Hello,
I don't think that it is an extreme learning curve. Slackware nowadays works out of the box after a full install. Only wireless network can be an issue, but this holds true for any distribution.
Note that here at LQ we have the official Slackware-forum. You will find any help you need here. So I think you will not have an extreme learning-curve, but you will learn much in a short amount of time and you'll have much fun because Slackware isn't that frustrating as other distributions can be.
only if one needs packages besides the official repository. But there is slackbuilds.org which is a great help in such cases.
Yes, learning and having fun with the system
here it is my main OS on three computers, I use it mostly for my work.
Well, OpenSuse is a good distribution, but some people like the installer/setuptool Yast, some don't. If you find your way through it your can be happy, if not you're lost.

And note that Fedora is the "bleeding edge"-version of RedHat. I think that it is a good distribution, but I would not recommend bleeding edge for newbies.

Markus

A lot of people have suggested Slackware. I whole-heartedly agree. About 10 years a go I started with SuSE, then Mandrake (now Mandriva) then Redhat. Right before the release of Redhat 9 I went to Slackware. The thing to remember is that through those other distributions I had a basic general idea of Linux for about 6 months off and on. With Slackware I reached the milestone of a working installation the first time around. Soon I realized there was a lot to do (reading, fixing end user errors etc.) to get other third party software installed. It isn't difficult, just a little time consuming.

Later I moved to Debian for my day to day usage with the release of Debian Sarge (4?). It's behind the cutting edge of software but it's rock solid stable and hasn't given me any problems at all. I still keep Slackware around for home servers since it's such a great pragmatic system.

If you find that you like Slackware keep at it. If you want Slackware but a little more desktop oriented for a new installation check out SalixOS. In a very generalized sense it's Slackware with package management for broader access to more software that might not be included with a traditional Slackware installation from disk.

Then again, slackbuilds are quite useful. Take your pick.

I'd go for Arch. I did and never looked back. I use Gnome 3 (after a few extensions and hacks it's starting to become usable) and Openbox on my laptop. Arch may be "bleeding edge" but as long as you're not enabling the testing repo it is very stable. Had a few problems with some extensions on the AUR but all we're easily fixed.

Slackware is a fine distro as well and really can't go wrong with it, but I lost interest when they dropped Gnome (the gnome slackbuilds repo was terrible, maybe it's gotten better but it was buggy as hell when I used it).

If you go for Arch, install it in virtualbox or something first... Installing is easy, configuring can be, at times, quite painful your first time, but after that it's easy. It's like riding a bike

Choose between dependency resolution and stability.

If you chose stability, welcome to slackware.

(not knocking anybodies OS of choice, and every OS is a good choice for someone).

Mr. Singh,

If you are still visiting your thread, my 2 cents as per your previous experiences would go to OpenSuse or Fedora with a lighter desktop environment. Because you have experience on rpm tools and don't want any Debian based distro now.

If you havn't tried lxde or xfce versions of both, I'd suggest you to get your hands over them.
Once you'll set up your wireless, install whatever you need and you can learn pretty much anything about using Linux from these two distros as you can from Arch or Slackware, if you are willing.

Regards.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for the help.

I decided to go with Fedora 15, since I already had tried Fedora Core 6 via Linux for Dummies.

I tried using Arch via Virtualbox, but I wasn't able to install an X-Window system. Though that might be because I don't know which port for internet I should use, eth0 or wlan0

With virtualbox your virtual-guest-machine is always connected via eth0! Virtual-guests don't have wireless lan.

And be sure in Virtualbox where you chose which adapter of the host-machine is bridged to the guest to select the adapter you're host is really using. I'm using wireless on the host, look at the screenshot. And be sure to select "Bridged Adapter" for the connection, then your guest can use your home-network.

In short: wlan for the host / eth0 for the guest!

Markus

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