if you could only have one distro..what would it be?

[Sepero]

www.ubuntulinux.org

Wow you read my mind. I was thinking about posting about Ubuntu. I followed somebody's link there recently. They seemed to have a Very professional looking website. I'm really eager to try Ubuntu out. What about Ubuntu makes it so great?

[bs_texas]

Originally posted by Sepero
www.ubuntulinux.org

Wow you read my mind. I was thinking about posting about Ubuntu. I followed somebody's link there recently. They seemed to have a Very professional looking website. I'm really eager to try Ubuntu out. What about Ubuntu makes it so great?

Look here.

[beerman]

Yeah, check out that thread. There is too much good to repost .

[battalax]

If i could have one distro i would pick debian the first distro i used was mandrake 9.2 and it was really nice for me to learn some linux with. Then i went to lycoris lx i do not reccomend this at all to anyone that was on my harddrive for a half hour at most then i had suse 9.1 professional and i was very impressed and i thought i found the perfect distro but then later down the road it wouldnt boot for some reason and instead of fixing the problem i decided to give gentoo a try and I didnt even finish trying to install it because i could not get a gui to install so i went on to then try out debian and ive had it for 2 weeks i think and i am very very very impressed with it. apt-get install is the best command i have ever typed. I always felt the great diffculty about linux is installing things and wheni got debian and i installed gaim (on suse it had so many dependency problems) it took a total of maybe a minute to install gaim i was so shocked and i know there is similar things to that for other distros but ive found debian to very very stable
in conclusion debian takes the cake !

p.s ive tried more distros i jsut didnt want to annoy everyone by taking up so much space

[The Mas]

I began using Slackware in 1995. For a couple of years, it was my only distro. In 1998, I began to plan ahead for a system that would eventually be connected to a network. Around that time, I checked out Red Hat, Caldera, and Mandrake, but I was running them on a standalone system. I had at least used Slackware to run locally, then use it as a terminal into a UNIX system at work. I'd bring work home and edit it locally using Slackware, then login and send it back to the UNIX system.

In 1999, I began using Caldera OpenLinux eDesktop 2.4. It was one of the easiest systems of that time to install and use. It never gained favor because it incorporated both GPL and commercial software, so the geeks disliked the commercial stuff, but it was actually a really nice system for that time. I used it for about two years.

In 2001, I finally got a system specifically designed so that I could download and test systems. I started using Mandrake, Red Hat, and SuSE quite a bit, side by side. For the first time I got my hands on a Debian system, something I had wanted to do. I installed my first Debian system off a really old 2.1 CD from a book and had trouble. It was then that I was introduced to Libranet, which smoothed my entry point into Debian. Once I got settled in, I learned the Debian ways. To this day, Libranet has become my favorite distro and remains so.

These days, I generally keep partitions on my system running Libranet, Mandrake, Fedora Core, MEPIS, and one or two test systems. I've recently tested out Ubuntu, UserLinux, Simply MEPIS, Munjoy Linux, Knoppix, Damn Small Linux, Flonix, CD Puppy, SLAX, and several other distros. I really like several of the Live CD based systems, especially the ones with Debian packaging. At the end of the day, the two remaining distros that I use often are MEPIS and Libranet. The latter of these, Libranet, still remains my tried and true, trusted, flexible, hackable, yet usable and enjoyable system. MEPIS gets high marks for being a really nice ready to use system, and I still keep Mandrake around as an easy to use system that's also pretty flexible. I always keep a Red Hat descendant of one kind or another around, right now I'm keeping Fedora Core 2, soon to be Core 3 as soon as I install my ISO images. Libranet, my trusty entry into the Debian world, remains #1. However, since I began this trek, Sarge has massively improved the entry point into Debian. Had I begun this journey during the past six months, I may have started with a Sarge netinstall and remained there. Sarge greatly improves everything about Debian, especially the installation. If you want something free, Sarge Debian is a great way to start. However, Libranet and MEPIS are also free at the present time, so if you are running your system on Intel hardware, they make it easy. Either way, a Debian based system these days is easy to install (especially commercial versions) yet extremely easy to upgrade. Other distros are just as easy to install, but a pain to upgrade. Not so with Debian. Debian carries with it an ugly reputation for clumsy installation software, but that is no longer true. Debian systems are extremely flexible, yet much easier than ever to install and use. I recommend them. Sarge Debian, Libranet, MEPIS, Ubuntu, Knoppix, Xandros, and Linspire each have something to contribute. I use Libranet most and I nominate it as a great and complete system.

