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

[dalek]

I have been sticking with Gentoo for quite a while. I have no intention of changing either. It works perfectly for me. I may run into a bug on occasion but it never breaks anything and is usually fixed the next day or I can change some little something and fix right away.

I like this part too.

root@smoker / # uptime
 06:29:28 up 230 days, 23:05,  5 users,  load average: 2.77, 2.45, 2.24
root@smoker / #

I'm running that folding thing is why it is "busy". It's been running that thing for a few days now. Looks like a week or so more before it finishes. 10 more days and it will be 8 months. I like that. Mandrake was too buggy for me to do that. It was easy to install but running it was a bit rough.

Later

[silkcom]

U know, It sounds as if I've installed more distro's than anyone here (Started with mandrake, then suse, then gentoo, then debian, then mephis, then slackware, then peanut linux, then college linux, then ELS (i think) linux, then lindows, then linspire (aaahhhh), then (not that these are in order) red hat, then fedora, then ....... ) although I imagine that's not true. I'm lookin for the right one, but right now XP just seems to beat linux. Now I've got a bunch of froathing nerds on my hands . Here's why:

1 - Ms streets and trips (when u just don't have an internet connection)
2 - when I close the lid to my laptop and then reopen it, windows actually comes back on, linux always seems to hang
3 - I can actually get my wavebuddy wireless card to work in windows, something that i've just never been good enough to do in linux, which makes it tough to use the forums to fix
4 - Diablo 2 (and i don't want to pay for cedega), and guild wars for that matter
5 - My hardware just plain works, and is actually installed correctly. Granted this is because i know how to install stuff in windows, but it's still true. Not that I doubt that linux could install it correctly, but my friends who know linux always seem to be ok that the monitor works, and ignore the fact that it doesn't show up in the highest resolution possible (my friend always says that a console is just find on 640x480 anyway ).

Now if i could overcome these issues, I would love too. I find myself coming back to linux once or so a year trying to see if it fits yet, but it seems that the divisions that it has just makes it not quite good enough.

But i would have to give a vote to my current favorite distro: Mepis (although I just got Ubuntu to send me some CDs).

[zeroth]

U know, It sounds as if I've installed more distro's than anyone here (Started with mandrake, then suse, then gentoo, then debian, then mephis, then slackware, then peanut linux, then college linux, then ELS (i think) linux, then lindows, then linspire (aaahhhh), then (not that these are in order) red hat, then fedora, then ....... ) although I imagine that's not true. I'm lookin for the right one, but right now XP just seems to beat linux. Now I've got a bunch of froathing nerds on my hands . Here's why:

1 - Ms streets and trips (when u just don't have an internet connection)
2 - when I close the lid to my laptop and then reopen it, windows actually comes back on, linux always seems to hang
3 - I can actually get my wavebuddy wireless card to work in windows, something that i've just never been good enough to do in linux, which makes it tough to use the forums to fix
4 - Diablo 2 (and i don't want to pay for cedega), and guild wars for that matter
5 - My hardware just plain works, and is actually installed correctly. Granted this is because i know how to install stuff in windows, but it's still true. Not that I doubt that linux could install it correctly, but my friends who know linux always seem to be ok that the monitor works, and ignore the fact that it doesn't show up in the highest resolution possible (my friend always says that a console is just find on 640x480 anyway ).

Now if i could overcome these issues, I would love too. I find myself coming back to linux once or so a year trying to see if it fits yet, but it seems that the divisions that it has just makes it not quite good enough.

But i would have to give a vote to my current favorite distro: Mepis (although I just got Ubuntu to send me some CDs).

thats a lot of distros...have you stuck with oen for longer than a month? you probably just need to give one the time it deserves, enough time to learn it at least.

[dalek]

thats a lot of distros...have you stuck with oen for longer than a month? you probably just need to give one the time it deserves, enough time to learn it at least.

I have to agree on that. It took me a while to get everything working in Gentoo. After I had used it for a while and learned my way around, it was easy. Right now, I sort of feel like a idiot. Gentoo is so easy to update that I basically just tell it to update, update the config files and I'm done. I have not had any real serious problems with the updates. It just seems to work.

