Is there a distro which is not as restrictive as Fedora and not as complex as Gentoo? I mean a distro that comes with an automated graphical installer that will configure my hardwares and very few basic precompiled packages such as KDE and Openoffice.org.

Fedora is easy to install but quite bloated. Meanwhile, Gentoo lets me handle almost everything even at stage3 and I also just don't find it healthy for my hardwares to compile tons of data for a month just for the sake of software optimization (just ruined my system last night because of that..argghhh).

Is there a Linux distro like this? Please tell me.

Thanks...

hi there,
give Suse a try... also Mandriva ...
regards
slackie1000

I'm currently considering Yoper. Mandriva is no longer free, is it?

You can install any distro and include just the packages you need. Many people complain about distros being bloated but they are not forced to install every single package the distro ships with or run all the default services and daemons.

hi there,
yep.. somehow is still free..
here you can find more information and some mirrors list ..
regards
slackie1000

I think I'll have Mandriva.

Slackware - Simple, Stable, Elegant

hi there,
nope. slackware does not fit. piggysmile put his conditions/requirements for the distro and you tell him to use slackware.
did i miss the slackware graphical installer? openoffice precompiled?
c'mon, i am also a slackware user. but i think your post does not answer his question.
regards
slackie1000

well i've only used redhat7 about 4 years ago, and using suse9.1 now, so i can't comment on others, but suse was damn easy to install, configure, work, etc (now i just gotta change from kde to something a little less intensive for my poor rust-bucket...)

Try Debian or a Debian variant such as Ubuntu. The latter is really getting popular and for good reasons too.


Håkan

Ubuntu or XandrOS are very easy to install. XandrOS comes wih quite a few packages and you can easily get more with it's Software download panel thingie.
These are both debian based and are compatible with debian packages.

Try Ubuntu. I don't use it ATM, messing around with Arch Linux (Which is really nice, BTW). However, it is IMO a much better distro than Fedora, Mandriva, or Suse. It is very simple to install, very simple to setup, and if you have problems with anything, their user forums are very good. I'm still a huge Linux noob and I have trouble with a lot of things. On a lot of the distros I've tried, I have uninstalled them because there have been things that just didn't work, and I couldn't get a response to them on the distros' user forums. However, with Ubuntu, I never even had to ask a question. Searches have found detailed answers to all of my questions. It's been the only distro I was able to successfully setup 3D acceleration with my ATI card on, because of an actual working tutorial in their HOWTO forum! I've tried this with other distros, but the step by steps are never right, they always cause problems and no one is ever there to help troubleshoot.

Sorry, I went on a rant. I'd say try it, the worst that could happen is you don't like it, and you can go try something else.