I just want to get some opinions on Linux Distros

[bignester]

I just want to get some opinions on which distros people prefer and why.

[genlee]

Gentoo because it took bsds ports and put it on linux. What more can you ask for?

[Dolda2000]

I prefer RedHat since it's the only thing I've ever used. I don't think I'd prefer it anymore if I tried something else, but recently I've been thinking that I had no more spare HDs lying around, but now that I check my own system, it turns out that I have a 2GB unused one in this very computer. Look what you can find now that people mention it.
So, I'm off to try out some distros then...

[craig_mcd]

I love Debian, have tried loads of distros and its the one I always seem to end up using.

Distros end up being more of a personal choice, most offer the same features and if you know your GNU utils your fine on any system.

[sykkn]

I am the most confortable in Red Hat. I have used mandrake ... it's ok but I don't care for the installer or GUI system tools. I have also used slackware. I liked it, but I didn't care for the BSD style init scripts. Also, my cdrw drive wasn't working correctly. ( and I lazily didn't feel like fixing it ) I am still running Slackware 9 on my home system, but I dropped it for Red Hat 9 on my laptop.
... I use Red Hat 7.2 exclusively at work so that has a little influence on my usage behaviours ...

But basically as long as I have a shell and /usr/bin/perl I am happy .

[wassy121]

I like all of them. I use LFS, but that means nothing. I can use RedHat, Debian, Mandrake, whatever. As long as I can get to know them I am in. I usually only use them for playing around with anyway. Not that I do much else on the computer

[ehazlett]

I have tried many, including RedHat 7.3, 8.0, 9.0, Mandrake 8, 9, FreeBSD 4.6, Gentoo, Slackware 8.1, 9.0, SuSE 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, and miscellaneous other specialized distros such as Smoothwall. The one I currently run is SuSE 8.2 Pro, because I do graphic art, and things alike, and to me SuSE has captured the desktop appearance that Windows users dream of... It also has Yast2 which is a very good hardware and software configuration tool...They tend to aim towards the graphically oreiented users by including 3D software (blender, etc.) and many different sound programs. Plus, SuSE has released the first consumerized alternative to the MS Exchange Server, SuSE OpenExchange. They seem to take their time and do their releases right, instead of pumping out stuff to raise their version number...RedHat is very good also, being very strong in the server market, although I have been fighting release 9.0...

sorry so long, I leave you with this:

a buddy of mine compared SuSE to RedHat like this, and I agree...

RedHat is the Windows of the Linux world, where as SuSE is the Mac

evan hazlett

[vous]

I would agree with Evan (and his buddy) that SuSE is a great system to have at home. I have been trying to complain about SuSE for two months now (because you get free 90 support with the license) and I thought I was going to be calling every day...it's been some months now and aside from some hardware problems that were the CD manufacturers mistake....(I can't believe I'm about to say this)....I'm 100% satisfied with SuSE Linux !!!!

[kpzani]

I have used a few different distros and can get by with most. I find that each has little bugs and inconsistencies. RH is quite a good allrounder but I don't think it excels at any one thing. good all purpose. Mandrake is prob quite good if you are really new as it is very simple to install. I have found some of the cd based distros pretty good - morphix.

but i must say none of them are perfect. They all lcak at least something. More often than not its the gui config tools that make things go wrong - at least for me. Poss coz i don't normally know what I'm doing .

But other than a few quirks I find very little diff day-to-day. I like to use a system that can work with a version of apt-get (e.g. Debian or RH)

But there are so many diff distros available now its getting silly. Over the next few months I am going to install a version of Linux on my XBOX. I'll let you know what I think about that once it's on.

[l_Kriss]

I have used Redhat 6.0, 6.1, some suse version (i think it was the 6'th or something), and slackware 7.0,7.1, 8.0, 8,1 and 9.0.

The best one i liked was slackware 8.1. I don't know why, but I think it's great. No irretating Starting Service [ OK ] or mandrake's ultra-bloated startup.

But I wouldn't advice a newbie to slackware, because it might at the beginning seem frustrating to get simple thing up, like a soundcard, which many distrobutions does automagically for you.
But after some while, you "know where the most is", and after read some manuals, you're getting bether.

Also, slackware has its own package file, those .tgz. Installing an rpm on slackware is really easy, since all you have to do is "rpm2tgz file.rpm ; installpkg file.tgz".

Also, I like it because its not one of those "commercial distro's" where you have to pay for downloading updates (yes, im talking about redhat).
But before I would suggest even installing GNU/Linux, i would advice the people to download knoppix or freeduc, and see if they feel "comfortable". So, if they don't like it, eject the cdrom and boot back to windows.