You need to pick a distro and stick with it for a while. I'm not saying to pick Gentoo but I can tell you that once set up properly, it works very well. Proof is in the pudding I always say.

root@smoker / # uptime
 00:52:19 up 235 days, 17:28,  4 users,  load average: 1.12, 1.08, 1.15
root@smoker / #

I have updated every package on this thing, some more than once, without rebooting. Let's see windoze XP do that. I counted six reboots during a reinstall for a friend not long ago. I recently installed a program for my brother and it rebooted 3 times during that install. Rediculous. Oh, I also run folding on this rig. It runs at full speed for the past few weeks with out much of a break. I did have to log out and back in when KDE 3.4 was installed. I was using 3.3 before that. I run folding in a xterm in KDE.

Give Linux a chance. I don't have or never did have windoze and I make it just fine. No viruses either. Also saves a lot of money. They make crappy software so you will buy the new one which is about as bad as the last. That way you buy the next one too. Reminds me of a fish caught on a hook. Fisherman pulls back on the pole, the fish may fight but he gets pulled in too.

Later

[silkcom]

Lets see I played with Gentoo for about a month, maybe 3 weeks (that's about how long it took to install it, and because i had so many friends with it on their pc's i could get more help), I used mandrake on my desktop for about a month or 2, but using mandrake u don't learn linux very well. Right now I currently have pc's with Vector linux, Suse 9.3 pro, and Mepis on them. My laptop has Suse 9.3 and still has a few problems (I installed since my post), like suspending to disk and/or ram doesn't resume, and my wireless card almost works, but it just doesn't.

But ya, i usually use it for about a month before I give up completely, unless i've installed it before.

I think that the distro that will win for me will eventually be Suse, because my friend works for them and is really good at it.

anyway.

[silkcom]

I
Give Linux a chance. I don't have or never did have windoze and I make it just fine. No viruses either. Also saves a lot of money. They make crappy software so you will buy the new one which is about as bad as the last. That way you buy the next one too. Reminds me of a fish caught on a hook. Fisherman pulls back on the pole, the fish may fight but he gets pulled in too.

You know, people say that Windows is crap, and fine, linux is a much cooler idea to me, but windows works. I've had windows boxes up for months and months at a time, which goes down because of power failures. No virus's, because i'm somewhat intelligent (meaning I use firefox lol). So people may knock it, but the only problem that I see with it is that it gets more and more bloated, and it costs money.

So fine, we can say that linux is better at a lot of things, but you can't say that windows is total crap cause it always works for me (maybe you just have to be good at it, but the same holds for linux)

[dalek]

So fine, we can say that linux is better at a lot of things, but you can't say that windows is total crap cause it always works for me (maybe you just have to be good at it, but the same holds for linux)

I say windoze is total crap and if yours can run that long, you are very very lucky or it sits there idle, I know of some that can't run that long even when idle. I see a lot of Linux boxes that can run that long and very much longer but very few windoze boxes that can, even running the server versions. The one I posted uptime for is my desktop, not a server. It is what I am typing into right now. It is never idle. I run folding on it, plus I compile a lot.

Bell South appears to be one that can't keep it together. I can't get theirs to let me pay my freaking bill. It runs windoze 2000 and it reboots about every couple months at best. I looked it up to see for myself. Yea, I shot them a email and told them to fix it or no money. They don't have a place around here to pay the bill. They closed the office. I guess they got tired of people trying to get them to explain the stupid bill and all that coded crap that I still have no clue what the %$#@ it is.

My $.02 worth and it is worth it. I used to work on computers. When windoze came out, I quit and went to another career. I saw this crap coming.

Later

[silkcom]

Now, i don't want to defer this conversation (the one talking about which distro is the best), because i've found distro's that I want to try out from reading it, but even still, My windows box that hasn't gone down for years (if you take away the power outs at work) is my work desktop. It goes through so much crap it's incredible. So i still submit that although windows isn't this super clean (lol) OS, u guys obviously haven't given it the same "respect" that you give linux, because it's not all the things that you say it is. It doesn't slow down with time, rebooting it doesn't have any effect on that at all. The only reason to reboot is because you've installed some program that requires it. So fine, in most programs that I've installed on linux, linux is better in that respect. But don't say that it's more stable because windows slowly slows down. Windows slows down because people don't know how to use it, but I'm sorry, my linux box goes crazy and doesn't work at all because i don't know how to use it . Hense the reason that I keep trying to learn it .

