best distro?
 

What is the best distrobution to use? I have tried mandrake, red hat, and slackware before. I heard Debian was really good. My computer is pretty slow so I want to switch from windows xp to a linux distrobution. I was wondering if any distribution would be faster than windows xp or slower? And if the linux distributions were faster, which one is the fastest to use? Thanks.

Slackware
 

The speed of a Linux distro is going to be determined by how much stuff you install, and how your kernel is compiled. If you will recompile your kernel for your specific hardware, especially CPU and memory, and tweak hdparm, then Slackware will kick the pants off Windoze eXperiment. Period. Hey, it does just right out of the box on my comp, anyway. What could be slower than WinXP? I've yet to see it...

If you load up some big resource sucking desktop environments like KDE or GNOME then you've going to see a slower speed comp. Try Fluxbox, recompile your kernel for your comp, and set hdparm up for your drives. Read this link http://www.digitalhermit.com/linux/K...ild-HOWTO.html for compiling the kernel.

Re: Slackware
 

Fedora + KDE

I don´t think think there is a "best" distro, there are so many good ones.

I would also suggest trying a lighter window manager, makes a huge difference. Debian, gentoo and slackware are all very fast with light window manager. I think both fluxbox and windowmaker are great - many people love xfce too although I´ve never tried it.

Re: Re: Slackware
 

I wouldn't doubt it. I used DeadRat 9.0 for about a month, and if that was the only Linux distro, I'd happily use Windoze 2000 instead. ;-)

I'm with you all the way, Chinaman; RH 9 was the only distro I flat-out did not like in any way, for any reason. And I've never been a fan of KDE in any way, shape, or form (though some of the apps are good).

But to the question; not to start a distro war (really not), but if I was to say that Gentoo is the best (which it kinda is, then Slack in a close second), it makes it very clear why this question cannot really be answered by us, but only by you yourself.

Gentoo and Slack are the best, as long as you're comfortable with editing config files by hand from the command line and compiling from source. If you need a GUI and don't know your ls from your cd, don't know how to open or close a man page, haven't the first clue what a runlevel is, and never heard of nano, pico, vi, links, or lynx, then it doesn't matter how simple Slack is, or how stupendous Gentoo's Portage is-- these distros will not fit your needs (at this time), you will not have a fun time installing them, and you will not appreciate their virtues (which are many). If you're willing to learn these things, and spend some time being frustrated while you're learning, then go for it. But if not, don't spoil your first Linux experiences by biting off more than you can chew.

For a complete Linux novice, the first thing you'll want to do is accept that you are going to spend some time trying various distros to see which one suits your needs-- and the second thing you'll want to do is accept that those needs are going to change as you become less of a novice.

At the moment, you don't know what you want, or what works for you, because you have to get to know Linux in the first place, and in the second place you have to get to know how you will most effectively use a Linux system. You may think you will use it the same as you use your current Windows system, but I can tell you, that may not be the case. But only time will tell, so give yourself time to recognize that the distro you start with may be fine for you right now, but in 1 month, or 3 months, or 6 months you may want something else.

At that point, the distro you were using doesn't become "bad" and the one you switch to doesn't become "the best"-- it just becomes the best for you, based on your needs and comfort level.

I will say, though-- the distro I found most useful, friendly and comfortable when I was just starting out with Linux and didn't know anything about anything, was Mandrake (specifically 9.2, which atm I would recommend over 10.0). It offered the best mix of "Windows-ness" (meaningless term, but bear with me) and "Linux-ness"-- meaning that it did many things in a way I was used to (centralized Control Center, etc), but still gave me a lot of room to learn about "the Linux way" at my own pace (for example, if I changed something about a partition in DiskDrake, the popup always asked if I wanted to write the changes to /etc/fstab-- in one stroke telling me what was the configuration file for partition mounting under Linux, while leaving me free to examine the file or the manpage for the file, at my leisure). I also liked the fact that many "non DE-specific" tools were installed by default, such as Webmin, Linuxconf and LinNeighborhood, so when I eventually changed distros to one that did not have custom tools to set up various things, I already knew what "general" tools I could install to replicate the functionality.

