Which Distros?

[phunni]

I have only ever used Mandrake (8.0 - 9.1) and am curious to find out what other people reckon to other distros and what you like about them.

 

I really like mandrake for it's ease of use, but I do find it a little bit bloated - of course I can't really compare it to other distros so it might one of the meanest and leanest for all I know...

[DragonMage]

Well.. so far I have tried 4 distros, Slackware, RedHat, Mandrake, and lately SuSE. I always go back to mandrake because of ease of use and the "open" development system. SuSE doesn't play well with my NForce2 MB so I keep away from them. RH is ok.. but not as user friendly as mandrake (as in, although linuxconf is ok, but it's not as easy to use as mcc). Slackware is slackware, tarball city :)

 

Although I find it weird that the newest morphix doesn't work with my computer.. oh well.

[tyme]

I used Caldera back in 1999, it was ok at that point. Then my brother got me into mandrake around...what...7.1/7.2 I think, and I used Mandrake exclusively until about a week ago when I got Gentoo up and running on my system, and I'm pretty happy with it now. I've also used Red Hat, but not a lot.

 

Old Caldera: Not bad, but that was a looonngg time ago.

Mandrake: easy to use, good starter

Red Hat: somewhat easy to use, but not all that great.

Gentoo: very good for optimization, but need to be pretty knowledgeable in that ways of Linux.

[aru]

I've used *among others* caldera, redhat, debian, mandrake and slackware; actually I have mandrake and slackware.

 

I started using GNU/Linux with Caldera (now SCO), then I went back to the roots: RedHat, good things there, but soon I evolved to its natural evolution: Mandrake (I think at that time was 5.X or 6.X), since then I've always been in Mandrake. Ofcourse I've done more or less stable incursions to debian (several times), to a mixture of minidistros till I had a decent GNU/Linux in a 386 (6Mb of ram), and ofcourse to Slackware which I'm using in my second PC for a year now.

 

I think of Mandrake as one of the most, if not the most, advanced GNU/Linux distro (many tend to read here newbie friendly or distro-for-newbies, but a friendly installer and freindly configuration apps means ADVANCED!). IMHO none of the distros I've ever used gives all the power that mandrake does. Mandrake covers by far all the needs from the newbiest user to the most advanced geek.

 

I'm so much happy with my MDK8.1 that I've never felt that I have to upgrade to a newer version or that I should change to some exotic distro to improve my system performance.

[MottS]

HI all

 

I started to use Linux about a year and a half ago with RedHat 7.1 (or 7.2 .. don't remember) but I wasn't able to configure the net connection (I was dial-up at that time) so I went to Mandrake 8.1. Then 8.2 came out and 9.0. I did a fresh install of all those versions. But then I started to try other distros starting with Debian. They were using KDE 2.2.2 and 3.0 was out so I switched to SuSe. I had problems figuring where were things so I reinstalled Mandrake for a while. Now, I'm using Gentoo since last january and I'm happy with it. I did 2 fresh installs of Gentoo (one back in January and another one about a month ago).. keep in mind that it takes about 2 days to install on my computer (well, with KDE and all I want).

 

Note that my server is running Mandrake because I don't want to play with it. It shares the net for my lan and servers my webpage. I configured everything very rapidly with the MCC and I like Mandrake for that. Mandrake rules! it is really ADVANCED !

 

But if you want to try a good distro to play with .. go with Gentoo ;-) .. this is a bleeding edge distro (there is a stable portage tree and an unstable one for your pleasure). When KDE 3.1 came out, it was in the portage tree the SAME day.. so I compiled it at night and was running KDE 3.1 the day after. .. really nice .. no need to wait for rpms.

 

MOttS

[bvc]

I think it depends on what you're aching to do :wink: . I started with ML8.1 1.5 years ago (or so) then 9.0 and now 9.1. I currently have Slackware9.0 installed but haven't booted to it in 2 weeks :roll: . B4 that I tried LFS . Next week...RH9 and soon Libranet2.8 (just released). Why just released? They get all (as much as possible) the bugs out b4 they release, and I've heard nothing but GREAT! things so I'm gonna give it a shot.

 

1.LFS- if you want to rack you brain, learn A LOT, do EVERYTHING from the command line/write scripts and edit just about everything, and have an extremely fast distro...this is for you :P

 

2. Slackware- nice, for the do-it-yourself'er. Does have pkg-management and rpm is installed by default and a few other nifty things. My thoughts where to rebuild it like LFS from the ground up, but been there/done that, and the bottom line for me is that the time gained by optimization is lost in a lack of ease of use. :wink: (true with LFS as well)

 

3.Mandrake- well,....you know.....it could very well be as good as it gets....but I want to see how Libranet2.8 does...and start rebuilding ML9.1 from the ground up and have the best of both worlds....ease and speed.

 

4.Want something that configs EVERYTHING at install, and I think has the crossover pluggin included, and can resize a NTFS-fs. These are things I've heard about Libranet. Since I'll be trying it soon...more research about it is on my TODO list this weekend, so don't quote me on the above.