[SirHailstone]

I must be in quite the minority here .. I use RedHat. I like RedHat. It was my first non-Apple or non-Micro$lap operating system. Starting with 5.2 to operate an Internet service provider with a 512K line and 24 modems. I tried to operate it with Windows NT 4.0 and the constant crashes and cries for help to my upstream provider, I was dragged kicking and screaming away from my "trusty" windows and into Linux.

I'm working on setting up Citrix like Windows terminals for our factory employees usage. I looked into Wine and trying to port over apps to pure Linux but that looked to be a ticking time bomb - so I am using a Windows based term serv for the apps, and Fedora Core 2 and X-windows and GoGlobal to view and operate the apps.

And Linux operates just peachy with or without a web browser or any other network program so I don't have to be concerned over business abuse by employees, and setting it to run level 5 and automatically starting the terminal program and enclosing it within an infinite while-do loop keeps the employees once signed in, doesn't even realize he's on a Linux computer instead of using Windows.

It was more difficult to modify the registry to hide the server drives and set up the network shares on the Windows side than it was to set up the entire Linux workstation.

[The Mas]

Originally posted by SirHailstone
I must be in quite the minority here .. I use RedHat.
...
And Linux operates just peachy with or without a web browser or any other network program so I don't have to be concerned over business abuse by employees...

It was more difficult to modify the registry to hide the server drives and set up the network shares on the Windows side than it was to set up the entire Linux workstation.

You are not in the minority, except perhaps in the response of these posts. In the U.S. Red Hat is definitely the most widely used commercial Linux system. Worldwide, I suspect that Debian systems, by their inherent free nature, probably have the most installations. Novell's SUSE is the popular European option, and now that they are American owned, they are regaining popularity in the U.S.

Red Hat's community distribution these days is called Fedora Core, and Fedora Core 3 was just recently released. Red Hat's major commercial entry is Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, that's the one that many businesses use.

[The Mas]

Originally posted by bs_2003
Look here.

Debian based systems have long been lauded for their excellence in quality and packaging, but lambasted for being old, hard to install, and thus difficult and out of date. That situation is vastly improved, but it still is the commercial side of Debian distributions that is closing much of that gap.

Knoppix makes a really great Live CD, and so do MEPIS and a few other vendors.

Ubuntu's big contribution is an easy installation plus bleeding edge new packages that have been tested and found to work. MEPIS and Ubuntu are leading the charge in this area. Both systems are VERY good, MEPIS uses a KDE desktop, Ubuntu uses a VERY current GNOME desktop.

[bensdomain]

Fedora Core or Ubuntu

I hope Ubuntu gets even better.

[carbon-12]

SUSE!

All other Linux distros are redundant.

[Disk Monkey]

Indeed, I would have to recommend Slackware as the only way to fly. It's got the goods. It's got the game. And it's got a nifty/entertaining(Ever seen slackprop?) name. I can' timagine myself switching to another distro unless they had something that I just couldn't live without that Slackware was incapabable of having (I can't see this happening) or Slackware starts to get really buggy (I doubt this as well).


***Edit***
Okay, I can't be that much of a bigot. I like LibraNET (it rules) and BLAGLinux is another good Red Hat spinoff, as well.

[Gnarulf]

Gentoo

[rbrimhall]

Originally posted by beerman
I've used a lot of distros over the years but my vote has to go to Ubuntu. I switched a couple of days ago and I've been totally floored. I forgot who has it the linky in their sig but thanks

It was probably me...

[Gallienus]

Well it would be nice to have gnucash on slack without having to jump through hoops.


PS

My new MSI mobo and anthlon64 chip are due to arrive tomorrow does anyone know if there's a 64 bit slack in the works?

[Eejay]

Originally posted by rdeschene2
When I first started using Linux (about 3 or 4 years ago now) I tried a few different distros, and ended up settling on SuSE Professional.

(1) it's cheap, like all Linux distros

(2) when I was on dialup having 6 CDs loaded with RPMs was especially fantastic. I still like that as almost all the apps work very well "as on CD". Some of the ones that require proprietary codecs are crippleware, unfortunately.

(3) overall very good hardware and installation process, that gets better with every version #, and good online resources at
http://www.suse.com
http://packman.links2linux.org

So that helped me as a newbie.

(4) the software and documentation in the Professional edition has allowed me to expand my usage further as time goes on.

If I were starting over again I might very well end up with Libranet though - Debian-based, and apparently a very good installer and hardware detection.

~Subscribes to thread~