Jump to content

Best Distro to LEARN?


Recommended Posts

Webmin is a must have. I don't care who you talk to, there are just some times in your life that you NEED it. Unless you know everything about everything, there is a feature in Webmin that you need. Or something. ;)

 

Anyhow, back to my ramblings of Gentoo vs Debian.

 

I think the best part about Debian is the fact that it is free (100%), and runs on so many different architectures. Their commitment to freedom is amazingly amazing to me. Sure, there are politics in Debian, but I believe that's what holds it together. I really enjoy the comfort that Debian gives me. It's been around for a while, and I don't see it going down any time soon, if ever. Gentoo, to me, is quite similar. It is a lot newer, however, and I don't think it's really proved itself as a sticking distro yet. Don't get me wrong, I believe in it and all, but you have to admit that it IS still very very new, and no one really knows if interest in it is a phase or what. In any case, I see it as being quite similar to Debian. Their social contract, IIRC, was based on Debian's. They are committed to free software. I can appreciate Gentoo, and hell, even Gentoo users, but it's not for me at this point in time. Maybe you feel my concerns aren't valid, but that's your feelings. I respect that. I am amazed at how quickly so many Mandrake users jumped on the Gentoo bandwagon, to be honest. It's like, Gentoo drove by your house and offered you candy to get in. It's amazing, really.

 

So in the end, in my opinion, it really doesn't matter what distro you use (unless it's Lindows, Lycoris, SuSE, or Xandros), and we're all brothers... Any distro (except the aforementioned) is better than Windows.

 

what amazes me is tht gentoo zealots go around barking about all that gentoo does that other distros don't do. oddly enough though is that all gentoo does have over some distros is speed and dependency handling.

 

i also note that the majority of its loudest supporters :

 

1. came from a situation where their main distro was an RPM distro

 

2. they have the most problems.

 

3. have learned nothing (ie "my gentoo box is fast because it is compiled for my archtecture" "you only install what you need not what you don't" "it is not easy to install")

 

4. couldn't install debian (even after using gentoo)

 

5. think gentoo is the bestest distro out there when in fact they have no concept of what other distros are trying to do (for distros like mandrake the target is to get as many people using linux as possible while making the transition as smoooth as possible to this end they sacrifice certain things such as huge piles of incredibly stupid CFLAGS etc)

 

well i'm bored now thanks alot gentoo zealots......for a real learning experience i too suggest lfs.

 

I like you. :D

 

And did I mention that your name *really* rocks? (except the 31 part, it's just there.)

 

To answer the SuSE question... I just don't like them. I'm surprised I don't have to pay for ALSA...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 76
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

To answer the SuSE question... I just don't like them. I'm surprised I don't have to pay for ALSA...

 

I can understand that, they have a good product and have some very good stuff coming down the line for servers and corprate clients.

 

But I think they really hurt them self's not beta testing and only realeasing an ftp install a couple weeks after the box hit's the shelves.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I find it fascinating that there is so much criticism directed toward gentoo, or should I say, people who use gentoo.

 

I know that my knowledge of linux and how it operates is very limited. I know that there are alot of good people here at this board who actually enjoy helping others. This board started that way, and I think it should continue on that course. There are other boards on the net (we have all been to some of them) that do not welcome people who do not know what they are doing.

 

Since I am "ignorant" of the real workings of linux, I suppose that any distro I choose to use or abuse would be the "wrong" distro, because of my own "ignorance". Ah, well, such is life.

 

I thought this thread was about distros, and the opinions, and passions, that users have concerning those distros. I think it is appropriate to make critiques of the distros. Be-littling the users of certain distros really belongs somewhere else.

 

Just my opinion.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I find it fascinating that there is so much criticism directed toward gentoo, or should I say, people who use gentoo.

 

I know that my knowledge of linux and how it operates is very limited. I know that there are alot of good people here at this board who actually enjoy helping others. This board started that way, and I think it should continue on that course. There are other boards on the net (we have all been to some of them) that do not welcome people who do not know what they are doing.

 

Since I am "ignorant" of the real workings of linux, I suppose that any distro I choose to use or abuse would be the "wrong" distro, because of my own "ignorance". Ah, well, such is life.

 

I thought this thread was about distros, and the opinions, and passions, that users have concerning those distros. I think it is appropriate to make critiques of the distros. Be-littling the users of certain distros really belongs somewhere else.

 

Just my opinion.

 

i would agree. but being the member of so many forums out there i know alot of the tactics of gentoo users. they have no trouble belittling other distros and user sof those distros. when i have tried to push arch linux in the past as a good fast light distro without all of the compiling time i have been called a noob (or similar things) and people who have not even tried the distro criticize it simply because it is a precompiled binary distro.

 

i just went on the just linux forum and tried to defend arch against criticisms of someone who used the distro for three days and thought he knew what arch is all about and how it works. he makes claims that gentoo is better out of the box because of very simple things in the package manager and speed wise.