On the whole , I found it a very useable system for my level of experience at that time, and if I ever wanted to go back to a "full-featured", fully-tweaked, RPM binary distro, it would be the one I would pick.

But at my current level, I'm completely anti-bloat (even ditched GNOME for Openbox 3), and I can't stand all the tweaking being done for me without me even knowing what has been done, so for me Gentoo is the best, because it puts me in control of these things to a much greater extent (and I have enough knowledge to be in control of these things much more reliably than a year ago).

So I would say-- don't worry about what's "the best", because you don't know, and can't know at this time. Just try things and learn what works for you; "the best" (for you) will reveal itself in time.

Re: Re: Re: Slackware
 

When I first tried Linux, I tried RH.

That kept me away from Linux for a good year.... Mandrake was alright, but I still didn't like it. Slackware is the best for me :)

I tried Fedora for a week or so w/KDE and I could not stand it. It felt like I was on Windows 95 running VMWare with the VM having 1/1000th of my CPU and RAM.

Holly,

Very well stated, and good advice. Hats off to you - as usual. ;-)

saiz66, you would do well to follow the advice of motub and get your feet wet with Mandrake. Check out the Reviews section here at LQ and see what people have to say about how and why they use their distro. And read that Unix and Internet Fundamentals HOWTO that's linked in my sig. It's a great read.

If I had read that before I started trying to use a Linux distro to do my work each day, it would have saved me a lot of headache and heartache. Hey, what am I saying? It's the first tab open in my browser, and I am reading it now. I'm still a very green newbie.
And something finally dawned on me. I can take just about anything apart and learn how it works, and after that, I'll always know how to fix it when it breaks. Same with this wonderful *nix operating system. Now I've decided to slow down, learn the basics, figure out "how it works," and get a good foundation. This way, I'll have something to build on, and in the future, when something doesn't work, I'll know why...

hi guys,

i am beginner and started with Mandrake 10.0 (the 4 Cd's Distri).

I can only say : Mandrake rocks

Athlon 2000+, AsrockBoard, Kyro Graphics, ALLComponents auto installed!!!



LinuxMax.de
:Pengy:

Stay clear of SuSe 9.1. I've had 3 computers that simply don't work because of it or the new kernel 2.6x.
Stay clear of any distro with 2.6x in it. The new Fedora core 2 looks nice, but uses the new kernel. Also some things are left out or broken.
Slackware 9.1 is easiest or you could try SuSE 9.0 and choose a light desktop. There seems to be a problem with Yast on the newer 9.1 (again they say its a kernel issue) Debian is hell!
Slackware is simple and works.
After 3 weeks of installing every new major distro Slackware wins. You need only to learn a dozen good bash commands and the pkg management tool
Hurray for Slackware; the tortoise wins!:p

don't listen to him.. it's not because kernel 2.6.x is installed by default that you have errors, i have a distro running with kernel 2.6.4 (an old p2 333Mhz) and everything works fine, you just have to install module-init-tools if it isn't installed allready

Debian rox!! only minor is it uses old versions.. but it has a good portage system.. apt get..

slackware isn't that bad indeed...

generally i think linux is most of the times slower than winxp (if you use gnome or kde) if you want some sort of speed try fluxbox or blackbox those are fast UI.. maybe try gentoo? with blackbox?

What?

2.6.x kernel is rock solid. I'm running on the latest (2.6.7) and it could not be faster.

That's like saying steer clear of the 2.4 kernels when 2.4.7 was the latest.... that's crazytalk.

Hey kids, read the Rules if you can find the link. There's no need to just attack someone else's opinion with your emotional opinion. If you can't supply some tangible facts...

I'm running a 2.6.4 generic kernel on mandrake 10 and it's been up (and solid) ever since I installed the kernel.

2.6.x looks good to me.

OK, I'm using kernel 2.6.7 as well (upgraded from original 2.6.3 and then to 2.6.5) and it's fine.

But.

