Wanted: Advanced Linux Distribution

[MetalheadGautham]

Hi Guys! Sorry to post this in newbie section, but since I am a newbie to advanced distros, I thought this section might be appropriate.

After using Ubuntu for an year and Debian for a few months, I thought I need to take the plunge in advanced distros. On the advice of some friends, I made it up with Arch Linux a few weeks back. I think its very comfortable, fast and user friendly. But I am wondering if there is a better distro than even arch, for "advanced" newbies like me. Can someone help ?

The main thing I need is fast mirrors. I have been putting up with slow mirrors on arch for a long time indeed.

The next thing is extreme ease of use, where arch pwns everything else with its rc.conf.

Then I need an insane level of doccumentation, which should be available as well formated text files which I may read at my leisure in console sessions at VGA 1024x768 resolution using my favourite doccument reader, LESS.

And I need a huge number of software packages available for the distro. I hate having to search the net all the time for software. This was one of the things that made ubuntu appealing to me.

I am also a huge security freak, and being sometimes a bit paranoid, I love uber secure firewalls and almost an almost invisible footprint online, while at the same time this should not affect my favourite net apps, like Deluge Torrent, KTorrent, Aria2, MultiGet, Kontact Suite, Thunderbird, Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, etc.

Most importantly, the system needs to be Simple and Elegent. I am not a brainless baboon the way distros like mandriva and ubuntu assume its users to be, so I don't mind, and infact PREFER an organised text file layout for configuration, which may be backed up with a GUI editor.

Extreme stability is one thing I am always after, and its one of the reasons I left Ubuntu 8.04 and Debian Sid(ux).

Finally, it needs to run on my old fashioned rig with a Pentium 4 506 Grantsdale LGA775 processor running on an Intel D815GLVG motherboard with RealTek ALC880 audio, Intel GMA900 video and 256MB DDR RAM.

I prefer KDE as the desktop, but since KDE 4.1 is a bit new, I am not so comfortable with it, but I still love it. I am also comfortable with Gnome. For some reason, Xfce seems attractive but hard to use at the same time (how do I move pannel widgets to different areas and expect them to stay where I place them ?) but its also welcome. I am also a big IceWM buff.

I am thinking of Slackware and CentOS. What do you guys say ? Are any one of them faster than Arch ? How is Gentoo ? What about the successor to Debian Lenny ?

[Thrillhouse]

The main thing I need is fast mirrors. I have been putting up with slow mirrors on arch for a long time indeed.

Have you done everything you can to improve pacman's performance?

I am thinking of Slackware and CentOS. What do you guys say ? Are any one of them faster than Arch ?

I've never tried Slackware but I doubt CentOS will be faster for you than Arch. It's an rpm-based system.

[oz]

CRUX is probably the fastest distro I've ever used, or at least it felt that way to me. It's plenty advanced as well.

[i92guboj]

It seems you might like Gentoo, if you don't have a problem with compile times...

The next thing is extreme ease of use, where arch pwns everything else with its rc.conf.

This is very subjective. I find Gentoo easier to manage than a binary rpm hell, but, as people say: to each his/her own.

Then I need an insane level of doccumentation, which should be available as well formated text files which I may read at my leisure in console sessions at VGA 1024x768 resolution using my favourite doccument reader, LESS.

No distro beats Gentoo on that respect. And no forum beats the Gentoo one either (with all due respect to the rest of linux distros and forums). I am obviously biased, though

And I need a huge number of software packages available for the distro. I hate having to search the net all the time for software. This was one of the things that made ubuntu appealing to me.

It's big enough, and for the rest, there's always overlays to the main portage tree.

I am also a huge security freak, and being sometimes a bit paranoid, I love uber secure firewalls and almost an almost invisible footprint online, while at the same time this should not affect my favourite net apps, like Deluge Torrent, KTorrent, Aria2, MultiGet, Kontact Suite, Thunderbird, Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, etc.

Security comes always at a price. If you really are as paranoid as you say, then you can use a hardened profile, with a hardened kernel and a hardened toolchain, which is a very easy and convenient way to harden your applications from the ground. I don't recommend that for a desktop machine, though.

If you are really paranoid I am surprised that you don't use a custom iptables script, since ALL linux firewalls are ultimately frontends to iptables (and none of them can really use all the power of iptables, well, nor even a 10% of it's full potential).

If you do, then you can just copy your iptables script and run it on gentoo (or any other linux flavor, for that matter).

