Tell us why your Linux distro is the best

Slackware is very text-based, because its design philosophy was focused on simplicity. Many do think that the text based configurations, lack of GUI installers and the like, but for those that are willing to learn, Slackware can be a very rewarding learning experience. It does have somewhat of a steeper learning curve, but it's a very transparent system.

That said, I really like Slackware and ZenWalk (mini-Slack), after my venture into the Debian world.
 
I am going to throw *another* vote in for ubuntu as a good n00bie distrobution because of the "Automatix" package that you can install....it allows a linux n00bie to install a multitude of useful software through a GUI and also automatically configures some options that people unfamiliar with linux may not know how to change...

check it at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=66563
 
BillLeeLee said:
Slackware is very text-based, because its design philosophy was focused on simplicity. Many do think that the text based configurations, lack of GUI installers and the like, but for those that are willing to learn, Slackware can be a very rewarding learning experience. It does have somewhat of a steeper learning curve, but it's a very transparent system.

That said, I really like Slackware and ZenWalk (mini-Slack), after my venture into the Debian world.
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so true, I've been using slackware since the day one when I made the move to linux back in 1998 and I love it. I enjoy downloading just the source of any application, compiling it myself and making changes that suit my needs. I tried redhat, ubuntu, mandrake (mandriva?) and debian and I still keep on coming back to my slackware <3

I think everyone who is really interested in learning linux should use slackware or distros alike since its the best way to learn and expirience linux like it was meant to be IMHO ;)
 
I guess my opinion won't really add much for some people, but I prefer Redhat. I don't use linux at home, just at work.

Redhat, in my opinion, has the best support out of the two major players. We have Novell in house because we used to use NDS (switched to AD) but we will continue using groupwise. Novell tried to tempt us to go to SLESand OES instead of RHEL. We didn't get anywhere near the support from Novell as we have Redhat. Redhat also has the best relationship with Dell (we are pretty much exclusive Dell servers), SLES was supposed to have OpenManage last summer but they still have nothing from what I've seen. Redhat also is aquiring JBoss which is what we have been planning on switching to for our java app server needs. That should make our purchasing people happy.

We have a Redhat Satellite that was a breeze to setup. Novell's ZLM is a nightmare in comparison (though it should do more).

One thing I like about SUSE is YAST. I don't really need all the tools together, but searching for one .so or rpm I need is much nicer in YAST than on Redhat.
 
Here's a bit of my overview:

FreeBSD: Nice overall BSD distro. We used this as our OS for our appliances where we worked. It did/does osme goofy things. It's funny cause the one developer would often sit in the back trying to figure something out and go on a complete rant. They were very funny.

OpenBSD: Love it as a server OS. Secure, and simple. Was told about it by the one ranting developer I mentioned above.

Ubuntu: I like it as a desktop OS.

FC4: Won't install on my computer. Perhaps I'll try with FC5.
 
I'd have to go with Debian for me. I was using it exclusively on my laptop for a couple months and loving it. I stopped using it because I coudn't get sound working on my laptop (couldn't find any drivers for em). Outside of a few smaller APIC related issues, it worked flawlessly. apt-get/synaptic is the greatest thing I've seen in linux (used it off and on for a few years).

plus debian is cooler than the rest

debian.jpg
 
Freesco.

I give freesco my vote for an award, since their support forum is excellent, and its the most feature-packed router 486-friendly linux distro ive tried. Plus a total linux-noob can just about use it, due to it having wizards (no GUI). PnP support for NICs, and it has many add-on packages that are fairly simple to install.
 
locutus24 said:
Slacware 10.2 ftw, just cause of how close it comes to being like gentoo as far as speed is concerned. The lack of package management is a small problem, thus far my only problems have been dealing with missing libraries and building them. Other then that, everything builds flawlessly using ./configure make make install those three commands have yet to fail me.
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Slackware has package managment, but the manager doesn't include dep checking (what every one seems to think is required for something to be called a package manager).
 
Xipher said:
Slackware has package managment, but the manager doesn't include dep checking (what every one seems to think is required for something to be called a package manager).
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don't you think that should be required of a package manager though? i mean the last thing you wanna do when installing some app is hunt down dependency after dependency. not bahsing or anything, but was just curious as to why u think that that shouldnt be included
 
Jake said:
I guess my opinion won't really add much for some people, but I prefer Redhat. I don't use linux at home, just at work.
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Another vote for RH.

Don't get me wrong, it has it's quirks. However, they are workable. And some of the bigger software packages I run were written primarly with RH in mind ( asterisk is one ).

