Which Distro?Forum: water cooler Topic: Which Distro? started by: ImNotHere Posted by ImNotHere on Dec. 14 2003,03:22
If you feel its needed, you can back up your vote with a small speech or something
Posted by ImNotHere on Dec. 14 2003,03:23
I personally use slackware for its extreme ease of use, it just works =)
Posted by sevengraff on Dec. 14 2003,08:11
Debian, in the form of Knoppix. I get the power of apt-get, and an install system that doesn't make my head hurt.
Posted by Jed on Dec. 14 2003,09:59
Which distro for what? newbies -> mandrake developers -> debian livecd -> dsl workstation -> HD install knoppix old hardware -> dsl suckers -> Lindows lazy and simple minded -> M$ masochist -> sco Posted by DrWatt on Dec. 14 2003,16:19
I suspect if everyone is as dumb as me, the poll is flawed. I voted for debian, even though I use DSL, simply because it was first on the list and DSL is after all debian. I never scrolled down as far as DSL, before hitting the send button prematurely.
Posted by ImNotHere on Dec. 14 2003,19:31
lol, sorry, I was going to not have DSL but, then I thought people would get pissed off at me so I decided to give it its own little section. Anyways polls are useless as they say on the slashdot polls
Posted by cbagger01 on Dec. 14 2003,23:26
I use DSL as a live CD and will eventually hdinstall it on my old 60Mhz Pentium computer once I get my old Microsoft PS/2 mouse working with the kdrive servers (could be a while).My installed Linux is currently Peanut Linux, which is great for multimedia and is not too bloated. Especially version 9.4 Version 9.5 has KDE which adds to the total install size. Posted by hasty on Dec. 15 2003,22:54
I use Slack9.1 with fluxbox for my main machine but DSL for my little p150 32meg screamer. Runs like the proverbial off a shovel with ADSL. It gives me great pleasure to run a lean & mean machine without the bloat of other distros. Just keep them coming John Posted by jogi on Dec. 16 2003,17:03
I think,livecd -> DSL (small machine), Knoppix newbies -> SuSe, Yast2 ist very great tool or Knoppix! spezial projects like CFD-HD install -> DSL!!! :-) workstation -> RedHat 9, Knoppix! Router -> fli4l < Floppylinux > Posted by peter on Jan. 08 2004,09:43
I'm currently using Debian on my 2gig 512meg box - but I cheated the "can you install Debian?" test by using a hd install of Knoppix. I'm on dial-up anyway, so upgrading a Woody install would have been a very tedious business. I have Vector Linux 3.2 SOHO on my Pentium 200mmx 64meg machine, but my next project is to install DSL on it. Vector is a nice distro, but I can't resist the opportunity to have a really lean Debian-compatible system on the old box... I think DSL is a fantasic achievement- congratulations to John and all concerned. Posted by one on Jan. 16 2004,20:15
i use gentoo linux its the best but you have to be advanced but gentoo is the best Posted by mage492 on Jan. 23 2004,14:33
If you want X, without the horrors of configuring it, get DSL. Get it and don't look back!For computers that don't have the ram to handle a livecd, I'd go with Slackware. If you can't handle a ramdisk, odds are you aren't configuring X, anyway! I horribly botched the X configuration on a Slackware install, yesterday. Can you tell? Fortunately, DSL (which, it turns out, has everything I needed) came to the rescue! Posted by Jock on Feb. 02 2004,08:30
Slack, Slack in the form of Vector linux, Slack in the form of Tiny linux, Best I have found yet for old hardware. DSL nice and small but early days yet.
