havent regretted it. (JAMD is not debian based)

JAMD was actually able to install to my UDMA hard-disk (/dev/hde)

Can't get much easier than that. Use Synaptic for a gui version of apt-get,with an easy to use search facility for new software to install.

......that also applies for JAMD linux

JAMD is RPM-based , but *I* still use (./configure make install) build from source baabieeeee

JAMD = distro designed for the nieghbor to installl

[thing_from_space]

So morphix or knoppix?

I'd have to go with Knoppix. Everything on one CD. Morphix looks pretty cool being modular and all, but it's a serious departure from the simplicity of Knoppix.

Another "live" CD that hasn't been mentioned yet is Gentoo. Though not as refined as Knoppix, they do offer live CDs of UT2003 (demo) and America's Army. Hell, a little tweaking and maybe a UAE version can be done.

[thing_from_space]

By the way, a good lowdown of ALL the linux distros can be found at Distro Watch.

[thing_from_space]

MrZammler wrote:
Debian has a lot of old software in it's stable release.

Actually, Debian "Stable" is a more of a reference distro than an end-user gaming platform. It is, however, perfect when stability is essential like in file, web, or mail  servers. I've had Debian stable running for almost a year straight with not even a slightest hint of a crash or hiccup.

The "Unstable" tree is probably a little more stable than the name might suggest. I'd even say it's a little more stable than many of the odd distros i've tried. It does have quite a bit of up-to-date packages and it's perfectly suitable for the home desktop.

"Testing" is the middle road between "Stable" and "Unstable". There's nothing really exciting in it since it's the  testing platform for packages coming out of unstable for the next Stable release.

thing_from_space wrote:

So morphix or knoppix?

I'd have to go with Knoppix. Everything on one CD. Morphix looks pretty cool being modular and all, but it's a serious departure from the simplicity of Knoppix.

Morphix couldn't be simpler.  Just download the 200MB mini-iso (Light GUI), and install to HD.  Then apt-get anything that you want afterwards.  Knoppix gives you the choice of KDE or nothing.

I don't see the point in KDE at all.  If you want to use a Windows clone, why not just use windows and add CygWin for the UNIX layer?  You get the best of both worlds then.

If you want a UNIX clone, then use something like XFCE4/WindowMaker on top of Debian Linux/FreeBSD5.1. As an amiga user, you also feel a lot more at home with this kind of setup too.

[Tomas]

Morphix couldn't be simpler. Just download the 200MB mini-iso (Light GUI), and install to HD. Then apt-get anything that you want afterwards. Knoppix gives you the choice of KDE or nothing.

Yes, this is true if you have some sort of broadband that is... But i think he was on modem, so would take ages to do it that way...

I don't see the point in KDE at all. If you want to use a Windows clone, why not just use windows and add CygWin for the UNIX layer? You get the best of both worlds then.

What is wrong with KDE? KDE looks awesome, much better than XP with any skins on it... Its not that kde copied windows, it was windows that copied kde... just look at XP, they "stole" a few features from kde even then..

[jack]

Debian! I love the apt-get function of debian... so much better than redhat packet manager...

Don't forget that there's apt-get for RH too (acts like wrapper for rpm command, works very like the  Debian's one, although on my A1 it's smoother than apt-get on RH9 when it comes to broken installs/dependancies).

But there's another advantage of debian: packages are configured on the fly when installed. IMHO, rpm-based distros lack this feature.

Jack.

[thing_from_space]

mdma wrote:
Knoppix gives you the choice of KDE or nothing.

This is incorrect. If you read the manual/README, you'll see the boot parameters allow you to choose between a number of window managers.

mdma wrote:
I don't see the point in KDE at all.  If you want to use a Windows clone, why not just use windows and add CygWin for the UNIX layer?  You get the best of both worlds then.

You've been bashing Windows for way too long. Take a breather and stop finding negatives in the world. If a WM "borrows" from the GUI of the world's dominating OS, then so be it. There's actually some merit to the way Windows looks and feels.

KDE is actually a well designed and solid desktop. Just because it "looks" like Windows doesn't mean you should immediately dismiss it.

mdma wrote:
If you want a UNIX clone, then use something like XFCE4/WindowMaker on top of Debian Linux/FreeBSD5.1. As an amiga user, you also feel a lot more at home with this kind of setup too.

Neither of these would be a good experiance for a first time Linux user. Too much of it depends on heavy shell use and editing .config files. KDE and Gnome are both excellent as novice desktops.

You've been bashing Windows for way too long. Take a breather and stop finding negatives in the world.

And I've also been developing on Windows for way too long. :-P

IMHO Windows is superior to KDE.
AmigaOS is superior to Windows.

[Gojirax]

I downloaded all 6 CD ISO's from http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/torrents/3.0_r2/i386/ and I'm going to try it out on a spare Gateway P3-500 Tower I have in my garage.

Is the distribution I linked there pretty complete?

What can I expect to do with it? (I'm a linux newbie, I installed Redhat 6 once and played with it for a week.)

Do "Linux" applications work across the board? I mean.. if someone makes a Web Browser for RedHat, will it run on Debian etc?

Thanks,
Jack

[adolescent]

SuSE user here.  I was a die hard Slackware then Redhat user for some 7 years but recently switched from a dual boot Redhat/XP Pro installation to a SuSE/Wine setup.  SuSE is very well thought out and nicely setup.  I still have to run Redhat stuff at work, but SuSE is a nicer desktop.

Apt-get is no better than any of the other online package managers.  It can have the same drawbacks of dependency hell as RPM.  Both are decent systems and make things a lot easier than the standard configure, make, install process.

[jjans]

I use SUZE as well (version 8.1) It was very easy to install, but my only beef was that my version is no longer supported (tech support)after paying for it- last I heard they were are up to V9.1. Not a biggie though as plenty of online groups provide help for most distrubutions anyways.

The only other thing that irratated my about SUZE (and other pakages for that matter) was the unabilty fo me to enable 3D acceleration with my ATI Radeon 7000 (PCI).

My first experience with Linux was with an old Caldera distribution included with a 'Linux for Dummies' book. It was very easy to install with my older AMD 133, and in fact has extended the usefulness of the old beast. I doubt it would work on todays' top end machines straight 'out of the box' but an older system it would be ideal for.