As long as it works, does what I want, with the least amount of headaches, that's all I'm after.
 
ne0-reloaded said:
don't you think that should be required of a package manager though? i mean the last thing you wanna do when installing some app is hunt down dependency after dependency. not bahsing or anything, but was just curious as to why u think that that shouldnt be included
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If your using Slackware, I assume you know what something depends on, or how to find out. Most 3rd party packages tell you what they depend on any ways. Dep checking is what causes so much overhead for all the other package managers, while slackwares .tgz's are tarballs with a couple install scripts, and the pkg tools are just shell scripts.

K.I.S.S.
 
RH works pretty good for servers and what I deploy everywhere I can. There are some issues/bugs with it but there are just as many work arounds if needed.

For a desktop I like Ubuntu/Debian, the package management system is great and there is support for a LOT of hardware.
 
My two cents has to go with Debian. Ever since I started work as a consultant for a small company that had a Debian server, I've really grown to like it.

I've dealt mostly with RH in the past but I've found Debian and Ubuntu to be great.

Soon we'll be installing RH Enterprise on all our mail servers at work so I'll be working with that a lot more.
 
I really like Ubuntu myself, Kubuntu in particular. It's a very easy to use distro, and you can still do a lot of neat stuff with it. The new Dapper Drake release is fantastic, being very easy to install. Though the options on the live cd installer leave a bit to be desired (like reiserfs as a filesystem formatting option).

Synaptic is one of the best package management systems I've seen thusfar. The community for Ubuntu is just amazing, so if you choose ubuntu make sure to go to the forums regularly.
 
I just tried Ubuntu. It's Debian. So that's neat. Lots of small and annoying problems just like any other distro. I realize more and more that they (distros) are all the same with their own set of pissers and there is no such thing as a distro that stays true to standards. Even it's own standards. If there was, the popular software you would run breaks all that anyway. It's such a mess.
 
velusip said:
I just tried Ubuntu. It's Debian. So that's neat. Lots of small and annoying problems just like any other distro. I realize more and more that they (distros) are all the same with their own set of pissers and there is no such thing as a distro that stays true to standards. Even it's own standards. If there was, the popular software you would run breaks all that anyway. It's such a mess.
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Sounds like you're looking for FreeBSD. If they do change the way they do things it's well-documented. :)
 
[H]EMI_426 said:
Sounds like you're looking for FreeBSD. If they do change the way they do things it's well-documented. :)
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Indeed. Or the other BSDs, from what I've heard, though being even less mainstream than FreeBSD leads to certain other quirks and problems.
 
well I think its interesting I seen libranet which btw is a Debian clone =)

im sure had I read all of them id have seen over a dozen other debian clones mentioned as well

as a 10 year Linux/UNIX admin and user going on 11 years now for UNIX
I have been since 1994 a Debian user for both personal use and recomended for servers.

and a 12 node amdxp 3200+/12 nodes amdxp 2500+ cluster running Debian 3(woody) testing at the time with PVM-Condore and OpenMosix
dpkg/Apt-get are by far obviously the best the Debian Security team is tops imo and in the Linux community as a whole

I fail to see how one can compare other packaged distros to debian imo anyways but for starters lets go with the packaging utilitys apt-get and dpkg used by debian and its many many clones

rpms by mostly rh(redhat/redhat enterprise) based systems over the years iv used many redhat ent loaded servers its pretty common and I dispise rpms and the apt-rpm they tried to get going which imo is a failure iv had loads of trouble using it with dependencies same for rpms them selves and what is the point of its package managment if im forced to simply either make my own rpm from source or build from source?

flame all you want, I will always dispise rpms

all distros of Linux are somewhat similar using the same kernel which is Linux it self and some use various boot loaders lilo and grub few other lesser used ones come to mind

any devlopers reading will know what I mean when I say redhat is dirty do I even need to mention its rpcs? and its booting processes or its patched to hell kernel? its just dirty and the commented sections in such config files as (## not sure why this works fast patch but it does work so keep it in place)

for GUIs they pretty much all use KDE/Gnome tho I am seeing less and less of Gnome as a main installed GUI and just KDE these days I will agree KDE is much nicer looking all around.

and to the user who first commented on this discussion listing various linux dists most of those use rpms and would have been around 80% the same not a very good selection

libranet is old and lacks updating imo go with Debian =)
 
Damn that's hard to read. Use periods (.) and Capitol Letters where they should be.

And my vote is for Debian also. I got started on RH 7.2 running some email servers and have tried many distros, but I keep going back to Debian.
 
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