yees there are a few of these, but i am a bit... odd

ok so i am looking for a distribution that will allow easy use of CLI programs for the majority of my tasks; while still allowing me to run java and firefox at the same time.

i want to know what the best distro would be that allows:

easy source-installation
easy use of custom kernel
stable but still up-to-date

i have used:
gentoo ==> took an age to get going and i HATED portage

funtoo ==> couldnt get going fully; but loved the speed and portage seemed more bearable somehow

debian ==> problems with my odd pcspkr that doesnt ever blacklist (same with LMDE and many debian based distro's)

Ubuntu ==> no.

puppy linux ==> made me happy but i need 64bit

so what should i try next? slackware?

Arch linux? Pacman's nice to use Ubuntu/Puppy/Debian certainly aren't very source-install-friendly... Arch is more so, but slackware is definitely the king, queen, and overlord of installing from source. I don't get on with it, personally.

If you install X with a tiling window manager (like xmonad) then you can pretend you're not running X pretty much all the time, as it will maximise your terminals; and then running a 'normal' application won't be any bother.

Hope this helps,

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/vie...=533613#533613

http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/...ns/fatdog/web/

For my Acer Aspire 4gig 64bit Laptop I am running Barrys Racy 5.2.2

http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewDetailed=02602

which is 32bit but recognizes all 4gig of ram and both dual cores.

For your needs Slackware should be the best:
Yes, with makepkg very easy and clean way to do that.
Just compile and run it, no problems at all.
Totally.

Unless I'm missing something, this looks like a very small motive to drop a distro, besides it's an easy fix if you are used to advanced stuff: either bring up a custom kernel or simply remove the pcspkr module from /lib/modules/$(uname -r).

@juako that was just the final straw; the documented methods not working, I also found that the update system was a pain in the arse (why oh why canit not sort it's own dependency conflicts out or at least ask?)


Anyways I slapped Arch on and it seems to be working perfectly; and it boots in 12 seconds (better than gentoo) xmonad is nice, but the default dmenu is a tad.... Bland.

Thanks for the fast responses.

Oh and what's the deal with crux? Some guys say its 64 bit as well as 32... Is there a fork or something?

Well, technically speaking you don't often install things from source in Slackware. You use the sources to create slack binary packages and install the binaries. For that reason, Slackware is not classified as a source based distro.


As far as Crux is concerned, there seem to be 64-bit contributed iso images
http://crux.nu/Main/Download

Oh wow how did I not see that xD

Thanks guys

So how would things work in a 'pure' source-based distro? You just run configure/make/make install ?

@origami-sheep: if your problem is solved, could you mark the thread as 'SOLVED'? Thanks

I haven't used any of source-distros myself, but I guess there would be a script that would let you automate it (I might be wrong)
Here's a list of source-based distros:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor..._distributions

Source based distros (at least the ones I know of) also have package managers and repositories. While you can do the classical configure/make/make install thing it also can be done with a simple emerge vlc (Gentoo) or cast vlc (Source Mage) or something similar on the other source based distros to install for example vlc.

Yeah source based distro's aren't the same as LFS

And I shall mark thread as solved as arch seems good enough until I try crux

Arch is pretty nice, good luck.

try Chakra linux