i am searching for opinions from exprienced users.

i have been usin redhat ( 9 lately) and have had may problems with installs and configuration. After a little research i have come to the conclusion that redhat is far from the best linux distro. So i am looking for opinions on what the best linux distro to try out might be. All input is greatly appreciated.

Moving to Linux - Distributions

There is no best distro (besides Slackware ) so you should either:
1. Check out the other threads related to see what people's opinions are;
2. Check out www.distrowatch.com to find out differences within distros;
3. Install and work with several distros to get a feel for which one is best for you

HTH

Cool

There might be no best distro, but there are a few that qualify as the worst: Anything based on RPM. That includes Red Hat (obviously), Mandrake and I think SuSE and Yellow Dog. Avoid these, and any other RPM-based distro, like the plague, they're nothing but trouble.

have you tried apt-get for red hat? it can make installing things easier.

otherwise try slackware. everything seems to install without problems.

I use RedHat.

RPM based distribution are good because not everyone has time to compile a custom system.
We need RPM in order to get Linux in the mainstream.

As for RedHat, there are many good and bad things in version 9.
The real question is: What is my current knowledge of Linux ?

Advanced users will flock to slackware, Debian and Gentoo.
But if you are a newbie, Mandrake is the best.
Intermediate users... RedHat and SuSE.

Even then, it comes down to personal preference.
At my workplace, there is a Unix/Linux Guru. He has been working with Unix systems since the early 80s and his workstation is RedHat 9.
Actually, he uses the console.
80% of the time, he uses pure console (not a GUI based shell).

But in the end, once you master the command line and the configuration files, you can modify any Linux distribution.

RPM - based distro is good if you install only RPMs, only for your distro+version.

I must say that I recently 'discovered' urpmi i MDK and it work well. It's worser than apt-get (just my opinion), but good.

You can do a lot better than RPM for that. Debian's apt system is light years ahead of RPM (although it's not quite as good as Gentoo's portage system in my experience but for binary packages, it still can't be beat). And before you start saying Debian isn't good for n00bs, I can think of four "n00b-friendly" distributions off the top of my head (Lycoris, Knoppix, Xandros and Lindows) that are all based on Debian. The only thing Red Hat has going for it is that, as the biggest supplier of Linux in the world, it has the largest support network which is really what Linux needs to make it in the mainstream, not a half-baked package management system. It's just too bad that they're distro is becoming popular as a result...

RPMs biggest problem is it's complete lack of inbuilt dependency resolution. Sure, it can tell you what the dependencies are but that's it, it doesn't go out onto the net and grab them for you. Now, I know this facility can be added through things like urpmi, apt4rpm and YUM but that isn't really the point, the facility should be built in like with apt and Portage. When I type in rpm -ivv Mozilla, I expect all four of the RPMs necessary to install Mozilla (it really should only be 3 but that really is another rant altogether) to be downloaded and installed, along with any other dependencies, without any fuss. If a dependent packages needs upgrading, it should be able to handle that too. Continuing on from that, it should be able to upgrade the entire system using only one, possibly two commands. apt has been able to do all these for years (and a number of front ends, both text-based and graphical, are available to simplify it as well), so why is RPM still stuck in the dark ages?

Lycoris uses RPM. Also, I thought it was based on Caldera Linux.

Maybe you meant Libranet?

LSD:

You are a little mistaken.

RPM should not be compared to APT.

RPM should be compared to DPKG, Debians Package management system.


APT is a front end to DPKG, and its NOT integrated (it came a year after DPKG).

There is APT for RPM, and there's YUM, and those are both fine, so I don't see how you can say "APT > APT".


And if you want to know how "great" DPKG is, try using it w/o APT. Its just as bad as RPM.


Either way, Pacman is where its at.

A one click or one command solution would be nice for n00bs, but I know I've learned a lot about Linux by installing tarballs, compiling from source, self-extracting rpms, etc. I started with Mandrake then moved to SuSE and I had very little problems with rpms. And I was a complete n00b when I started.

For instance, doing an upgrade to KDE means you have to download about 75 files and a n00b might not figure out how to install them all at once but it's good practice.

IIRC, Lycoris is what remains of Corel's Linux distro which itself, as you point out, was based on Caldera's Distro and I could have sworn I read somewhere that Caldera was based off Debian. If it's not then that only makes 3 examples I could think of then as Libranet didn't even cross my mind at the time.

Caldera was based off Red Hat.
I don't remember Corel (which was Debian-based) being part of the Lycoris chain.

Xandros is the successor to Corel. Maybe that's where you got confused.

I'd also add Mepis Linux to your list of newbie friendly Dabian based distros.

Could be, it's been absolutely ages since I'd read or heard anything about Corel's or Caldera's Linux distros...