 

On my dialup...gentoo isn't possible (unless I want to be without a computer for over a week....NOPE)...otherwise, that's probably what I'd be using.... :P BUT, Mandrake=HOME :mystismiles:

[polemicz]

I've used Mandrake from 8.1 and have also used Red Hat and Debian. Right now I have cleared off Red Hat (8.0) and only have Mandrake and Debian. With the Debian Unstable I can be as bleeding edge as I wish, but just stay with Mandrake for all my basic work. The configuration tools are great. If they ever go belly up I'll probably switch to Debian. FYI I use KDE 3.1 on Mandrake and 3.1.1 on Debian.

[qnr]

Over the years, I've used Caldera, Definite, Turbo, FreeBSD, Red Hat, Slackware, Mandrake, NetBSD, Debian, Gentoo, Sorcerer, Lunar and Sourcemage. I've actually used more than those, in the sense of having installed distributions to test them for a couple of months. All of them have been useful in their own ways.

 

I personally prefer SourceMage, Debian, and NetBSD. However, I generally recommend Mandrake to my friends that want to switch to Linux.

 

I'm not a big fan of Gentoo like the others here are. I used it for about five months, and I liked it, but it never really took with me. Perhaps because I compared portage to ports on my BSD machines. Other things that Gentoo users like to rave about, like "USE" are to me just poor wannabes of features like "Optional Depends" in Sourcemage. Not to mention the fact that SMGL users in IRC and on the forums are about 1800% friendlier than those in the Gentoo equivalents (just my personal opinion).

[paul]

I'm a gentoo fan, altho' I have to agree woth qnr about the helpfulnes of the gentoo forums

 

they are not helpfull at all

[DragonMage]

That is weird.. shouldn't a "more advanced" distro board be friendlier to help people in need. I mean, if they are friendlier, I think they will get better feedback of what should they do better in the future.

 

I guess gentoo will be one of those niche products with very very loud supporters but without the numbers to prove its popularity if the attitude of the board is like that.

 

I kinda miss the happy penguin faces mandrake used to throw around in the distro :)

[qnr]

You'd think so. However, there are a few things that need to be taken into consideration. Gentoo is a victim of its own success. Gentoo users flock out to all sorts of other boards, raving about how great it is. Naturally, that attracts a lot of people. Gentoo only has one board, basically. Other distros have hundreds to thousands, in many languages, with a lot of crossover between distros due to the similarity between RPM based distributions, for example. So, while people might ask the same question without using the search function 4,500 times a month to solve a Mandrake query, that 4,500 might be split across 700 different forums - with Gentoo, all 4,500 would be asked in one place.

 

Plus, I got the impression from lurking on their board that a lot of them would be just as much at home being a Windows script-kiddie, thinking they are L337, when judging from the quality of their 'answers' they could barely find their own posterior with both hands.

 

Personally, I think SMGL is more 'advanced' than Gentoo in many respects, but the crew is a lot friendlier. The base is much smaller, and they don't really care - they want to help, not to advertise. With that said, I think the best choice for support would be none other than MUB, it is, without a doubt, one of the best resources I've encountered, even if you do occasionally have to filter out some major weirdness.

[MottS]

I think the best choice for support would be none other than MUB, it is, without a doubt, one of the best resources I've encountered, even if you do occasionally have to filter out some major weirdness.

 

I'm with you .. but what is weirdness ? :mystismiles:

 

I compare the Gentoo forum to something like a Wallmart. You can get what you want but not in the same way as you would at the local store where the guy know your name and ask you 'how are you?' .. you know what I mean? This is why I stay here. Anyway Linux is Linux, whatever the distro one use.

 

MOttS

[aru]

Anyway Linux is Linux, whatever the distro one use.

I agree :D

[ramfree17]

I really like mandrake for it's ease of use, but I do find it a little bit bloated...

 

pardon but from my understanding, bloat refers to the slowness to respond due to excessive amount of data installed unnecessarily to the system. i recently read a mail from the local mailing list which attributed mandrake's bloat to it having a boot time similar to windows so i took a little timing test of my system and here is what i have:

Boot 39.66 seconds. time is from the moment i selected an option in lilo until im dropped to a log-in console.

KDE 29.86 seconds. time is from the moment i selected an option in Xtart unitl the KDE splash screen disappears.

Fluxbox 4.12 seconds. similar to KDE description

 

and here are my services...

atd  

crond

devfsd

gpm

internet

iptables (stopped)

keytables

kheader

linuxconf

lm_sensors (stopped)

network

random

rawdevices (stopped)

switchprofile (stopped)

syslog

tmdns

xfs

xinetd

 

i can get into my machine in around a minute. i agree that i dont have a dhcp-dependent interface as i only have a dial-up but that shouldnt matter for this little experiment. my bamboo installation is minimally tweaked from the stock install.

 

if this is bloat then i love it. :)

 

ciao!

[paul]

I think the best choice for support would be none other than MUB, it is, without a doubt, one of the best resources I've encountered, even if you do occasionally have to filter out some major weirdness.

 

I'm with you .. but what is weirdness ? :mystismiles:

 

I compare the Gentoo forum to something like a Wallmart. You can get what you want but not in the same way as you would at the local store where the guy know your name and ask you 'how are you?' .. you know what I mean? This is why I stay here. Anyway Linux is Linux, whatever the distro one use.

 

MOttS

 

ahh the perfect comparison ...

 

and as for weirdness .... I think SGML users are weird

 

buwahahahahaha

<paul ducks as he starts a flame war !!! :#: >

 

qnr on a more serious note ... point me to some docs about gaze etc. ... everytime I read something about SGML, it gets my interest.