The *nix cat fight thread. No, I really just want opinions ;-)

[d0pefish]

I do not know a single distro where the console is hidden away. I compile stuff with my ubuntu box as well. The difference is that i only compile when needed as a last option.

...I didn't entirely mean that literally. :roll: I'm trying to say that some distributions I've seen GUIfy everything and place emphasis on the nice easy to use desktop; no need for anyone to touch the console.

You can eat all the horror stories you like, I'm not pushing Gentoo on anyone, all I am saying is that I have had great experiences with it, and I'd recommend that you guys give it a whirl sometime, no need to bite my head off.

It's not Like I'm trying to sell you Windows or something...

[Piru]

@d0pefish

Okay comparing that to for example Debian (the distro I know best): The only thing not available in Debian is global USE flags, but then again if you don't build from src, it's kind of pointless (at least assuming you have 2GB HDD storage for installation).

Everything else mentioned is available in Debian (and any Debian based distro) aswell, although not necessarily in the same form.

Finally, regardless of distribution, at some point the user will need to do some rather low level maintenance. At this point all distros are the same: RTFM... :-)

[srg86]

I tried the AMD64 version of ubuntu 6.01 and 6.10 and had graphics card problems. Its X.org doesn't work with my ATI X800 out of the box so I installed ATI's proprietry driver. That worked but it always hanged when I tried to shut down X.

Now I'm trying Suse 10.1 AMD64 and my graphics card works out of the box! woo hoo! And the ATI proprietry driver is rock solid stable.

The trouble I'm having with Suse is dependancy hell. I want to install FF2.0 and OOo 2.0.4 but I get dependancy problems including one that is just a number, very odd.

BTW What is the Gentoo graphial installer like? I think a stage 3 install with that would possibly be quite a good idea.

[Turrican]

Excuse my noob question but I have been wondering about this for a while. How different distributions differ in driver support? Don't all drivers come from the same source - kernel?

[Crumb]

@redrumloa

try out Xubuntu. It works quite well and it seems to be less resource hungry than ubuntu.

[srg86]

The kernel can change from month to month enough that an existing driver will not work from kernel version to version

[Turrican]

i see, thanks

[Nycran]

Ubuntu is good and so is SLED (or Suse 10.1).  Another worthy contender is PCBSD PC BSD.  It's been getting a lot of attention at osnews.com lately (deservedly so I think).

PC BSD is novel in that it:

* Runs the full FreeBSD 6 kernel.
* Runs full KDE.
* Installs very easily indeed.
* Has what they call PBI software installers, which are much like MSI files under windows.  With PBI's, you download an application as a single file (a .pbi file), and then double click on it.  You then run through the application installation wizard.  There's no software dependencies to worry about, and the PBI library is getting bigger all the time.  It's good biscuits.

Cheers,
Andy.

[Tomas]

You can eat all the horror stories you like, I'm not pushing Gentoo on anyone, all I am saying is that I have had great experiences with it, and I'd recommend that you guys give it a whirl sometime, no need to bite my head off.

It's not Like I'm trying to sell you Windows or something...

Fair enough

[BouncingAyatollah]

According to the openSUSE roadmap openSUSE 10.2 is supposed to be out in a month so you could wait for that.

I recommend SMART package manager with SUSE, it makes managing repositories (or "channels") dead easy. On first run, you can say Yes to adding all the suggested channels and thereafter switch them on/off with one click as you wish.

There's a HowTo here covering SUSE 10.0 and 10.1

I say this because I just did a quick "smart search" for e.g. zapping and mythtv and both are available as SUSE-ready packages.

As for desktop distros I usually recommend (the remastered) SUSE 10.1, (K)Ubuntu or the oddly-named but fantastic PCLinuxOS. It's great for Windows deserters as it has Flash/MP3/WMV video playback already set up, the Control Center is really good and it's 1 Live/install CD so you can quickly try before you don't buy.

It impressed me when I found things like Skype and nVidia drivers right in the repository. I installed the nVidia drivers - a pop-up appeared asking if I'd like to restart X once everything had finished installing. I said "OK", the screen went blank, came back and nVidia 3D drivers were up and running! Similarly, after installing it at someone's house and clicking Printers in the Control Center it found their Epson Stylus Color 600 automatically, there was a pop-up, I waited, and it was configured. There may be fewer packages available than for, say, Ubuntu but they are tailored towards the typical ex-Windows-user desktop needs.

[weirdami]

I think the only noob friendly way is Slackware (+ a big Linux book).

I have a "LINUX" book that's got 2 CD's in the back with that Slackware stuff on thems. It's a few years old, though. I picked it up somewhere used but never used it. I didn't even know there was more than one CD in there until just recently when I was taking pictures of stuff for to sell away.

[benJamin]

My two cents...

I wish I had a tuner card to try the bundled tuner software, looks pretty good, though, but:

FC6 is pretty fun once you get past the {bleep}-ups they made.  Start with Core 5, though: much more stable and mature.  The CD install I got gave me everything, including a paint program just like MS-Paint, which surprised and annoyed me (but my lady felt more comfortable with it), etc..

Then, install VMware Server (which is a pain on FC6, still haven't got ICAclient working...) and Bob's your uncle's aunty's cousin!  (I used it on the dual-core Dells at Uni. t'other day and was shocked how fast they run).

If you do try FC6, and have an nVidia or ATI card, it is well worth getting Compiz running.  I assume this works on all the other distros, too, but I fought with Debian m68k so much I won't touch the thing again, and SuSE and Slackware were a pain, Storm was OK, Corel looked too much like Windoze and I could never find a Mandrake give-away to try.

Damn Small Linux is fun to carry around, but I started fiddling with it and the nightmares of Debian came flooding back.

Going to install AROS on VMware tonight while I study for Networks exams.  Then I might continue installing every other package I can get my hands on for FC6.


benJamin

"But, I really miss Assigns!  I want my Assigns!"

[persia]

Try Sabayon Linux, sapayonlinux.org, fist and pretty and based on gentoo.

[Tomas]

@redrumloa
So what did you end up choosing?