Posted by Rapidweather on Feb. 04 2004,13:40
I tried Redhat 9, but it would not install. Probably due to my overclocking, but I'm notsure, RHL9 won't say. For a good workout, I do SuSE 2.2 I'll never go through installing Debian 2.2 again, I just copy a good working setup over to a new box with DriveCopy.:D Posted by Modrak on Feb. 10 2004,16:21
REAL MASOCHIST > Gentoo REAL MA$OCHIST > MS-DOS 3.0 w/ Win.1.01 Posted by PhrozenFear on Mar. 10 2004,09:21
I like the real ma$ochist option.I run Fedora Core on my main desktop, unless I wanna play a decent-framerated UT or Q3A, then I switch to Winblowz XP Profuxional. But on my little laptop, which I take to school and stuff, I also have Fedora, but I'm making a custom DSL 0.6.0 with a compiler so I can do everything I need from that one little laptop. Posted by Rapidweather on Mar. 20 2004,00:52
I run DSL 0.6.1 and Luit Linux 0.2 on this box representing the Damnmall andoffshoots OS's. Main distro's are Windows 98, and Redhat 9, all this on three hard drives, one cdrom drive, with two pentium pro processors. Yes, I get two penguins when Damn Small boots up! Oh, Redhat 9 won't install unless it's a 686 box! On another box, I have Red Hat 6.1 and 7.1, SuSE 6.3, Mandrake 8, Debian 2.2. All of those run my own .fvwm2rc's in FVWM. Also, Damnsmall 0.5.3.1 there, as a /knoppix in /dev/hda1 install, with boot floppy. Next to that, Mac OS 7.5.3. Big thing there is the talking web pages, lots of laughs. Next box down, has DSL 0.5.3.1, Windows 98, Debian 2.2 and Mandrake 8. Lots of custom configs there too, with FVWM. Have Arachne 1.70 running off of Windows 98's DOS, too. Great little distro (that's not a distro). Laptops? yes, with Windows 98, and Luit Linux 0.2. XP box, that too, and can run Damnsmall 0.6.1 and Luit Linux, with a usb drive for restoration. It's a P4 2.8 HT, with a gig of ram, and a 17 inch Dell Ultra Sharp with a 128 MB ATI card. Damnsmall and Luit look great on that! With Windows viruses abounding, it's best to surf with Damnsmall or Luit. Daughter prefers Luit, for it's xfce4 window manager, closer to XP in appearance the way I have it set up. Broadband? No. Took a week to download a custom Slack 8 distro and put it together. (gone now). I never met a distro that I didn't like. (takeoff on Will Rogers) Even ran Arachne 1.70 on Caldera OpenDOS. Posted by Johnny_B on Mar. 31 2004,17:52
Whatabout Libranet instead of Knoppix as workstations (easy Debian HD install). What do you think...
Posted by Modrak on April 08 2004,22:48
I've installed Gentoo 2004.0...started with stage1.tar so the most difficult instalation I shoud choose ;-)But works BEST emege app ;-) Posted by buyzaba on April 13 2004,10:45
Debian in the form of Knoppix. Have not tested DSL though but I think I will love it
Posted by raoulg on May 23 2004,11:39
In my opinion, DSL is excellent, coz:- fast in my Pentium MMX 166Mhz with 96Mb EDO RAM - Hdinstall costs only 250-300Mb - it's enough for me : internet, listening mp3, tiny office , and easy to use - and..... I forgot - to repair a HDD (with cfdisk, for example) So, DSL's my favorite. John and others, carry on! Posted by nugget on May 24 2004,02:01
Do you mind if I take that and post it on yoshis forums? We gots lots of people who ask what distro? and poll what disrto? its very annoying and that was very funny, but true... Posted by ke4nt1 on May 27 2004,05:37
After the days of....peeking and pokeing on a commodore c64/c128 - remember basic? (Man, If you had a Lt. Kernel, and a fat 80 MEG SCSI drive , you were KING !) running analog sweeps with "batch files" on an old at&t XT and pounding out big floppies on a "Model 3"............ ahh yes.. I worked on my first pc back in the 286 days, with my brother, who liked to play Hardball II and keep track of his baseball card collection. MY first pc was a 386 DX 16 !! 4M on the MB, and 4M on a daughtercard.. Choplifter and good ol' Norton Commander were my friends then... Ran DR-DOS for a while, but upgraded! to MS-DOS 5.0, and thought I was in Fat City AMD came out with their 386DX40, which was a really good setup for the money.... Doom... trackers and MOD files..No mp3's Another ham here in Houston was into the J-NOS / T-NOS scene. Running packets over his radio, and sending emails without an ISP was "Pretty Cool" Linux was his game, and he was good at it.. Got me started with a 2 meter radio, and a small packet program.. Linux was native to the protocol - AX25 I remember getting my first intro into linux from a friend who handed me a redhat 5 book with a cd in it, and a 6 pack set of cd's from "MicroCenter"... Redhat 6, Mandrake, Slackware, FreeBSD, etc... I really liked Redhat then, and today still run RH9 and FC1 here.. Suse just had everything layed-out differently, which Redhat has begun to do as well.... Slack was really difficult to grasp. dselect was NOT my friend !! Mandrake was OK, and is still nice.. Always used to crash, though... I have recently enjoyed the music distros based on redhat, like CCRMA, and so on.. Maybe one day, I can ditch the M$ in the studio... ...and it wouldn't be fair to leave out DSL.. Not only does it run on just about everything without "breaking the bank", It's small enough to trash completely when your doing stuff that you DARE not do on that 5 Gb install of RH9, and big enough to get done what you want to do, like learn the real guts inside Linux, without being overwhelmed by the sheer number of files and programs.. .... and a great forum! Just look around! 73 ke4nt Posted by simosnipe on June 20 2004,19:34