 

other gentoo people continue to do similar attacks on other distros too. it is just pathetic especially when you are one of those people that has taken time to learn things and realize that thes gentoo zealots are so full of themselves and s**t.

 

basically i gave up trying to push ANY distro i just push curious users to do their own exploration of places like distrowatch. there are other choices and most if not all distro s have the potential to be as good or better than gentoo.

 

THAT is my point. it is great that people love gentoo but i wish these people would spare use all of the endless repetition of the glories of gentoo and the porliferation of myths that gentoo is the ONLY option out there for fast and effective. i wish too that these peoples criticisms of other distros were actually based on true problems with the distro instead of problems that are a result of their lack of knowledge and inexperience (ie i know more people that do NOT have dependency hell than do and i know at least one precompiled binary distro that is faster than gentoo and two source distros that are better managed and developed)

 

there is choice out there.....i want people to know that. arch linux is one of them, but there are others. no distro is perfect but any distro can be perfect for the right user.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can tell that you are knowledgable about linux. And it is equally true that when people are passionate about something, they can get over-bearing. :wink:

 

For what it's worth, I get a little cautious anytime someone tries to tell me that a any distro is THE distro, because that is exactly what microscuttle believes! :lol:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm with DOlson....I like sarah31 :wink: How many times do we need to see and rpm question being answered, or rpm pkg found, to have a gentoo user say, "yep! execpt I just emerge....bla bla". This has nothing to do with rpm, now does it? Is part of it jealousy from the rpm users?....I think so...but the point is...grow up already! Have I tried gentoo? Nope, I'm dialup. Would I? Love to! But then I just love trying distros. Oh, and a lot of gentoo users are young, so this has to be taken into consideration as well. :P I haven't been in ML in weeks. If I need to help with ML rpms I just chroot to it from RH9 which is what I'm using now with XD2. So far it's very nice. I go into my Libranet every now and then, just cause I like it......debian rocks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You know, that makes a lot of sense. I can't believe how people get so mad at me when they say things like "I'm going to use the gaming sources, and hey, Debian doesn't have that!!!" I tell them that I can just get the patch that Gentoo uses and apply it to a kernel and compile it for Debian... Well golly gee, now I've done something wrong. Bah. Screw them.

 

It's not just Gentoo users though. Lots of Debian users are the same. Or perhaps different... They think they're better than everyone else, they say that Mandrake is a Windows distro, not a Linux distro, and just lots of really stupid things.

 

It's sad. What OS you run doesn't define who you are as a person. I wish everyone would stop acting like it does.

 

I'll leave off with a couple clips from one of my chat logs:

 

---- New Conversation @ Sat Dec 14 21:05:18 2002 ----

(21:05:18) L337: I use gentoo and they are the best linux i have hever seen

(21:05:43) Dana: I see

(21:08:00) L337: Gentoo is ruff to install and configure but they not have precompile package they compile all ,they take a lot of time but they are very fast to run it after

(21:09:03) Dana: I know. I've run it before.

(21:09:12) Dana: but compared with Mandrake 9.0, it's not really much faster at all.

(21:09:32) Dana: and the 10-hour install isn't worth the miniscule performance increase I'd get

(21:11:03) L337: they are very stable  

when i use mdk ,it crash often

(21:12:05) Dana: I haven't had any crashes on my gateway/server/buildbox, and it's been running for about 130 days, and my desktop computer has not been rebooted for 13 days, 17 hours, and 3 minutes

(21:13:19) L337: gentoo boot more faster than win XP ,i can<t say this think about mdk

(21:13:41) Dana: My system boots in 12 seconds. I don't see how that's considered "slow"

(21:14:20) Dana: On another computer, I've got it booting in 8 seconds.

(21:14:22) Dana: but whatever.

(21:14:59) L337: i don<t how you<ve do this with mdk but i knows that you<ve not install a lot of daemon  

(21:17:38) Dana: umm

(21:17:40) Dana: okay...

(21:17:45) Dana: what is your problem?

(21:18:05) Dana: I'm not gonna convert over to Gentoo, just because you think it's better

(21:18:06) L337: i<ve no problem why^

(21:19:17) Dana: I've talked to some of their maintainters, and they know what I'm looking for in a distro. When they provide it, as they've told me they are planning to do in the future, then I will try it again. But until then, I don't need some Gentoo ambassadors breaking down my walls trying to wipe down my hard drive and install a different version of the same operating system.

(21:20:04) Dana: and fix your bloody keyboard

(21:20:35) Dana: your ' shows up as a < and your ? shows up as a ^

(21:22:05) L337: sorry  

(21:32:40) L337 logged out.

 

Oh yeah, and then, a little while later, I get this:

 

---- New Conversation @ Wed Mar 12 17:26:42 2003 ----

(17:26:42) L337: i uses debian i've install gentoo 1 time and emerge is very good also ,but i think gentoo is more faster but take too much time to install

(17:28:02) Dana: well the last time I talked to you, you were trying to force me to use Gentoo

(17:28:16) L337: no debian

(17:28:49) Dana: uh, no.

