Which Linux Distribution?

[Pace]

I've always heard Mandrake recommended above RedHat, although they are quite similar at heart. Once you get into it more, you might want to try a Debian based one, or FreeBSD.

Check out PCPlus Paddy, they quite often have distros on their cover disk, plus will help with installation

[rugger]

Slackware damn you, slackware.

Its the only linux distribution that isn't a hand holding, babying, annoying peice of doggy do that should have been removed up years ago but hasn't.

Of course, you actually need to learn something to use slackware

Ok, I take my comment about other distribtions back for debian. In debian's case, its the tin foil capped distribution that leaves you saying "WTF"

[thop]

nope debian is simply the best

[Wulfman]

Originally posted by thop
nope debian is simply the best

I agree. I'm also learning to use linux here - and installed debian. packet managment is nice and configuration files can be found easily.

debian is always a bit slow when it comes to including new software-versions, but if they include them, you can be sure that it works stable. on the opposite, they have an extremely low reaction time regarding security holes and the release of patches.

mfg
wulfman

[thop]

on the opposite, they have an extremely low reaction time regarding security holes and the release of patches.

hmm do you have to the following line in your sorces.list?

deb http://security.debian.org/ woody/updates main contrib non-free

also i'd recommend using the testing branch (sid) rather than stable, because some stuff in stable is really stone old.

[rugger]

I refuse to use debian until they do something about the initial installer.

It is the worst installer I have encountered, bar none.

And don't tell me to use apt-get for the inital install, because, as nice as it is, it is a pain in the butt trying to get all the package names correct. And the large number of software packages I install make that very tedious.

Once debian is installed though, it works great.

[thop]

i agree on the installer. there is a new one though which boots woody: http://hackers.progeny.com/pgi/

and if you dont remember the name of a package, then apt-cache search is for you

[DGhost]

see... honestly if you are gonna be looking at going to the level of slackware or debian, it would be wiser to just start off with FreeBSD... it works better with less of the inconsistancies of linux distrobutions, is more *NIX like, and just works better.

if you are new to the whole idea and need a GUI, i would give Redhat a try... personal experience has shown it works a lot better...

Debian is nice to keep updated, but thats about it... too much inconsistancy, too many obfusicated things... not really worth the bother to figure out unless you are going to try to improve it...

Slackware is wonderful, altho it has pretty much no mechanism for automatically staying updated... and distribution updates can get hairy... one of the reasons that Slackware is cool is because it is a BSD style distribution, so system boot scripts are relatively straight forward (altho not nessicarily full featured), and config files are all placed in a sane (in the everything in /etc sorta way) location, instead of being spread across half the drive like other distributions do...

personally, Linux has really gone down hill because of the fragmentation that has occured in the community...

[rugger]

I don't really feel the need to run freebsd much.

It is probably more reliable than linux, but:

1) No 3d opengl on Nvidia cards. Does freebsd even run Xfree 4.X yet by default. This is a killer problem. I think FreeBSD supports the rest of my hardware though.
2) Poor partioning support. I know you are going to say, that FreeBSD uses slices, which are infinitely better than regular partitions. However, I would prefer FreeBSD to blend nicely with the normal partioning system, rather than put its own on top. FreeBSD's special partioning also means I can't actually install it, because it wants a primary partition that I don't have spare.

And lets not talk too much about fragmentation. There has been a fair bit of it in the BSD camp too.

[thop]

hmm funny how opinions on linux differ so much imo red hat is one of the worst distros of them all, and rpm broken. the package db will become inconsistent sooner or later and you end up --force'ing your way through the jungle. deb is really much more sophisticated imo.

also i dont see any obfuscation in debian. things are there they are meant to be. it might not be 100% LSB compliant, but who gives a

[DentyCracker]

I have never been able to stand debian. I haven't used slackware or suse. I couln't stand Corel. Redhat was poor. The only linux I've been able to use in a manner comparable to Windows is Mandrake, from version 6.1 up

[Paddy]

I started to download Mandrake yesterday but the only version that i could freely find was 8.2. I notice that version 9 is out now but there seems to be a hefty price tag attached!

[Admiral]

Originally posted by Paddy [MU]
I started to download Mandrake yesterday but the only version that i could freely find was 8.2. I notice that version 9 is out now but there seems to be a hefty price tag attached!

Can't you access Mandrake's download page ?

[Paddy]

Doh!

you very smart, me very stupid ...

[Admiral]

Originally posted by Paddy [MU]
Doh!

you very smart, me very stupid ...

look, I don't have anything with you, consider me "chalanged"
it has problems accessing the mirrors with IE, that's why I used Opera

I just started downloading the 9.0 ISO images from a Czeh site:

Mandrake90-cd1-inst.i586.iso
Mandrake90-cd2-ext.i586.iso
Mandrake90-cd3-i18n.i586.iso