Well OK. I've got two computers. A laptop, which has to be working at all times, and a desktop for ... call it experimentation purposes. So clearly, when I decided to move my laptop to linux, I took the easiest route, I went with what I had heard is most "Windows like, easiest to get working" - ie. Mandriva.

Now its my desktops turn. Call it ignorance, masochism, or stupidity, I want to actually understand linux, learn as much as possible about it, mess around. It's why I migrated in the first place - windows was far too rigid.

Having said that, which distribution would you recommend me (to attempt) to install on my desktop for educational purposes? The steeper the learning curve the better :P

(From what I've heard / read it seems to be Slackware..... but I decided to run it past this board to be sure)


Thanks in advance

---abe---

Ya, Slackware.

regards

Gentoo, Arch Linux, Slackware, Linux From Scratch (but for that you need an existing linux install).


Gentoo is great - you learn a lot - but it takes a while to build an entire system from them.
Arch is what I use exclusively now. The install is quite simple if you have been through any other linux installs, but there is no "hand holding" once the system is booted for the first time. Everything is done through text editing. Again you learn a LOT.

Slack I have never used. It's "Modular-ness" has kept me away (that and the fact that they have no official package manager to speak of - or they didnt when I went to use it) From what I hear though - it is very well organized and is "generic" in its setup (by which I mean that they have files in specified places and "slackware specific" help is rarely needed.)

slackware has its own packages ".tgz"
and easy commands to install or remove them.

#installpkg *.tgz for installing
#upgradepkg *.tgz for upgrading
#removepkg *.tgz for removing

moreover you can use "checkinstall" to convert the source (.tar) packages to .tgz ones.

how to use checkinstall

regards

Slackware has very powerful package managing tools.

So to sum it all up, yall suggest Slackware?

slackware, definitely. although you might want to dual boot with debian, as it has a very different way of doing things. and a lot of distros are based on debian, so it pays to learn both, imho.

Let me clarify on what I said earlier - I didn't like that they had no dependency checks in any of the package handlers that I saw when I first looked into moving over to them, not that they didn't have their own packages.

My suggestion still holds though. Just because I didn't care for it doesn't mean that you won't or that you won't learn a lot.

Yes Slackware is the way to go...

http://www.slackware.com/

Jake