There's also filesystem encryption if you want it. That's not advised for a desktop machine either since it will impact the general system performance.

Extreme stability is one thing I am always after, and its one of the reasons I left Ubuntu 8.04 and Debian Sid(ux).

On Gentoo, stability depends on two things basically: how lazy you are, and whether you stick to stable or testing branches. On Gentoo you can accept testing for just a few packages while the rest of the system stays on stable, it's a really flexible system.

Finally, it needs to run on my old fashioned rig with a Pentium 4 506 Grantsdale LGA775 processor running on an Intel D815GLVG motherboard with RealTek ALC880 audio, Intel GMA900 video and 256MB DDR RAM.

I prefer KDE as the desktop, but since KDE 4.1 is a bit new, I am not so comfortable with it, but I still love it. I am also comfortable with Gnome. For some reason, Xfce seems attractive but hard to use at the same time (how do I move pannel widgets to different areas and expect them to stay where I place them ?) but its also welcome. I am also a big IceWM buff.

Specs are fine, though I would change your ram stick by one of 1gb. 256 is not enough if you plan to use compositing (kde 4.x, compiz 'n' stuff like that). Shinny effects also comes at a price.

EDIT: About speed... It's all linux. There's no faster or slower distro, they all can do the same things. There're only sanely and insanely, correctly or incorrectly, badly or well configured distros.

[jmadero]

how about just go straight to freeBSD

[MetalheadGautham]

CRUX is probably the fastest distro I've ever used, or at least it felt that way to me. It's plenty advanced as well.

Yeah, I heard a lot about CRUX. But arch is one level ahead of crux and I think its getting a bit annoying.

Mainly this is about the mirror issue. I want huge download speeds, and I need a good content. I have a university next door which hosts stuff for POPULAR distros (read centos, debian, ubuntu, maybe slackware, fedora, mandriva, etc). So when I used ubuntu and debian, I knew what was the best mirror.

Here on arch, using Reflector script along with rankmirror, the fastest I get is 15kbps at night. And via the powerpill, I get 56kbps. But I am on a 2mbps line. Download speeds are high during the day since the mirrors come from the other side of the globe where everyone is asleep, but since I have an unmetered connection for the night, and for the rest of the day its metered and I have better things to do like gaming, I can't download huge stuff at night.

Have you done everything you can to improve pacman's performance?

I've never tried Slackware but I doubt CentOS will be faster for you than Arch. It's an rpm-based system.

I use PowerPill for getting high download speeds. I use Reflector with rankmirrors for getting latest repos.

Anyway, WHATS the actual issue with RPMs ? I have heard a lot about them but I still never had the guts to actually try out fedora one day and see whats wrong with RPMs.

It seems you might like Gentoo, if you don't have a problem with compile times...



This is very subjective. I find Gentoo easier to manage than a binary rpm hell, but, as people say: to each his/her own.



No distro beats Gentoo on that respect. And no forum beats the Gentoo one either (with all due respect to the rest of linux distros and forums). I am obviously biased, though



It's big enough, and for the rest, there's always overlays to the main portage tree.



Security comes always at a price. If you really are as paranoid as you say, then you can use a hardened profile, with a hardened kernel and a hardened toolchain, which is a very easy and convenient way to harden your applications from the ground. I don't recommend that for a desktop machine, though.

If you are really paranoid I am surprised that you don't use a custom iptables script, since ALL linux firewalls are ultimately frontends to iptables (and none of them can really use all the power of iptables, well, nor even a 10% of it's full potential).

If you do, then you can just copy your iptables script and run it on gentoo (or any other linux flavor, for that matter).

There's also filesystem encryption if you want it. That's not advised for a desktop machine either since it will impact the general system performance.



On Gentoo, stability depends on two things basically: how lazy you are, and whether you stick to stable or testing branches. On Gentoo you can accept testing for just a few packages while the rest of the system stays on stable, it's a really flexible system.



Specs are fine, though I would change your ram stick by one of 1gb. 256 is not enough if you plan to use compositing (kde 4.x, compiz 'n' stuff like that). Shinny effects also comes at a price.

EDIT: About speed... It's all linux. There's no faster or slower distro, they all can do the same things. There're only sanely and insanely, correctly or incorrectly, badly or well configured distros.

