Yet Another What Distro Is Right For Me Thread (YAWDIRFMT)
 

Hey, I'm running Suse 9.2 right now and I'm interested in finding a distro more suitable to my needs. I feel that I'm not learning enough about the inner workings of Linux on Suse, but I don't think I'm ready for something quite as complicated as slackware yet. Any suggestions? My criteria is as follows:
1. harder than the newbie distros (Suse, Mandrake, Redhat)
2. Easier than the expert distros (Slackware, freeBSD)
3. I have a DWL-g520 wireless card, I need a distro that either has out of the box support for it or relatively easy installation of drivers for it. (just because I've had numerous problems with it so far, the only distro that I could get it to work on was Suse. If anyone could suggest how to get working drivers for it on a specific distro, I will be forever in your debt)

and yes, I know that freeBSD isn't Linux

Are you doing everything from CLI or from a desktop manager like KDE, Gnome? If you are doing almost everything from the command line, then you should be learning a lot of the inner workings of linux.

-twantrd

don't fear the slack!
i use both suse and slackware, and truly slackware isn't that much more difficult to use.
while it's true the learning curve is a bit steeper, you've indicated you wanna be challenged a bit and learn more. you'll find pretty quickly that it's not that hard to use, and once you know it, you can apply it to pretty much every other distro out there.
there are some great threads here on installing it, and more information about how to use it than you will ever need, plus a huge support community here that will guide you as you go. so i gotta suggest slackware for you. it's pretty sweet.

IF you REALLY want to learn linux then go for Gentoo or slack, I use Gentoo and its also fast. Check the HCL for your card, if SuSE will work with it then its highly likely Gentoo will.

o! Don't use Gentoo if you don't have any experience! Well, you can use it if you want to have the best Linux experience, but don't expect to be able to install it. I reccommend Fedora. EVerything is made easy, but you can still go to the Command Line to do whatever you need to do "the hacker way". Never BY ANY MEANS should you use the horror that is Ubuntu.

respectfully disagree. What's so hard about typing commands in from the handbook? really, broken down, gentoo is no harder than any other distro ( and before any flaming, keep in mind I've more than done my time with gentoo).

Back to the topic, (my opinion only), slack, gentoo, rock, or something similar should something along the lines of what your looking for ( rock is a little more complex than the other two, but not terribly difficult). Also, maybe linux from scratch if you want to learn about how things work together and how the system operates.

..I suggest you Frugalware...nice new distro...for intermediate...not so difficult to install and you can learn!
Arch linux is another option if you wanna learn!

I'm with __J here, I would challenge any n00b to not be able to install Getnoo with a copy of the handbook. Hey I use it ;-)
Fed is good too but I don't like the cumbersome way it works, RPM cant stand up to portage IMO

Normally, I would ignore a thread like this as if it was the plague. But you won me over with your humorous title. :)

I like the advice most people have given you above. Although -- as a FreeBSD user -- I can't help but put in a good word for that system. It is not nearly as hard as it often is made out to be. And the handbook is an excellent resource. I'll admit that many people class it as an "expert" system because it doesn't setup X automagically for you, the install is text, and there is a high expectation that a new user is willing to read/research answers for themselves (although, this does not mean users aren't willing to help if someone gets stuck... actually the help is often excellent because more people can focus on the "interesting" problems as opposed to the most common ones).

Anyway, listen to the people above. They offer good advice. But don't just shove FreeBSD into the "expert" corner and forget about it. :D

The problem with doing everything *to the letter* from the Gentoo install guide is that sometimes not everything works exactly theway you expect, and you have to figure out how to make it work yourself.

Well if a nugget like me can do a stage 3 +GRP with just the handbook (oh and yes I had the desktop guide as well), then anyone can.

the only real stipulation would be to use the "suggested" defaults if you're not 100% sure i.e. stuff like /boot, /swap and /root. Then it's pretty straight forward.

IMO that gentoo documentation isn't perfect, but it's some of the easiest too follow I've used so far, whereas lots of it (even some supposedly written for newbie friendly mainstream distros - mandrake, SuSE, etc etc is rubbish written by techie developer types who know shitloads about developing, but bog all about technical publication writing).

just my :twocents:

regrds

John

thanks for all your help, I think I'll look into gentoo. I'll prolly be back here with a new thread for help installing it but what the heck, might as well try it lol

I tried slackware as my first linux experience and the install/setup is a snap. Easy as pie to get X working too, so I doubt you'd have any problems.

I'm gonna suggest something else. You could keep what you have (although I've never installed Suse, for certain reasons) and download the RUTE manual and read about how Linux works. Then it won't matter as much what distro you have.

gentoo is an excellent project and their community is good as well - check out the handbook and the gentoo wiki. and make sure to schedule in extra compiling time :D