Hello,

Which of these three quite similar distributions would you recommend most?

Which is the most diffcult to install?

Thanks

Quite similar yet way different...

Debian is the most difficult to install.

Gentoo takes the longest.

Slackware isn't optimized by default to your system.

So take your pick

Cool

Recommendations are best served when we know what you are judging by. Best at what?

I would choose Debian as the most difficult, personally.

Well I don't think as Debian as most difficult. I am a addicted Debian user. I think the install is just easy. And I DO know of a Linux NEWBIE who recently installed Debian 3.0/r1. And if that guy can install Debian almost everybody can ...

I enjoy apt-get, etc. I think Debian rocks ... I haven't tried Gentoo yet but I bet it's pretty nice too (also Slackware). After your installation check out the Security forum ... I will post a ChangeLog to secure your Debian box soon. Be prepared for a nice read :-)

Why do you think so? Which Debian version did you try?You mean because everything is built from source?

I've tried Redhat, Slackware, SuSe, FreeBSD, and BeOS (couple others too that I can't remember offhand...) and I would say with no conviction that Mandrakes latest is the best! For newbies, it's very easy and will automatically recognize most hardware. yet, once you get comfortable, you can still go in and tweak to your hearts content.

No, I don't work for Mandrake!
Although, that might be a pretty nice job to have!

JF

Slack nine rock i have tried debian but i think end of my apinion

cheers

erling

I was just listing the 3 main things wrong with each distro. There are all kinds of things that are mentioned that people love, but I figure I'd touch on the negative points to help figure out which battle to choose to fight

Out of the 3, Debian has got to be the most difficult to install. Too many options, expects quite a bit of prior linux knowledge, and since a lot of n00bs feel lost in the dark, that doesn't help either.

I do believe it was 3.0rc1 that I tried. And as for the gentoo, yeah, that and if you don't find a fast mirror/have a dial up connection, you're in for a wait

But I didn't mean anything real bad by my comments. I really like all 3, just wanted to touch on what battles the user might face with each one.

Cool

I must say that I'm biased towards Slack... and I'm a newbie. I did use Mandrake a lot, in fact I used every release they've made over the past year.

I loved Mandrake due to the simplicity of its installations, smart detecting of hardware, automated-everything. Notice the usage of past tense...

What I hated about Mandrake was the way it installs libraries and programs... it could be anywhere but at it's usual places! I've always installed Mandy with LSB support... however, I can't imagine how it got certified in the first place. I get errors 90% of the time when I try to compile anything that is not Mandrake specific.

Don't take my word for it though, install Mandrake... use KDE for a while... and grab some themes/windecos from KDE-Look... and tell me how many of those you managed to install successfully.

My advise to you is to install distros that conforms to Unix-like structure. So far, Slackware, Debian, and Gentoo (if you installed it properly) can be said to conform to that structure. I would not recommend the so-called Desktop Linux types... sure it's easy, but when you are more comfortable with Linux, you will start to feel the pain.

Those are very different distros, in their goals and features.

IMO:

Gentoo - Is for "power users" and people who want bleeding edge and complete customization. It really depends on having a nice internet connection in linux, because you have to have internet just to intall it, and it relys on portage, a BSD ports like system (similar to apt-get, but with source and not packages)

Debian - 2 different faces.
1. their official releases - the goal of these versions is to be the most stable distro out there (though I dont think they are, but I digress)
2. Their "unstable" versions are gotten with Apt-Get, the real prize of Debian. Apt is used to download packages and updates, it handles dependancies and installing. It makes handling installed programs a breeze.

Slackware- Tends to be very generic and unix-like. Its goal (IMO) is to give you just what the origional programmers intended. In return, you get the most compatability, and stability. For example, Slackware is so generic, it can install RPMs fine (better than RH )

Heres how I rate difficulties:

Slackware - 2 - its not for the absolute beginner, but ANYONE can handle it, if they are willing to read some man pages and do a little work.

Debian - 2 - Its a little harder to install, but everything else is a breeze w/ apt.

Gentoo - 4 - Its pretty hard to install (when compared to the other two) and setup, but managing packages is easy, via portage.

Hope that helps.

well one disadvantage of debian is the ways packages in stable are handled ... but that's due to high-quality-assurances ...

if you need apache 2 for instance you have to backport it or compile it from source (which is easier than backporting).