I am considering Gentoo, but I am worried about the compile times. Look at my CPU for instance. If I had a quad core setup, I would have installed gentoo without a second thought. But on THIS Mr. Ugly, I seriously doubt I can do something good. So gentoo is off my list. And yes, I am installing an extra gig of RAM this sunday.

how about just go straight to freeBSD

Actually, I have been considering Gentoo/FreeBSD. But then, I will miss out on one very important thing: GAMING. I use linux, but I am still able to game, on titles like Quake Series, Doom Series, Unreal Tournament Series, etc. I can't do the same on BSD.

[oz]

Yeah, I heard a lot about CRUX. But arch is one level ahead of crux and I think its getting a bit annoying.

Mainly this is about the mirror issue. I want huge download speeds, and I need a good content.

Whether or not Arch is a level ahead of CRUX would be purely a matter of opinion, and I'm not sure that you would be entitled to one if you've never tried it. I've run both, and prefer Arch, but don't necessarily think that it's ahead of CRUX in advancement.

If it's mainly about the mirror issue, I don't see what the level of advancement has to do with it at all. If you want more packages, Debian and Gentoo can offer those over Arch or CRUX, but that doesn't mean their mirrors will be faster, or that the distros themselves are more advanced. I've used Gentoo a number of times and it ran perfectly, but it was always far too time intensive for my own tastes and needs, so I could never stick with it.

Hope you are able to find what you are looking for.

[Dapper Dan]

If you want to run a distro that will force you to learn more, Slackware is a good start. After that, CRUX will teach you much but you have to have a lot of patience with it.

CRUX's motto is to "keep it simple." You start with a minimal install from a live cd. After configuring your connection (which might include a kernel re-compile), you build it the way you want using the CRUX ports. CRUX is very challenging, but in the end, you have a Linux machine that's easy to maintain and faster than a scalded dog on amphetamines...

[i92guboj]

Anyway, WHATS the actual issue with RPMs ? I have heard a lot about them but I still never had the guts to actually try out fedora one day and see whats wrong with RPMs.

It depends on the distro maintainer, it's not an RPM specific problem, it can happen with any other package format, as long as it contains binary files. When I speak about a binary dep hell, I mean that sometimes a broken lib or something slips, causing all the rest of packages depending on that lib to suddenly stop working if there's an ABI breakage. This can lead to very funny situations when there's a problem with a critical package. As said, it really depends on the distro maintainers. Mandrake in the past had lots of problems with this, many years ago... It's been very long since I used a binary distro, I just grew tired of this annoyances, and now I couldn't live with a binary distro any longer (though if I had, it'd probably be arch, cause it at least has ABS, which can help you to alleviate the dep hell problems when there's ABI breakage).

I am considering Gentoo, but I am worried about the compile times. Look at my CPU for instance. If I had a quad core setup, I would have installed gentoo without a second thought. But on THIS Mr. Ugly, I seriously doubt I can do something good. So gentoo is off my list. And yes, I am installing an extra gig of RAM this sunday.

I fail to see the problem. A P4 is an excellent cpu for most tasks, people buy newer cpu's for I-don't-know-what-reason, when they really do not need that.

There's no need to sit in front of your screen looking how gcc spits out meaningless stuff. You can download at any time, and compile overnight if that's what worries you. And if you stay in stable, you will have less updates to worry about. My desktop machine is a sempron 3000+, and I don't have a single problem. I can even compile stuff on the background and continue working in the while without interactivity/response problems. However, your view of the problem might vary.

Actually, I have been considering Gentoo/FreeBSD. But then, I will miss out on one very important thing: GAMING. I use linux, but I am still able to game, on titles like Quake Series, Doom Series, Unreal Tournament Series, etc. I can't do the same on BSD.

BSD's in general have some limitation, they are doing a pretty good work and it's getting into the desktop field a bit more each day, though generally linux is a better option *nowadays* for a desktop machine.

However, if the compile times bother you, Gentoo/FreeBSD is not going to help you either. It's the same than Gentoo is, except for the FreeBSD kernel and toolchain, the big things will take the same to compile (if we leave appart the performance differences between the gnu toolchain and the bsd one, sincerely, I don't know how do they compare).

In any case, the choice is yours. That's only part of the beauty of the open source world.

[MetalheadGautham]

Whether or not Arch is a level ahead of CRUX would be purely a matter of opinion, and I'm not sure that you would be entitled to one if you've never tried it. I've run both, and prefer Arch, but don't necessarily think that it's ahead of CRUX in advancement.