(17:28:57) Dana: (21:13:19) L337: gentoo boot more faster than win XP ,i can<t say this think about mdk

(17:29:15) Dana: (21:17:45) Dana: what is your problem?

(17:29:16) Dana: (21:18:05) Dana: I'm not gonna convert over to Gentoo, just because you think it's better

(17:29:17) Dana: (21:18:06) L337: i<ve no problem why^

(17:29:34) L337: ok yes

 

Well, I thought it was funny.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

nice DOlson :-)

 

i hope no one thinks i'm a gentoo zealot...if i ever came off that way, i apologize. i made the mistake of accepting the hype as true. guess i got drawn into the band wagon.

 

anyways, i'm working on getting archlinux to my likings (specifically gnome) but so far, it's nice. took me a bit to figure out all the packages i needed to bring down to get gnome up and running nicely, but i figured that out, so it's all good.

 

and if you ever read the stuff DOlson and i message back and forth about Debian and Gentoo sometimes, don't take it seriously ;-)

 

i'm rarely ever a serious person.

 

sarah31: if i ever said anything that offended you or made you think i thought gentoo kicked every other distro's arse, i apologize. if it's any consolation, you taught me the real deal w/compiling for specific architectures.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sarah31 - you really have a problem with gentoo users don't you? :wink:

 

I've only ever used three distros - mandrake,RH & gentoo kind of in that order and gentoo is by far the best distro of that list - for me. My system runs much faster than it ever did and everything (except seahorse) works so much better than it ever did on mandrake.

 

I won't say that gentoo is the bestest ever distro - I haven't tried enough. But what I can say is that when I was using Mandrake, I still felt like a newbie after using it for a couple of years. Since using gentoo I've learned absolutely loads about linux and I find gentoo really easy to get working pretty much exactly how I like it. At some point I may try another distro (one which doesn't require decent broadband - who knows if I'll always have that luxury)

 

until then - I really like gentoo. Others don't - fine. I won't ever try to ram it down anyone's throat like that guy DOlson was talking too - but can I ask, as a favour, can we also not have how terrible all gentoo users are also rammed down or throats?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Gentoo has been around for some time now. They mentioned it it every where where Linux is. Nothing interested me until I came to this site where I found very helpful people resolving problems and talking about Gentoo. Only then I decided to give it a try on one of my machines. It took ages to emerge a few things. BUT from my point of view it's worth it. I finally got a solid stable system (it hasn't collapsed yet, others did. Of course you have to consider what you are using the system for before you can talk about stability. Development, specially system development, is an easy way to disrupt the os but I found Gentoo to be very stable).

Gentoo still a new distro, so you can't compare it to other distros that have been around for many years.

It seems to me that in a relatively short time it'll become the distro of choice for many users, newbies and others, who have broadband access.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

About 'learning linux', I think the point sarah31 was trying to make is that you're not learning anything in gentoo about 'linux' that you couldn't have learned in any other distro. What you have learned is gentoo....not linux. The things that you have learned that are 'linux', could have been learned regardless of the distro. Echo....I'm repeating myself :wink: The good thing about it is that 'gentoo' was there to prompt you to learn it, where...say...mandrake spoiled you with tools which inhibited the necessity of learning. So if this is what makes a distro great....lfs is without a doubt the best distro ever :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree with bvc and sarah31, emerge <filename> isn't helping you learing anything about compiling software.

 

Of course I use RH and Debian and apt-get install <filename> isn't helping me out either.

 

I'm seriously thinking of going back to Slack and do it "old school", I've just got used to being pampered with apt, I haven't compiled a kerenl in a long time. RH's kerenl doesn't like to except patches and that pretty much stinks.

 

I can't speak on Arch, that is one distro I haven't tried. Maybe I'll check it out.

 

How's it going bvc, haven't talked to you in awhile?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Speaking of Gentoo users filling up news site's.

 

Here's an article on www.osnews.com about slackware 9 & of course you can't get through one article on that site with a couple of gentoo users makeing bad statements.

 

http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=3780

 

Check it out, I know Dolson will get a kick out of it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Rad: if I remember correctly, gentoo is only been around a little over a year.

 

for such a popular distro, that is _extremely_ young. heck, compared to most other distro's, it's still young.

 

so wait...you say it's been around a while...and then you say it's a fairly new distro......i'm confused.

 

i just woke up, i don't think i should be posting....i'll come back later ;-)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Linux is a kernel, so you have to study the kernel code in order to learn how it works.

When you develop a program on Linux, you learn (in general) how to develop on the UNIX family.

Everything else you do is related to the distro you use.

So, it doesn't make much sense to talk about the best distro from the point of how much it'll make you learn about Linux!

To me the best distro is the best in stability, security, performance, maintainability, and ease of use. Each one has his/her own list that depends on what the system is used for. No distro can be good (or best) in all the items in the list and there's always a price to pay. With Gentoo the price is a very long time to emerge but you make the best possible distro for your machine to cover your needs.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share


×
×
  • Create New...