Distributiuon Recomendations...and a whole lot more :)

[ski999]

Last week began my second journey into the world of Linux. Seems to have come a long way since I first tried it a couple of years ago but I find it no where near Microsoft as a desktop OS. For all the MS bashing I come across, I really dont see anything that backs it up. My Win2k system is ROCK SOLID and easy to use. Ok the 9x kernal sucks as far as memory management....need to reboot every few hours :( but Win2k is really a fantastic OS...nothing comes close in my opinion!

So far this has been my experience...
Installed Linux-Mandrake. Found it easy to use and the installation went without a hitch.
Problems:
buggy as hell....all kinds of crashes and lockups.
When using the Gnome desktop my sound was fine but when switching to Kde it was screech city. Why it would do this, I am clueless :confused: . Isnt the kernal or X controling the sound? Or is it each desktop system that those this?? Btw sound card was properly detected and configured as a Yamaha YFM760. I have a Intel SE440BX2 motherboard with built in sound :(

Next I tried Redhat...
It too suffered from crashes and just a multitude of general bugs here and there. Sound wouldn't work on either Gnome or Kde. Did my research and figured out how to reconfigure card but to no avail. Why one disto would half work my sound and the other... :confused:

I tried Bigslack from slackware for a few minutes. Since it was run from a folder within windows I didnt play with it much. Just wanted to get a quick feel for Slackware.

Thought I'd give mandrake another try so I reinstalled it. By now due to problems settling on a boot system, I decided to install it on my main drive and let lilo boot windows and linux. I got brave when I discovered that u can let Linux write to the mbr and easily revert back by booting your win2k cd and running fixmbr :) Whoa....cool!!!
Problems arose soon after installing. Did what I had done on my previos mandrake install and imported my windows font(using strong verification) and now system isnt able to start x. Tells me I have a font problem :mad: My plans are to use the installation cd's and run the upgrade function to hopefully fix this.
Just a small point....
Why on earth would linux need to import windows fonts to display webpages in something other that an barely readable ugly *** font???

Todays experience...
Burned me a copy of Suse 7.1 (live evalution) that I donwloaded overnight and ran that baby.
Installed flawlesly, set up my sound card perfectly!!! Huh? Yeah, with the Kde desktop even!!! :D
As we speak data in the form of the REAL suse 7.1 is being downloaded from their ftp. Shhh!! Yes, it's now available but slow to d/l.
So can someone explain to me why on earth different distros are so as far as properly handling hardware?? My belief was that they are just putting a skin (for lack of a better term) and that the kernal or the x windowing system was actually controlling hardware.
Secondly, what disto due you recommend? Ive heard nothing but praises for the likes of debian and slackware but am concerned about their difficulty(am willing to learn). They may be what I need since my philosophy has always beed less=more. God I hate bloat!!! Redhat and Mandrake seemed like bloated hogs to me. Like I'm just here to play around with linux....I dont plan on developing software ;) Do I need to install all that stuff?

Guess I'll shut up now even though I have many more details I'd love to get into.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Molecule Man]

SuSE 7.1 has close to 6 months newer hardware support than the other two Distros. (New Kernel and New XFree) That can make a load of difference on new hardware, and even some old hardware. Plus factor in the internet speed of software developement and the related packages should also be less buggy.

Fonts are a problem as they are covered by copyright, so a lot of the nice ones are not able to be distributed. There is a ttf.rpm available. Instructions on how to use are in an NHF here.

The different distros appeal to different people. Some like doing everything themselves so the use slackware. Others prefer automated downloads and installs and use Debian (or maybe the autoupdate in RH). Try several and find the one that works for you.

I found Mandrake to be great, but other systems may not work as well. Plus I have gotten to the point where small greivances are easily fixable.

[ph34r]

Have you read the distro choice NHF? Personally I have no problems with Slack....

[ski999]

Yes, I read that and a whole lot more. Would like to hear others opinions though. Only thing thats got me leary of slackware is package installations. With my current mandrake setup its preety simple. I downloaded unreal tournament last week to try and install and was really lost. I can imagine that doing upgrades and regualar programs would be scary without rpmdrake or gnomerpm kinda interfaces.

Damn suse's taking forever to d/l :eek:

[filo]

For my two cents, I have really enjoyed working with Conectiva 6.0. I was running Mandrake 7.2 before that. Since My original installation of Conectiva (about 2 1/2 months ago) I have tried to switch to various Debian based distros (Storm, Libaranet) and Mandrake (7.2, 8). Why did I try to switch? Because I was really impressed with apt-get and wanted to see if a native Debian distro would be good. Pain in th arse to setup. I have ultimately gone back to Conectiva after messing with the others. It isn't bloated, comes with an rpm-enabled apt-get (Debian's package manager), and has been extremely stable.

[ariel001]

I actually bought the SuSE 7.1 Pro CD. It installed without a hitch and I'm now running it as my primary OS... it found all of my hardware, and everything is working flawlessly!

Before that I tried Red Hat 7 and I couldn't get it to work with XWindows... It didn't find my network card or video card. I just couldn't get anything to work at all.

[zappy]

Suse7.1 isn't the wonder distro, they do try to have cutting edge hardware support but the distro is buggy, get a Slack or a Debian for stability, and you are right Linux of any flavor is not your everything OS. It takes a special breed to want to tweak. Linux has a long way to go. It can't touch Windows2k for the everyday desktop/multimedia/gaming box.