What about gentoo it's quite nice for developers
Posted by username on July 04 2004,06:35
Debian just rocks for ease of use. It has been very stable on any system my friends and I have installed it on.DSL is a great handy alternative. I'm running it on my main computer right now, updating every new major distro. I also have a CD handy usually for when I use other computers and I want a familiar system. With each new update of DSL, it's becomming better and better. I can't wait until it passes Debian as my favourite. Posted by sarastro_us on July 04 2004,18:19
I've run linux for the almost three years, starting with Red Hat 7.2. It was enough to whet my appetite for more, and as soon as I found Knoppix, I installed it. This was my first exposure to apt-get, and I fell in love. But Knoppix, thought wonderful for running off a live CD, isn't so great for upgrading (I found some difficulty with the differences in the apt sources between testing and unstable) So after about six months of running Knoppix, I installed Debian Sarge and I have to say that the "dreaded Debian install" wasnt difficult at all. Pure myth. Sure, it was a little more complicated than Knoppix, but it was nothing that someone with a little bit of experience couldnt handle. My current plans for DSL are to get a low end laptop with no hard drive running DSL out of ram (anybody know it that improves battery life significantly?), and saving my data to my USB keychain drive. Then, if I need something with more horsepower, I can SSH into my desktop and run my remote X apps over a VNC. Whoo hoo! Thanks to all those who have helped to make DSL such a great distro. You guys rock! Posted by thesumis41666 on Aug. 02 2004,16:03
debian, of course without it, there would be no dsl. but otherwise, knoppix is the best Posted by jerome5 on Sep. 29 2004,10:08
"lazy and simple minded -> M$"You dont have a clue what you are talking about. Posted by mikshaw on Sep. 29 2004,17:12
Suse9 is on my workstation.Slackware8 is on my older computer, which I haven't touched in about a year. I'll probably be putting Slack on the unused Windows partition of my workstation. Slackware has the best performance from what I've seen, but I still prefer SuSE for Yast and for its built-in support of winmodems. Personally I wouldn't ever choose DSL as my main distro, simply because of its lack of development tools and openGL. It rocks as a general-purpose liveCD though. Posted by Null on Oct. 05 2004,20:00
-On my primary tower i use a combination of DSL for almost everything, windows xp for gaming, and win98 for a legacy laserprinter i got at a surplus auction (only driver in existance I found to work is for win98).-I gave my family a remastered knoppix 3.2 with a root password; on the hdd is win2k because the cosmos would calapse in upon itself if my mother couldn't use her gardening design program. -Xandros-OCE on a system in the works for a friend of mine, anti-piracy, computer illit, and very thankful to know a geek. -I do keep a DSL cd updated with some nifty apps for data recovery, no telling what the next virus will do to the local problem user. Posted by max-ebb on Oct. 07 2004,16:52
I use Knoppix Mib-11 in form of poor man's install cos is just what I wanted, invulnerable to viruses and keyloggers, loop-AES automated, encrypted swap, kgpg, etc.the only downside of it is that Gaim is useless and I use MSN alot. As live CD the expandable version of DSL is on a league of his own. I have introduced many friends to DSL and everyone just loved it. it makes everything else look obsolete. I need just to figure out a cople more script to automate a few functions and DSL will become my desktop of choice too. To everyone involved, BRAVO! Posted by Ghost_runner on Oct. 24 2004,16:34
i like dsl on my slow p166, but need gcc, and everytime i went to install it under dsl, i fried something critical. I love slack, it is thin, but not too thin. but i do like flux, which dsl introduced me to.
Posted by prayforwind on Oct. 27 2004,15:03
I like Slackware on the main workhorse, dsl in my wallet and duct-taped under bike seat. dsl also now lives on the previous box which is now semi-retired at the family cottage. I would absolutely recommend dsl as a first distro, more so than the mandrake's and the lindow's of the world. It's just large enough to be really useful, small enough to not too overwhelm a newbie (and fit on a biz-card CD of course ;) ), and it installs in a snap after which it "just works". I'd have been saved months of frustration if it existed when I got into this...
