The Brand New UltraMegaSuper "Which Distro" Thread

currently i'm using RedHat9 but i'm considering change of that distro. well i cannot say i am an expert in linux, however i do know the basis (i believe so ). i don't know which linux distribution should i choose now. few people recommended Debian to me. as far as i know it is one of the best linux distros and in addition it does supports binary packages. but i'm still now sure. i was told that SuSE is good too. which (of the most popular distros) would you recommend me?

Try a few and make your own decision. As long as you have your data on a separate partition and backed up, you can't go wrong.

Start off trying Debian, Mandrake and/or SuSE (the first two you can download full isos, SuSE you can download a trial run-off-CD iso). See which you prefer. You might also like to try some others - see www.distrowatch.com.

I agree with iainr. You have to find your way.... I think this is the better advice.
Now I'm using Slackware (this is my choice) but I tried Debian, RedHat, Mandrake, Suse, FreeBSD,... also.

im currently on Debian.

I have tried Mandrake and Redhat already both good distros too.

choosing a distro may be a prob i admit , but it actually depends on what ur application area revolves upon , debian is considered a very good dist bcos it is highly stable and still quite tough to handle , install and configure , on the other hand if it is just a desktop pc you may go for SUSE bcos it is extremely user friendly , I have used RH all my years , i suggest that , still today RH 7.1 I didnt have to change it bcos it still suits my needs , but i definitely agree with the other fellows here , its really upto you to decide ..
Thanks and all the best ..
Shaheen

Moved: More suitable in our Distro's forum.

Also, this is asked all the time, search our forums. We have stickies and threads already covering this topic to help you choose a distro. We even have a reviews section. Search and then search some more, no need to keep repeating ourselves.

Mod Note: Read this post first



I was a fedora user on my 32 bit machine, but now that I upgraded I'm shopping around. First I tried Fedora3 x64, but it wouldn't boot (after the initial installer screen, it always freezes on the line reading /sbin/loader). Next, I tried Ubuntu Hoary, but it couldn't get a good refresh rate, and init 3 didn't work for dropping down to text mode. Finally I settled on Suse 9.2/64, but it's giving me a few problems too (the libstdc++ has some kind of strange problem, so with almost any rpm (64 bit) that I attempt to install, YaPT wants to remove or downgrade half of my system). Also, I can't get synaptic up and running, and apt seems to be a little crippled based on the repositories that are available for suse (apt update; apt upgrade failed off the bat.)

So if you are running a 64 bit distro that just worked, and has a wide range of packages available for it (I'm particularly interested in running cinelerra), let me know.

Thanks!

Have you tried Mandrake or Gentoo. I am sure there are other distros out there with 64 bit versions, check on Distrowatch.

I believe SuSE 9.2 has an x86_64 version. There is also an unofficial x86_64 version for Debian which you can read about here: http://www.debian.org/ports/amd64/


I have an AMD Athlon64 3500+, but I decided to stick with 32-bit Debian for now and just have my kernel and video drivers as 64-bit. 97% of Debian packages have been ported to 64-bit now, but there are still some workarounds you have to do to run 32-bit apps. I'm playing a 'wait and see' until the Debian 64-bit port becomes a little more mature, and then I'll probably backup my data and enter the relm of pure64.

I've been using Gnetoo on AMD-64 for some time now and it works great. You have to jump through some hoops to get things like Mplayer to use win32 codecs but it isn't that big a deal really.

gentoo rocks the house, just makes sure if you are using fat32 partitions to share between windows and linux you enable language support in filesystems when you are compiling the kernel.

I have ran the 64 bit versions of Fedora Core, Gentoo, Debian, Slackware and FreeBSD. Out of all these, I have enjoyed Debian and Slackware (Slamd64 unofficial port) the most.

On Debian, it just worked. I have had no problems. I don't try and run any 32 bit apps on it either. Don't want to. However, on my Slamd64 Slackware box, it handles 32 bit apps and 64 bit just fine. For speed though, if speed is the big concern, I have found Debian to be the fastest.

Seems Gentoo would be the best option, since you can compile everything with 64 bit support.

Mod Note: Read this post first




I just found this on distrowatch.com, it is a web based distro chooser. You input what you use the computer for, what type of computer you have, among other questions and it will tell you the best linux distro to use. Not only that, it tells you which distros you should stay away from. The link is below;

linux distrobution chooser

This should help anyone asking the famous question "what distro should I use" or "which distro will work on my computer"

fantastic idea!

It failed, I'm afraid.

I use Gentoo, and am fond of Slackware and LFS. None of them appeared in the list, instead it was almost entirely Debian-based distros.

Still, it might work for others...