I've been in a distro hopping mood of the late (currently have Fedora, OpenSUSE, and Ubuntu installed on my main laptop) and I wanted to get some opinions of other distros to try. OpenSUSE has been misbehaving and I'd like to replace it with something else.

I was wondering what your distro of choice is - and why I should give it a try. Figure this question should lead to some interesting conversation on a multi-distribution forum such as this.

~Jeff

To be clear, I think you're asking about desktop (including laptop) distros. What I select for a desktop is very different than what I run on servers.

For me it's going to be Fedora or Ubuntu. As work/life has gotten busier, I've grown tired of customizing the hell out of my desktop distro, only to wipe it clean and start fresh a few months later. As desktop distros, both Fedora and Ubuntu more or less just work (TM), and they're pretty painless to start over from scratch with given proper backups.

Slackware.

It's simple (KISS).
It's robust.
It's fast.
It leaves all control in my hands.
It doesn't have Gnome.
It follows the principle: "Never run a changing system!"


Cheers,
Tink

Yes I am talking about desktop distros.

How well does the package manger work on Slax? That was one of the big turn offs I had with SUSE YaST didn't work all that well.

~Jeff

i like fedora because it has the easiest live-usb creator on the planet.

my work laptop is windows-xp, so in my leisure i stick a usb hardrive in there and run a live distro from it.

I like ubuntu because the package manager is so simple to use. If I need something I usually find it there and it can be installed with 1 click instead of searching all over the internet like I used to do with FC8 when I was in school and using it.

I started my adventure with Linux in 1997 with Red Hat 4.2. I always wanted to know what different installers change in my system, so after each change I inspected /etc directory, I determined where and what was changed, I unpacked the original configuration file from the appropriate .rpm renaming it to .old and I compared the original file with the changed one. I stored both original and changed files in my /root/Red Hat/ subdirectory in the directory structure mirroring the original one.

When new release of Red Hat appeared I customized it by comparing original and changed files from the previous release and by implementing the appropriate changes in the new release manually. I still customized a lot of the new services and programs storing the information about it in my mirror directory.

In the course of the time I was more and more disappointed with Red Hat. In 2000 I decided to change the distribution. After short research I stated that for my needs better should be Slackware or Debian. I decided to try both and to select the best. I started with Slackware and fell in love with it. So I didn’t even try Debian.

With Slackware I customize each feature myself. I don’t have to do meticulous investigations where and what some configurator changed in my system because I don’t use any.

Year in, year out I changed more and more in my system so finally I decided to automate the entire process. I stopped to modify the files in the system manually. I wrote a bunch of scripts and I use them to configure the system. If I want to change something instead of edit the appropriate file I add a procedure to the right script and I run it. After the installation of the new release of Slackware I run all my scripts and in result I get fully customized system in a few minutes.

I love it!

I agree...

RHEL on my servers
Linux Mint on my desktop/laptop

-C

hmm several.

pure Debian, it just works, fast to install (typically less then 30min to fully install everything i need from services, GUI, applications, office suite, and fully patched. apt is so much better then yast as mentioned above. it is IMHO even better then yum for the rpm based distros like RH/FC/Mandriva/etc...

Sabyon is one if you want to play around with bleed edge tech. again very easy to install and seems to work very well even with newer hardware.

CentOS for server.

what i dont like is the Ubuntu line of distros. they never seem to work exactly as expected and nerf to much stuff without basic linux functionality without major hacking. just not my taste. for some it is great, just not for me.

currently the only linux i am running is CentOS both at home and for my mail/www server remotes.

I agree...

apt>yum>yast

-C

Not a new topic, its been discussed ad naseum on this and other Linux forums. Just go to advanced search and look for threads with 'which distro' in the title. You'll have days of reading. You'll find that all the threads end up saying the same thing and none of it is really that interesting, IMHO.

That being said, I use Cross Linux from Scratch. It supports all of the architectures I have. It doesn't install anything I don't need or want. It's simple to use. It's fast. It works for both my desktop and servers.

Mmm I can agree after having played with Fedora and SUSE that apt is better than both yum and yast. Trying out Sabayon at the moment though... Where does emerge/equo fit which package mangers work the best?

~Jeff

i use a custom ubuntu to look like mac cos i cant afford one

Slackware. Because I like it, and that's a good enough reason for anybody.

Slackware, because I find most other distributions over-engineered. Been using Slackware best part of 15 years now.