Posted by somerville32@hotmail.com on Oct. 27 2004,16:05
I cooudln't get it to install either! Go DSL! Posted by noclobber on Oct. 28 2004,17:16
Masochist, schmasocist!Windows NT 3.51 Workstation with Newshell 2 rules! Don't laugh. I was actually contemplating installing this on an old 486 prior to my discovering DSL. My first home computer was an Apple II+ (c. 1981). Had a lot of fun picking it apart, both hw- and sw-wise, just to learn what made it tick. Figured out how to copy "uncopyable" floppies by yanking RAM chips out of the live mobo -- Yikes! I actually made a live CD of Windows 95 according to that German c't magazine article a few years ago. It was a PITA to make and was the slowest POS OS I'd ever run. DSL totally blows it away. Right now, my main OS is Windows 2000 Pro. "Favorite" might be too strong a word to describe it, though. It happens to be the platform that runs all the apps I use on a daily basis and is reasonably stable & useable once it's customized with enough 3rd-party sw to replace Micro$oft's half-fast "solutions". Tried RH, SuSE & Mandrake a few times. They shore do look purdy, but they just seem too big/slow/bloated for me to understand. Learning all those cryptic *nix console commands, I think, has been the primary barrier to my jumping into Linux altogether. I think DSL is the best distro for Linux newbies -- running it's a breeze, it's useful right "out of the box", and it's small enough to learn at a hacker's level. I like the Fluxbox UI. Who says Linux has to look like Windows anyway? If I can get to the point where I can do everything in Linux that I currently do in Windows, I'll be happy, and -- I'll probably make a permanent switchover. Just my $0.02, FWIW Posted by AwPhuch on Oct. 28 2004,21:53
Win2000 is M$ appology for WinME And you can do everything in Linux that Windows can - (minus the gaming ) but everything else is more powerful, faster, and cheaper!! (insert million dollar man running sound [nah, nah, nah, nah, nah] here) Brian AwPhuch Posted by WoofyDugfock on Oct. 29 2004,13:05
My experience with Linux is limited to Knoppix & DSL, but I've used Win2k a lot.So far I think what will limit Linux's expansion as a desktop system is the look and feel of the workhorse Office programs. Unfortunately, MSWord etc just looks and feels a lot better on the screen. The screen fonts look sharper. This is important if you use word processing all day, which many people do. Both Abiword and OpenOffice suffer from a slightly furry look on the screen to me, whereas MSWord is sharp and crystal clear. Posted by AwPhuch on Oct. 29 2004,14:21
< http://www.staroffice.com/ > < http://www.openoffice.org/ > < http://www.codeweavers.com/site/products/ > You can do anything that M$ does with linux....it just takes a bit of work!!! Brian AwPhuch Posted by linster on Oct. 31 2004,17:41
I like SuSE becuase of its simplicity to burn iso's (all you do is click on the file and click burn and it works. no luck with fedora for this) and its exellent YaST tool. (YaST = Yet Another Setup Tool). long live SuSE
Posted by Matty on Nov. 03 2004,20:25
But why should it take any more work when win runs right out of the box. I gave up getting DSL to run on my old thinkpad because of problems getting X to go. Currently trying an old install of Mandrake...at least X goes ;-) Matty Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Nov. 03 2004,20:46
Say what!? I have had machines that would not run windows, no matter how much i coaxed them, But with *nix, they run like a dream. Most distros have better HW detection than M$. -J.P. Posted by ke4nt1 on Nov. 03 2004,20:49
That's funny.. After the basic CD install, I usually have to: 1. Install Motherboard Drivers. 2. Reboot 3. Install Video Card Drivers 4. Reboot 5. Run the Windows Updates wizard. 6. Reboot 7. Run the Windows Updates wizard. 8. Reboot 9. Run the Windows Updates wizard. 10. Reboot 11. Run the Windows Updates wizard. 12. Reboot 13. Install Other drivers not found by Windows Updates. 14. Reboot 15. Install CD burning software ( Nero, Prassi ) 16. Reboot 17. Install Office Software ( unless you LIKE wordpad ) 18. Reboot 19. Install new browser ( IE? No way. ) 20. Reboot 21. Install Virus,Spam, and Adware softwares 22. Reboot , etc. etc. etc. And this just gets my WinXP box barely useful . 23. Quickly ghost the partition before it gets hacked or corrupted. 24. THEN begin to install the games, internet software, utilities.. Hopefully, by the end of the day, I can STOP installing "Windows" ... Did I mention how much this stuff costs ? Talk about "work" !? 73 ke4nt Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Nov. 03 2004,22:16
Took the words right outta my mouth.M$ is freaking expensive (hence the $). -J.P. Posted by noclobber on Nov. 04 2004,00:29
