looking for a distro

[fredmorcos]

hey everyone,
ive been around linux (not really into it - switching between it and windows all the time) since redhat 7.3..
currently - actually for about a year now - ive been looking for the perfect distro that fits me, what i actually need in a distro is:

java and c/c++ development support (with ides and settings working out of the box)
internet and messaging
graphic and website designing
and a really important part: performance

the best 2 - out of the 15+ distros ive tried - were fedora core 4 and ubuntu, but both lacked something, fedora lacked performance and is really bloated with packages (even with custom installation), and ubuntu lacked development support..

what do you guys suggest? maybe some distro passed by me and i didn't notice or something

thanks for the much appreciated help
-fred

[techieMoe]

I usually lock threads like this but since you've obviously already done what I suggest to do first, I'm going to let this one go on.

If you are familiar with Redhat 7.3 (which was my first) you might consider something based off of Redhat Enterprise Linux, such as CentOS. To me personally, it reminds me more of the Redhat releases like 7.3, 8.0 and 9. As far as I can tell all the usual files are in the same spots they've been since then, and it's a pretty stable OS. I do programming on it.

Pretty much any major distribution should do everything you listed, but not all will necessarily "grab" you. You've done a pretty thorough job looking and I commend you for it. Eventually one will tickle your fancy.

[psic]

You've probably heard of www.distrowatch.com, if not, check it out. Anyways, I'm not sure for the programming, I can say that performance wise, Vector standard is excellent. The same goes for the source based distros (Gentoo being the best-known), though they tend to be harder to install. If you liked Fedora 4, you could perhaps install that and uninstall all of the packages which you do not need (this is the first thing I do when installing new distros, since I'm not blessed with a huge hd on my laptop).

[fredmorcos]

@techiemoe: sorry about that thread thing. i tried centos, everything is ok except for java development and performance, eclipse is a pain to set up with gcj (ive never managed to compile and run from eclipse on linux) and that's why im asking for the settings to work out of the box..

@psic: i check distrowatch daily praying to find a distro that will suit me - a mostly worstation oriented one - but still didn't find one. i decided to go gentoo now despite several failures and give-ups months ago.. if i fail again w/ it ill follow your advice w/ fc4.

eclipse will be a lot of work to configure for java and c++ on gentoo :'( hope it is worth it..

thanks guys

[techieMoe]

@techiemoe: sorry about that thread thing. i tried centos, everything is ok except for java development and performance, eclipse is a pain to set up with gcj (ive never managed to compile and run from eclipse on linux) and that's why im asking for the settings to work out of the box..

I have Eclipse running just fine on my CentOS install, but I'm not using the GCJ stack. I just downloaded the Java 1.5.0 SDK from Sun and installed it, pointed Eclipse to it and it worked.

As far as C++, I haven't tried it in Eclipse, but KDevelop, Anjuta, or just plain Emacs/Vi are available.

[bryansmith]

Suse performs pretty well and installing the J2SDK, GCC and Eclipse is a breeze with Yast.

Bryan

[oz]

I agree with psic... DistroWatch is probably the best place to research distros. It will certainly get you off to a good start, anyway.

[chopin1810]

Agreed.

[chopin1810]

You've probably heard of www.distrowatch.com, if not, check it out. Anyways, I'm not sure for the programming, I can say that performance wise, Vector standard is excellent. The same goes for the source based distros (Gentoo being the best-known), though they tend to be harder to install. If you liked Fedora 4, you could perhaps install that and uninstall all of the packages which you do not need (this is the first thing I do when installing new distros, since I'm not blessed with a huge hd on my laptop).

Don't use Vector, it can't use USB keyboards, this is a widely recognized problem but I don't see any hope as for a fix.

[psic]

Now that you mention it, I still haven't gotten my usb key to work in vector (though that's a release candidate, I'm too lazy to install the new, stable version). But it is very fast.