Well, what I mean by the Arch being a level ahead of CRUX is that its firstly based on the crux concept, then its optimised for my architecture, i.e, i686, and then, most importantly, its pacman package manager is insanely fast in downloading packages. I don't know how, but I am able to install large software like firefox and jre in seconds. I have not used CRUX, and I don't intend to do so in the near future, because I want to first get familiar with fundamentals of linux which using ubuntu and debian deprived me.

If it's mainly about the mirror issue, I don't see what the level of advancement has to do with it at all. If you want more packages, Debian and Gentoo can offer those over Arch or CRUX, but that doesn't mean their mirrors will be faster, or that the distros themselves are more advanced. I've used Gentoo a number of times and it ran perfectly, but it was always far too time intensive for my own tastes and needs, so I could never stick with it.

As I said before, I have a university next door offering huge speeds from its mirrors for popular distros like red hat, fedora, debian, ubuntu, mandriva, suse, slackware, gentoo, etc. So something mainstream will ensure that I get full speed downloads.

Hope you are able to find what you are looking for.

Thanks. BTW, didn't I see you at the arch forums ?

If you want to run a distro that will force you to learn more, Slackware is a good start. After that, CRUX will teach you much but you have to have a lot of patience with it.

Then I suppose slackware it is. I hope I can find good doccumentation somewhere. But still, whats the speed difference between arch and slackware ?

CRUX's motto is to "keep it simple." You start with a minimal install from a live cd. After configuring your connection (which might include a kernel re-compile), you build it the way you want using the CRUX ports. CRUX is very challenging, but in the end, you have a Linux machine that's easy to maintain and faster than a scalded dog on amphetamines...

How is CRUX's package manager ? I never even heard of it being mentioned anywhere.

It depends on the distro maintainer, it's not an RPM specific problem, it can happen with any other package format, as long as it contains binary files. When I speak about a binary dep hell, I mean that sometimes a broken lib or something slips, causing all the rest of packages depending on that lib to suddenly stop working if there's an ABI breakage. This can lead to very funny situations when there's a problem with a critical package. As said, it really depends on the distro maintainers. Mandrake in the past had lots of problems with this, many years ago... It's been very long since I used a binary distro, I just grew tired of this annoyances, and now I couldn't live with a binary distro any longer (though if I had, it'd probably be arch, cause it at least has ABS, which can help you to alleviate the dep hell problems when there's ABI breakage).

But I still hear stuff about Apt-Get being better than Yum, etc. I want to know how the current situation is like. Will I face any issues with CentOS or not ?

I fail to see the problem. A P4 is an excellent cpu for most tasks, people buy newer cpu's for I-don't-know-what-reason, when they really do not need that.

Thanks for those words. I feel more encouraged to keep my CPU. How much more life can I give it if I switch to 1GB RAM ? And is my Intel D915GLVG motherboard capable of running Intel EM64T 64 bit computing ? The chipset is 915GL. My CPU supports 64 bit, which I discovered only two days back. So I am thinking of going 64-bit for some speed boosts.

There's no need to sit in front of your screen looking how gcc spits out meaningless stuff. You can download at any time, and compile overnight if that's what worries you. And if you stay in stable, you will have less updates to worry about. My desktop machine is a sempron 3000+, and I don't have a single problem. I can even compile stuff on the background and continue working in the while without interactivity/response problems. However, your view of the problem might vary.

I don't mind compiling if there won't be a problem of response delay, but how easy is compiling in gentoo ? I don't want to manually download anything. I heard a simple portage command can be used to install a wide variety of software. Is it true ? Can I just use a command as simple as pacman -S packagename in arch or apt-get install packagename in debian and install software (by compiling) from a HUGE repository of source code ? And what is the amount of binary stuff available ? Is everything configured by default ?

BSD's in general have some limitation, they are doing a pretty good work and it's getting into the desktop field a bit more each day, though generally linux is a better option *nowadays* for a desktop machine.

But I want to try out ZFS some day. Any idea how I can get it to work on Linux ?

However, if the compile times bother you, Gentoo/FreeBSD is not going to help you either. It's the same than Gentoo is, except for the FreeBSD kernel and toolchain, the big things will take the same to compile (if we leave appart the performance differences between the gnu toolchain and the bsd one, sincerely, I don't know how do they compare).

I want binaries of large stuff like KDE and OpenOffce and I want to manually compile smaller stuff like firefox and Kaffeine. Is it possible ?

In any case, the choice is yours. That's only part of the beauty of the open source world.

I know.
That thing gave me a headache when I first tried out linux, but today, I think I am always getting the best of all worlds in most distros.