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.

You can change themes, by the way--you're not stuck with the "tribal jungle thing" (whatever that means), and Ubuntu has a KDE version called Kubuntu. You don't have to feel bad about using Ubuntu. Mark Shuttleworth is trying to do something good with his hundreds of millions of dollars. If you feel bad, donate some money to Canonical.

You don't feel bad about using these? They're all free as well.

Any of the three you're thinking of could fit this bill.

Any of the three you're thinking of could fit this bill.

Gentoo?

No one's pointing a gun to your head.

Any distro can enable support for this. Ubuntu has it out-of-the-box, but it sounds as if you're leaning more toward the build-it-yourself distros.

Never mind--Gentoo's probably not the way to go.

Why not Ubuntu?

You can have both installed on one distro, you know?

if you don't want gnome, get slackware. if you might want gnome, get debian. thread over.

Debian, Slackware, and Gentoo are all stable and equally powerful. The least stable would be Gentoo, mainly because there really isn't a standard out-of-the-box setup, it compiles with all the latest packages. It is only as stable as you want it to be, pretty much.

Gentoo is tiny, it compiles what you want. Slackware is relatively small, minimalist is the software you choose to use. If you don't want any bulk, Gentoo is the obvious choice. Debian has something like 7 installation CDs...I've never used it but that seems like a lot of bulk.

I've been around the Gentoo community for quite a while and absolutely love it, they are extremely helpful people and have built themselves an incredible community and a damn fine Wiki for pre-composed solutions to most of your common problems.

... What? This has nothing to do with Linux.

I don't believe this is distribution specific, AFAIK, it will work with anything you want to put on it.

Slackware and Debian will take more time to download than install. Gentoo requires a bit of configuring and such, downloading and compiling will still, probably, take up the majority of the time. There is a walkthrough handbook on their [Gentoo] web site, it is very easy to follow.

On Slackware you can compile it from source or get a slackpack, Debian will probably have it in their repository with apt-get, Gentoo will have it in portage. I don't think the latest package will cause you any grieff with any of these distributions.

Debian Sarge (3.1) comes with OO 1.1.3, their testing and developmental releases come with 1.1.4.
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.

Actually, if you want Gnome, KDE, or any desktop environment or window manager, you can use any distribution.

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.

Who made that point? I'm sorry but I didn't see that in the thread.

Edit: Sorry. I see it now.

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.