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do you test other distros?


arctic
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do you test different linux-distros?  

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  1. 1. do you test different linux-distros?

    • yes, all the time! (i am always checking the distrowatch-site)
      8
    • yes, quite often. (i have some-spare time left)
      7
    • not very often (takes up too much time and gets me frustrated)
      20
    • never! (why should i?)
      4
    • i might do it in the future (once i am an experienced hacker...;))
      6


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there are hundreds of linux-distributions out there. many in this forum came from other distros and settled with mandrake, others began with mandrake and moved on while some are mandrake-users by heart and soul and they will never abandon their ultimate linux love.

 

but there is always progress.... every six months, most distributions are updated and users keen on seeing what the "other party" has done/achieved. so... are you one of those hwo constantly jump from one distro to another or are you resisting the temptation? please give your comments.

 

 

---------

 

i for myself am constantly interested in the new development of several distros (i keep my eye on round about 15 distros) and thus test them quite often on an older box, before i decide to install them on my main office-box (i need something that is very reliable, so mandrake cooker will never ever be on my office-box ;)).

 

although i have changed distros a lot and currently use three different distributions on my three mayor boxes, i think that with ubuntu, that constant "switching distros" could have come to an end... but we will see. :beer:

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Right now I've settled with Ubuntu, but I change around every couple of months. I've tried a lot of the more known distro's already. Unless I find a distro that really interests me, I probably won't try anymore out - but I've had up to 4 distro's installed at a time.

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I used to test distro a lot back in the States. The reason is that broadband and CDRs/CDRWs are cheap so I can test different distros easily. I even remembered downloading 7 isos of 3 different distros (mandrake, redhat, and storm) in one day and then testing them in the next.

 

Now that I am not in the States anymore, I cannot test distros anymore. No broadband, no testing. Although I managed to test a couple of distros in the last few months.

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Mandrake only since 1999. Still Mandrake only. Now that I have experience, many will think I should know better :) But:

- I just don't have the time for change.

- I only have 56K for internet, and the very complete Mandrake 3CD set permits to limit downloads to a minimum.

- What I don't like, I hack :) My current 3 mdk installs are customized beyond recognition.

 

Yves.

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I used to distroswap all the time - RedHat, SUSE, Debian, Lunar, JAMD, PCLinuxOS, Lindows, Slack, Mandrake, Gentoo, Slackintosh...

 

However, asides from the occasional change on my iBook - from Yellow Dog to Sarge to Ubuntu to Sarge to Sid to Yellow Dog to Mandrakelinux PPC - I am now a commited Mandrakeuser

 

It's star stuff...

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After a lot of distro-hopping, I settled for SuSe 9.1 Pro ATM. I have a Lifetime Membership for Linspire, so I will check out Linspire 5.0 when it comes out (probably at the end of this year, I suspect). If it is not better for my purposes, I'll probably buy SuSe 9.2 or the next version of SuSe/Novell Linux.

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I tried out some others in my day, last stray from Mandrake was RH, I think 8.0 (psyche?).

 

I just don't have time, and my Mandrake works fine.

 

There's no big point in claiming some distro beats the pants off of some other distro in terms of hardware support - that depends on the kernel. Sure, some distro's may have used some other patches, but Linus has stated that he would like to have more distros using a less modified kernel.

The kernel development process has also been altered - remember, by the time of 2.4.8 (when it was declared really ready for use) Linus started on the 2.5 branch. Now we're already at 2.6.10 and Linus still hasn't started on 2.7 - and 2.6 was stable enough at 2.6.3 (Mdk, Suse, etc all shipping it in their March - May releases).

 

I also react somewhat allergically when I see messages along the lines of: "I tried distribution X, but this and that just didn't work..." getting answered like: "well, you should have used Y, everyone knows it's better than X"...

:screwy:

 

The other day a friend of a friend came over, had a laptop with SUSE, with some X issues (namely, he needed the patch for intel graphics: 855patch - was running a 1400x1050 screen on 800x600 - and not even complaining too much - didn't mind his icons so big and the crappy look). He's got no experience with Linux, just wants to get rid of MSWin. So, I fixed his SUSE for him - which was not too straightforward, since I've never fiddled seriously with SUSE.

He just got somewhat used to SUSE, I'm not going to get him to use Mandrake, no reason...

 

 

All that being said, I will be doing some testing as soon as I find the time. I'd like to test FC3, Ubunto (I still hope to receive some cds in the mail) and SUSE, for starters. Test system will be my laptop.

Oh and I have used/tried knoppix a few times.

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There's no big point in claiming some distro beats the pants off of some other distro in terms of hardware support - that depends on the kernel.

absolutely right. most people do forget that all the time and blame e.g. slackware for not being able to do certain tasks while slack has nothing to do with it but the kernel-team/the kernel used.

 

i always tend to say: there is no perfect distro, no superior distro. they are all different to a certain degree and mandrake might be the best distro for some guys. but others will claim that <enter distro of your choice> is much better, only because it works better in their special case (their unique expectations are fulfilled) with their special hardware (not many people are using exactly the same systems as most get "tweaked" somehow).

 

i found the ones i like very fast by testing lots of distros. but i cannot say that i have one distro that i really like best. there are ~5 distros that suit my purposes.

:)

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Until now, the only distro/version I have tried other than Mandrake, was SuSE 9.0 Pro. This month, I looked on eBay and got SuSE 9.2 Pro and Debian 3.0 R3 CD sets. The SuSE is for evaluating. Given my fixed - low - disability income, I can't afford to plunk down nearly $100 just to see if it works and suits my needs. If I like SuSE 9.2 Pro, and it suits my needs, I will buy the boxed set.

 

Currently I am in SuSE 9.2 Pro. If I had enough disk space, I would attempt Debian install from the CDs (9 of them - 7 + 2 updates).

 

I don't check out different distros that often, since Mandrake Powerpack has been a rock solid mainstay for me (even 10.0 CE Powerpack). Once I get a box built just for testing different distros, then I will do so more often.

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Mandrake only. I had a look at a few other distros when I started out in Linux (1 1/2 years ago) but got hooked on Mandrake. I have to say I have never been more happy with my PC than when I installed Mandrake. It has all the software I have other wanted just a mouseclick away (I love kdict, freevo, amarok, kontact etc etc). It's fast, it's stable (it has never crashed on me though I have made it crash) and it's free!! (very important for a Dutchman :) )

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