Everybody is in fact right here to some degree (although I don't much appreciate thom coming in and confusing a potential migrator with his "pretend-authorative" statements). Early versions of the 2.6 series kernel included with both Mandrake 10 (CE) and SuSE 9.1 seemed to have rather severe problems. (I had tried Mandrake 10 RC 1, which was my first experience with the 2.6 kernel, and I think I tried 2.6.1 on Slackware).

In any case, it was a bumpy transition, and I can see how a user who "has installed every major new distro" but doesn't seem to have read anything about the new systems (ALSA now compiled into the kernel, ide-cd instead of ide-scsi, udev instead of /devfs) and/or is unable or unwilling to make any personal modifications to a "plug and play" distro might feel that the kernel was the problem. And to some extent, it was.

The 2.6 series is fine-- after 2.6.3, in my case, but I do not have any new hardware, and for those that do, 2.6.7 has been said to fix most all major problems that I've heard about (here and on other forums).

As for SuSE.... well, not a big SuSE fan, and I must say that I am not hearing ringing cries of "omg, it's great!!" from all corners as you would expect from a new SuSE release, and I have heard a lot of serious problems. It may be that SuSE has upgraded their kernel in the install, but if I were considering installing SuSE, I would want to know they had done so before I ponied up the cash (or spent a lot of time installing via ftp).

As for Fedora 2.... even less of a RH/Fedora fan than of SuSE, but other than the "partition geometry bug" (which is a sin to have made it to the release after being reported in Test 1), I haven't heard a bad word about it. As long as you know about and take some simple steps before the install to avoid your Windows partition becoming (completely) inaccessible after the install (or take some simple, well documented steps to recover the inaccessible partition after the install), afaik, the distro itself is fine, except for the usual "I can't play MP3s or DVDs" issue-- which you also can't do on SuSE, but at least Fedora repositories have the files to enable these functions, which, afaik, SuSE's YOU repositories do not. As I understand it, you just get a popup message telling you you can't play DVDs and then you get hung out to dry unless you actually go to the mPlayer site and install/compile it yourself.

But as I said, I'm not a SuSE expert, so I could be mistaken; I'm just following what I've picked up from people on this and other forums as to what problems they've had, and how those problems were solved.

But of course, that has nothing to do with the kernel in any case, so laying it on "the 2.6 series kernel is bad" is inaccurate, misleading, and in general, wrong.

The early versions of the 2.6 series kernel (2.61, 2.6.2) had a few problems, and also were confusing because they do things differently than the 2.4 series kernels. The problems themselves have been eradicated through the various revisions, and those of us who have been using and upgrading the kernel are now well used to the changes. Naturally those who are just installing it for the first time don't have anything to get used to, so that all works out.

Slackware is, as I said before, a great distro, but may be far too much of a learning curve for a complete novice--- and that is up to the user, not you, thom. Saying that they "only" have to learn "a dozen good bash commands and the pkg management tool" is not going to help someone who 1) doesn't even know wtf "bash" is; 2) is afraid of the command-line; and 3) wouldn't have the first clue about where to get packages to use in the package management tool (and please don't say "swaret" or I'll really go ballistic).

It's not necessarily reasonable to expect that a new user will want to learn all these things just to get the system set up so they can run Mozilla (so now they have to learn how to install and startx too, and/or change runlevels) in order to ask on these forums how to do whatever (since the user most likely doesn't know what is or how to use links either).

Give me a break. I understand that you have a right to your opinion thom, but if you're going to offer that opinion as authoritative fact that someone else is supposed to base a major decision on, you could at least make an effort to learn a bit about what is really going on in the community as a whole. Read more forums, like the forums of any Linux magazine you might read or subscribe to, the JustLinux forums, LinuxForums.org, or Linux Kung-Fu, the ArsTechnica Linux forums. Visit Distro Watch. Go over to OSNews and read the comments on the various recent articles about the issues in question (don't put stock in the articles themselves, though-- the commentary is much more informative). Read FedoraNEWS.org (if you have an interest in Fedora).

This is a huge community, and even if you want to present facts based only on opinion, it's very easy to get a sample of more opinions than just yours, on your own machine.