Which distro would be best for me?

[jmichaelre]

I have a considerable amount of experience with computers. CLI doesn't intimidate me, but I'll be honest I like using GUI. I've used Fedora and thought it was to buggy. I've used Suse and like it, but I don't have a fast enought connection to install. I have a copy of Mandrake and its fine I just don't like how its seems that a lot of the system controls are hidden. I don't maybe I'm wrong about all of this, but I want a distribution that flys, looks good, and that I have ultimate control over. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

[myshkin]

ultimate control...gentoo? lfs? slackware? lindows? :p

[Hayl]

try a few and find out for yourself rather than relying on other people's personal opions re: what works for them.

[karacus]

Originally posted by jmichaelre
but I want a distribution that flys, looks good, and that I have ultimate control over. Any ideas would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

Total control here you go Pacman mania!
Arch Linux (http://www.archlinux.org/)

[serz]

Originally posted by Hayl
try a few and find out for yourself rather than relying on other people's personal opions re: what works for them.
Can't be more agreed. Try a few distros and see what works for you.

[mmills]

here are some suggestions.....

www.suse.com
www.mandrake.com
www.redhat.com (soon this will not be available)
www.yellowdog.com (mostly for old apple machines)

[mmills]

for starters suse.com is a nice package, easy to use nice layout, allot of drivers for allot of items not listed on the website, you can buy suse linux at walmart, best buy and many other pc outlets, redhat.com is a nice user friendly distro, only flaw is 9.0 is the last version, mandrake linux is nice, they have version 10 out now, its alright but I feel its to small in packages, if you own a old mac, I would suggest yellowdog.com yellow dog linux is good with old hardware, a nice platform, some others that are more advanced, are gentoo, slackware, freebsd and more, these distro's are some text based installs but not all....freebsd for instance is simply at the promt: sysinstall from there I understand it is all GUI "graphical user interface".

hope I helped somehow.

[DSwain]

haha good idea... I can't say really Yellowdog/SUSE as I've never used either, but both are suppose to be good, and i want to run Yellowdog on my PowerPC 9300 or whatever it is. Also, you may want to make that link yellowdoglinux.com so it goes straight there.

[tonymontanna]

Suse
Fedora

[hard candy]

but I want a distribution that flys, looks good, and that I have ultimate control over. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Sounds like my parameters for a significant other on the other side of the genome- i.e, one without a Y chromosome. I've found several that meet 2 of the 3 requirements but those damn pilot licenses are expensive! And I'm not sure my definition of "control" would be the same as yours. Sometimes control has a funny habit of turning on you.

Slackware gives the most control/less drudgery ratio in my scientific opinion.

[proKrastinate]

is there a place or way to put SUSE on disc before I try to install it? I dont want to install from online or whatever. I would like read documentation and download the iso at the same time. Perhaps I should just go with Mandrake?

edit

did a little readingto find out that its only available for free with the online installation. this is as far as ive gotten. im just worried that i wont be able to get back into windows after a lot of work. i have always had mbr problems installing linux (three times thus far, still quite the noob) and dont have the time this weekend to fix it.

[proKrastinate]

mandrake not free anymore? :( im dissapointed though I do sympathize (if i understand that you have to join to download correct?).

Is there any other noobie suggestions besides Mandrake or SUSE? I know of Red Hat but what about this I'm reading there wont be any more versions coming out? They shutting down?

[soda_popstar]

These threads always turn out the same. Everybody's just going to tell you what works for them. Try a few and make your own decision.

[proKrastinate]

yea i guess your right. i do try to read threads and it does seem that everyone of them says "try it out and see what works for you" I guess its the uncertainty of if one distro works, how do I know another one wont work even better? Being a linux noob desn't help either b/c i won't know what to expect. And then, I have to wait quite a while to download all of the possible distros i want to try. But i'm not going to complain (even tho thats what it sounded like already...but dont take it that way ;))

im downloading Debian right now. 7 cds? oh well. ill wake up hopefully with enough time before school to install it on a second hdd i have.

[mengle]

Originally posted by proKrastinate
mandrake not free anymore? :( im dissapointed though I do sympathize (if i understand that you have to join to download correct?).

Is there any other noobie suggestions besides Mandrake or SUSE? I know of Red Hat but what about this I'm reading there wont be any more versions coming out? They shutting down?

Well, that's not entirely true. They release the latest and greatest verions (Mandrake 10 right now) to the club members a few months before the official release to the public (kind of a beta test I guess). You can still download the next to most recent version (penultimate? Is that the right word) for free, I believe.

[proKrastinate]

o really? im trying to download version 9.2 right now...and i can't seem to find a link :(

[Fryguy8]

Definetely seems like you want to move past the "starter" distros and move more to "real" linux. As has been said a few times, it's best to experiment and find what you want, but good "real" linux distros (no disrespect to people not using these):

gentoo, www.gentoo.org
debian, www.debian.org
slackware, www.slackware.org

These 3 are pretty much the core of more "hardcore" distros that give you lots of control over your machine.

As well as several others such as arch linux, which aren't as well known yet, and have much smaller development teams, which has it's plusses and minuses

You might also want to take a look at lfs, www.linuxfromscratch.org. Build a system from complete scratch for the ultimate in control.

[DSwain]

LFS=Scary

I'm sure once you get it going its incredible, but starting is intimidating. I'm sure if you read carefully and check out forums you can definitly do it. I like Gentoo, but recently I haven't been having too much fun with it. Running Red Hat 9 now, which i like because it kind of falls in between lack-of-control and complete-control, that's just how I see it

As for Mandrake, its still free, but only the download version. The club members and people who buy it get the goods, like nvidia/ati drivers, etc. This is why MDK annoys me now, because of lack-of-control, so i'm happy with Red Hat for now. Slack is good because its an easy to use source distro, or so I see it. I never was really fond of Debian, but i know people love it, so it may just have been my lack-of-expirence that pulled me away from it way back when.

[proKrastinate]

i wouldnt go as far as to say I want more control over what the system does. i dont mind being told what to do right now with linux. i was just having aproblem getting a hold of suse and mandrake.

ive found my 9.2 Mandrake, and have 3 of the cd's. (yes i know to exit when it asks for the 4th) but on boot the disc wouldn't autorun the installation that i burnt. am i missing something? do i need a boot floppy for linux first? wait...dont answer it here I will go ask this question in the appropriate forum. (p.s. wouldn't auto run the debian either)