Specific Distro Question
This is another post asking which distro to use...
I started out about 6 years ago on SuSE, moved over to Mandrake for about a week or so, went back, and then over to Fedora, and on to Ubuntu. I enjoyed Ubuntu the most but at the same time, not only did I find the whole tribal jungle thing corny and Gnome boring but, I also felt bad about using that kind of distro. I am commiting myself to either Debian, Slackware or Gentoo. I just need help figuring out which one... this is where I need your help... I need a distro that is stable and powerful, I will be working more and more with mathematical programs like STATA, Ox, etc. I am REALLY into minimalism... I would like something small, fast and efficient. I need to use a distro with a strong community (for support). I need to be able to not get an iPod becuase I don't want to have an iPod, not because I can't. I want to start using usb keys. I am willing to spend as much time as it takes to get things working... as long as it doesn't take too much time. I have a DLink DWL G520 wireless netowrk card that will only work with the latest MadWiFi package. OpenOffice out of the box would be ideal. ... these are the biggest things for me. I am torn between Gnome and KDE but I am slightly favouring KDE after hating it for so long. I REALLY appreciate any help. I would love to have a new distro running on my machine in a week. |
Re: Specific Distro Question
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if you don't want gnome, get slackware. if you might want gnome, get debian. thread over. :o :D
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Re: Specific Distro Question
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Slackware doesn't come with OpenOffice at all. Gentoo has the option to get it from portage (which is, technically, out of the box, since your entire system will be emerged from the latest portage tree) and they have the latest 1.1.5 release. As for KDE ang Gnome, they are both far from minimalist DEs. Xfce would be the closest DE (Desktop Environment) to minimalist, and it is still pretty bulky. I would recommend OpenBox (for out of the box configurability, or other *box window manager) or FVWM2 (for highly configurable), both being minimalist. |
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yes, but the newest slackware doesn't come with gnome and it's much harder to install than in other distros that have it pre-packaged, at least without using a third party installers like dropline (which may or may not alter your system in a way you don't want). as for flower.Hercules' point about debian taking 7 cds (i think there are 12, actually) -- that's for the *entire distro* with over 10,000 packages. the netinstall is a single CD, and installs only a base debian system. from there you use the apt package managers (apt-get, synaptic, etc.) to install only the software you want. :cool: |
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Edit: Sorry. I see it now. |
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sorry -- i edited that to make it clearer who i was responding to on that point. |
Any of the three will work for you. The only negatives I can say about them are as follows:
Slackware : Doesn't come with OpenOffice or Gnome, you'll have to install those yourself. Debian: Typically a little older packages than the other two as Debian is far slower to add new packages to testing. I've found that Debian also tends to run a tad slower than the other two. Newer stuff is in unstable, but there you may risk some system stability. Or not. Gentoo: Takes a long time to compile everything. There are binary packages available, but that kinda defeats the whole "if it moves, compile it" concept of Gentoo. My personal opinion is that Slack would do nicely for you, but honestly so would the other two. |
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