That's the part I hate most about Windows. Posted by ico2 on Nov. 10 2004,17:42
i love dsl, moving completely to it after i get this winmodem working (think i figured it out now)
Posted by WoofyDugfock on Nov. 11 2004,09:55
ke4nt1 et al - I have always thought MS's high maintenance & installation costs are, paradoxically, partly behind its market dominance.It goes like this. Back in the mid/late 90s a study was done on the number of IT support staff a large organization required to support Windows desktops as opposed to supporting Apple Mac. This was back when Billy G was so confident of his dominance as to publicly admit that MacOS was of course superior to Win. The results were not surprising: a Wintel-based organization required MANY times the number of support staff than did a Mac-based organization. Everyone knew why without ever reading the thing: Macs crashed very much less often, were less susceptible to viruses etc, were of much better build quality and were easier to learn and use because the interface was much better designed. Apple R&D, such as their subsequent development of quicktime, firewire and getting usb to work, was way ahead. Apple obviously also did more prerelease testing and bug fixing than MS, for whom everything was (and is) effectively a beta release. So Macs needed far fewer support staff. But they were more expensive. Outside the US, they were (and are) MUCH more expensive, and training staff in both Apple engineer certification + MS Win was double the time and expense. Now, if you are an ambitious senior corporate IT manager, which platform do you want: (1) the one that gives you many more staff (hence a big empire & salary package to match) but seemingly lower hardware costs in the short term; or (2) then one that gives you many fewer subordinates (hence a small salary package) and embarrassingly high hardware costs to fight with Finance over each year? It's a basic rule of corporate politics that (1) will win outright despite the false economies. The accountants are going to say "why aren't you buying CrappyTel PCs when these are half the cost of Macs?" Since they'll scream blue murder when an IT support person doesn't instantly materialize when their Excel crashes, they won't query your demand for two gadzillion junior IT support people to keep their nasty CrappyTel boxes running and to worship at your feet. I'm not saying it's all of the explanation but it's a big part of the reason Macs lost the battle for the desktop. It could've been an Apple world .... (sigh). However now Steve J & Co have effectively built their OS from unix, we can see a convergence of sorts between the second & third string OSs (Mac & Linux). And all of China is switching to 'Red Flag' Linux, with the rest of Asia using AsiaNux? Watch out Bill. Posted by zmef420 on Nov. 14 2004,00:07
yeah.DSL is my all time fav. It was on my first completely working linux box, it's so simple, works on almost everything, and is a perfect intro to linux. can't leave it alone. it dual boots with WIN98 on an old 200Mhz P2. From there i went to Mepis Linux because I am dumb and need a graphical interface, it runs on my main box with WIN98. Now, after using those for a while, i have just installed Fedora Core 3 (the only OS) on our newest machine and am teaching my 11 year old step-son about linux. he gets the DSL box. Posted by ke4nt1 on Nov. 16 2004,05:05
Nice post, woofy..I get to use/repair/upgrade a few G4's at work.. Mac has always had a really tight OS, and excellent hardware support. They should, since they were the ONLY ones making and selling it ! ( except for the "power computing" brand.. ) If you KNOW whats in the box, its easy to write good code for it. Must be nice to MAKE the hardware AND write the software for it. No Cyrix, IBM, Intel, AMD, issues.. It's all MAC I think the OS9 and earlier versions were very solid, as long as you maintenanced the hard drives and kept your fonts and drivers clean. I hope the OSX proves to be as roadworthy over the long haul. Now that mac has a "shell" , I imagine vulnerabilities will arise.. 73 ke4nt Posted by zmef420 on Nov. 18 2004,21:15
Fedora Core 3 sucked. had to revert back to DSL. it's so tight. ...carry on Posted by ico2 on Nov. 27 2004,14:47
you missed out knoppix
Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Nov. 27 2004,18:24
heh, Fedora Core X sucked.-J.P. (/me is not a big fan of RH) Posted by AwPhuch on Nov. 29 2004,16:16
For those of you with old beatdown MAC/Apple hardware there is a solution for you out there!< YELLOWDOG LINUX > < Why Yellowdog Linux? (8 page PDF) > < Supported MAC hardware > Brian AwPhuch Posted by harper on Nov. 30 2004,02:44
Slackware 10.0 on my server. Wife's laptop Mandrake 9.1 Power Pack. My laptop, DSL installed to the hard drive + SlackWare 10.0 + Winblows XP Pro for games. Extra Box: FreeBSD 5.3 |