Need a new distro.
 

I am in need of a distro with a 64 bit version, the latest NVIDIA drivers, Adobe Flash and Google Earth; will run the latest Firefox Nightly and has an up to date Thunderbird, plus all non-free CODECs and firmware. Must also have XFCE available, though I realise virtually all distros do.
I'm used to Debian based distros but this needs to be non-Debian.
From what I see Fedora may fit the bill, but before installing I'd like to hear from anyone who has it running, to know of any potential problems and the like.
Slackware I am working on but it's looking like a weekend's work to get anything like up and running and I'd rather install it when I've learned more.
Any other suggestions would be appreciated also.
Thanks in advance. :)

There's always Arch, which has all of those (or pretty much all of those) in their official repos. All the stuff that's not in the official repos is available through this thing called AUR. But, as you said, you'd install Slackware when you've learned more... And Arch is similar to Slackware in that sense.

Fedora is pretty good. The only annoying thing I've found with Fedora is adding repositories (you have to download keys and repo configs and blah!) to get the cool, nonfree stuff and SELinux which can get in the way at times. I haven't used Fedora since 14 (I despise Gnome3) but from what I hear, it's gotten even better. One difference to keep in mind is systemd. Debian uses the old(er) SysV init system, while Fedora uses the new(er) systemd init system. Systemd is compatible with the old SysV system, so if you're used to that, it's no big deal.

Alex Brinister

Thanks, I may take a look at Arch anyhow.
The main issue with Slackare seems to he the time involved getting everything set up initially if you're new to the OS. Whilst I know that that is only done once it's a lot of wasted time if something doesn't work in the end. I suppose I've been spoiled by repositories and apt-get.
I seem to recall, having used Fedora briefly a long time ago, that it seemed sometimes like one repository per application -- I know that's obviously wrong but are there more to add than Debian?
SELinux does sound a pain, but it's good to have, I suppose.

This is accurate, IMHO. It's a weekend's work.

I was under the impression that if you knew slackware well enough the install time becomes a lot lower (or arch for that matter, its fairly similar in install time in my experince). Maybe I'm biased from hearing *buntu uses say the same thing ('its a weekends work to get it installed') about debian, when I can get from no OS on the computer to debian fulled installed and running how I like it for me in under 2 hrs.

If its a weekends work to get a full install running how they like it for experienced slackware uses, I dont feel so bad with my couple of days poking to get slackware running how I liked whenever I've tried it.....

You want all this on a liveCD/'out of the box' install, or is it O.K. for them to just be installable?

*edit- maybe think about Kororaa over Fedora-

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=kororaa

https://kororaa.org/

No Xfce version AFAIK, but its installable.

Sabayon could also be worth thinking about-

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=sabayon

http://www.sabayon.org/

Xfce version avaible.

I think Slackware probably takes a lot less than a weekend if you know what you're doing. I don't, sadly, hence my comment about learning more. As it stands I'd have to follow tutorials for installing a new kernel, installing software and checking dependencies and getting multilib working. I don't even know where to put downloaded packages so that will obviously take a long time.
Sorry, I should make it clear this is a distro to be installed and used day-to-day from a hard drive. I'm fine with the "few extra steps" type install of Debian.
Debian's just not working for me at the moment for reasons I'll not go into. Suffice it to say though I've spent a lot of time investigating things to come to that conclusion.

Member Response
 

Hi,

I have been using Slackware since the first release. General install & setup is under an hour unless there are exotic/new hardware tweaks. Even then the polish or tweaking is no more than another hour or so.

I do not consider 'X' refinement(s) as part of the install unless there are major issues. Most times fonts & configuration(s) are done over the life of the machine or version. Nor do I consider package updates even with the new install setup. These are dependent on the hardware type and needs.

New Dell laptop with Slackware install has been about 2 1/2 hours. I did expect some issues for this Laptop. There will be the need for some software hacks to get this baby running at peak with all hardware. I am slotting another day(locked in the LAB, undisturbed) to polish this install since major tweaks to the init and udev to get the hardware setup to work as desired.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I've done a base install, NVIDIA drivers and X setup in an hour or so. It's getting things like multiarch, Flash, libdvdcss, VirtualBox, etc. set up that I envisage taking time. Since I spend most of my time using my PC to watch video and audio and play with things in VirtualBox the system wouldn't be "finished" until I'd got the majority of that done.
Not a criticism of Slackware, by the way, just an admission I don't know enough about it yet to install it without a lot of reading.

Well, thought I'd reply to my own thread to report a bit of progress with Slackware.
The things I thought I could struggle with, Multilib and Google Earth, installed fine.
Only issues so far:
I had Flash working but uninstalling Firefox and replacing it with the Nightly from Mozilla broke that. I'm sure it's an easy fix though.
For some reason setting up Google Earth to work with my SpaceNavigator didn't "just work" as it does under Ubuntu and Fedora but I suspect I've just missed a permission somewhere or mistyped something.

So, Slackware really could take me a weekend to have things just as I like them (there's WINE and other things to look at) but it's a little less involved than I thought and once I've got things right in a VM I may well take the plunge and make it my main OS.
Still have to get my head around where to keep Slackbuilds and how the various sources of software are used though. That and change the kernel, I think, or can the default be left?

I've also got Fedora in a similar position in a VM and that's looking good too. Very much like Debian in it's use though -- just replacing "apt-get" with "yum" and the like.

About SlackBuilds: check out sbopkg, it makes the processing of SlackBuilds easy, either via the ncurses interface or CLI.
It's recommended to switch to the generic kernel.

Thanks. So many steps and tools to remember. Nothing too "difficult" but certainly not as straighforward as what I'm used to.

Different people, whether they're novices or experts, prefer different approaches. Some, like Linux Torvalds, prefer easy distros. Others (such as me, I'm not quite a novice, but still have a hell of a lot to learn), prefer more "involved" distros. All a matter of taste,

I certainly like what I see of Slackware but it is taking much longer to learn and set up compared to .rpm and .deb based distributions.
For example, I'd not used Fedora for about 7 years and was a novice last time I tried to use it but I still managed to get it set up with very little googling and most of that was confirming package names.
Still, it's package management and what that means to a distro that have caused me pain in the past so perhaps the initial work is worth it.

Not in my experience. I've been using every version (pretty much, skipped a couple here or there) from 4 to 16, and since about 14 things have gone downhill quickly. Gnome3 is horrible, and overall stability has taken a huge hit. I have/had FC4-10 machines that stay up and running for literally years without ever being restarted, without ever NEEDING to be restarted. I have one FC4 machine who's current uptime is 374 days, and it's just chugging along happily without a care in the world. My F15 and F16 machines need to be restarted every couple of weeks because they just freak out and break for no apparent reason (network interfaces stop working, X crashes, etc). It's Windows XP SP1 all over again.

It seems like over the last couple of years, Fedora has gone from being a pre-release for RHEL to make sure everything is stable before making packages official, to being an alpha-release for completely untested and unstable software. You'll install an update and your printers will stop working. A week later you'll install another update and they'll be back again. This happens regularly. I grit my teeth every time I do an update on my F16 machine, just waiting to see what the update breaks. After years of using Fedora almost exclusively, I will not be using it again.

Vector Linux recently released a 64 bit version with xfce. Vector is know for including all the multimedia codecs you will need. http://ftp-osl.osuosl.org/pub/vector...-STD-FINAL.iso
Based on slack btw.