Anyway, this may not be the best place to ask, but what are some of the best places to learn more about linux? I want to learn things such as getting my hardware to work as well in linux(or better would be nice) than it does in windows, I also want to learn how to make suspend work properly. If you know of the "best" places to find info or to start my search it would be appreciated.

[eskaypey]

Anyway, this may not be the best place to ask, but what are some of the best places to learn more about linux? I want to learn things such as getting my hardware to work as well in linux(or better would be nice) than it does in windows, I also want to learn how to make suspend work properly. If you know of the "best" places to find info or to start my search it would be appreciated.

http://google.com and http://google.com/linux

[dalek]

http://google.com and http://google.com/linux

And don't forget that you can ask questons here. There are tons of forums for Linux and there are some great people on them. There are admins here and at LQ. If you do use Gentoo, they have their own forums. It is rare that I run into a problem that a quick search doesn't fix.

You can also have a good read here:

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/index.html

As far as having respect for windoze, your right, I don't have any and they don't deserve it. If windoze was a car or a plane or something, people would be wanting a law against it or it to be banned outright. Imagine if a plane crashed like windoze does, virus or not. Windoze is the only thing that is expected to be crappy, insecure and just plain buggy. The funny thing is, people seem to love it. I have never understood that. I will not defend a Yugo either. It is crap and that is why it went under. I know of a person that totalled his Yugo by backing into his mailbox. His kid did that the same day they bought it. Go figure. Some still like Yugos too.

Later

[psych-major]

It doesn't slow down with time, rebooting it doesn't have any effect on that at all.

So obviously you're using Win2000 or XP, not 98 or ME.

Windows 2000 is probably the most stable OS M$ ever managed to pull out of its butt. If it wasn't for all the security holes, I would put it up there with some of the Linux versions that came out about the same time. However, on a recent road trip, I was able to crash Win2K and XP repeatedly by switching between A/C power and battery and by frequent hibernating. Slackware Linux in a similar abusive situation handles it just fine.

I think the biggest advantage Linux has over Windows, other than security and overall stability, is a much faster time to "market" with fixes and new features. A closed source system with a finite number of coders will always be slower and more bug-prone than an open-source one with a nearly infinite number of coders.

[silkcom]

see now you're hittin closer to the truth. Although i haven't yet been able to get linux to hibernate/suspend properly, but I would definately agree that what makes linux potentially much better is that it releases everything much faster, and allows real people to fix their real problems.

[dalek]

Not to mention if you really know your stuff, you can just fix the darn thing yourself and then submit it for a update/bug fix. You can't mess with source on windoze. You have to wait till Billy Bob wants you to have your rig fixed, then you can fix it. Better hope it is as important to him as it is to you too.

Later

[Tequila]

It's simple really

Enterprise Linux Server: CentOS4. Rock solid stability without the RHEL costs. Just take a look at most VPS and dedicated server hosting companies and you'll see a majority of them using CentOS, RHEL or FreeBSD.

Enterprise Server that you can trust 100% with Java + Oracle: SunOS 5.8/5.10. We still have a lot of old E250s at work for QA. These servers might go a couple weeks without any activity then 2 months of nothing but constant abuse running Oracle and various java app servers . The 400mhz CPU are weak but by god SunOS is so solid. Plus I look at from the viewpoint if you can tune your queries to run well on a dual-quad 400mhz SPARC cpu then they'll you'll know they will fly on the quad Sun Fire V40z Opteron production servers

Workstation: FC4. I want the latest and greatest apps like OpenOffice 2, Native Eclipse 3.1(using GCJ compiler) and other goodies like Evince (an assume PDF viewer) and test Xen in its unstable form. You take the risk of stability issues but starting back with RH7 I've always followed these simple rules to make my RH/FC fast and stable for a workstation: (1) Recompile the friggin monolithic kernel and turn off what you don't need (2) Don't use gmore or kde -- fluxbox all the way (3) Make sure dma is enabled (duh (4) Turn off ipv6. Once you do that you have a rockin FC workstation to (a) develop on, especially java webapps via Eclipse for me (b) play mp3, DVDs and other multimedia. I've used xmms and ogle dvd for years (c) play games. RTCW plays smoking fast on my old GF3. UT2004 rocks on a 6600GT.

Alternatives:

Worktation: Arch Linux. Minimal install on one CD and a kickass package manager in pacman. Made me forget about Gentoo really fast.

Fast and solid servers where you don't need Java: FreeBSD.

[beakerman]

gotta be Gentoo