Linus Torvalds uses fedora
 

This must mean that fedora is a pretty good distro for a hardcore technical person. You obviously can't get more technical than the guy who wrote the kernel.
So what I was wondering was why some people use more "core" distros like slackware, arch, gentoo, centos, debian, etc which are less user friendly than distros like fedora and opensuse?

I want to know purely out of curiosity. If you do not like this thread/question, please remember than you have the freedom to go ahead and ignore it.

You know, "someone I admire uses it" is not generally a good criterion to base a technical decision on.

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/s...nt-management/

I use Slackware, but I started using said distro before I began to admire Pat Volkerding :p.

As far as I'm concerned Slackware is user friendly, and I use Slackware because it does not get in my way of doing things, it doesn't try to automatic or be overtly complicated. That to me seems like a good example of what user friendly should be defined as.

Yes but what is it that these core distros offer than more mainstream distros can't offer?
A n00b like me has no way of knowing. I'm just curious.

Of course you have a way of knowing. You can install one of those distros and try it out.

Well is there something that these 'core' distros don't offer? What exactly is it then?

I can use my 'core' distro (Slackware) as a desktop as well as any Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse, etc user can.

What does core distros offer that mainstream ones don't? A good trouble free working system. Lets see exactly how Ubuntu or Fedora stacks up against a core distro such as Slackware, or for that matter Debian?

I'm basically a ubuntu/mint user. I tried fedora the other day and that was a distro which was hard for me to use. It took over an hour just to get my wireless adapter to work. With ubuntu, all I have to do is go to "hardware devices" and click on a button. Fedora doesn't even have a "hardware devices".
I can't imagine how I would go about using something like slackware.

Then I think you've identified one thing that you can get from a "core" distro that you can't get from a "friendly" distro: confidence that you can pick up any other distribution and start using it.

Who told you that Slackware, Arch, Gentoo, CentOS, and Debian are not "user friendly"? That's preposterous!

This says to me that your wireless adapter is not Linux-friendly, not that Fedora is not user-friendly. :) Why not ask your hero Linus why his kernel does not support your device? ;)

Alright, you may keep that assumption with you, And who told you that Linus uses ONLY Fedora for the sake of eternity, LOL, and if internet tells you this, God bless you.



Regards

Steve Ballmer uses BLFS... :D

and Kim Jong Il uses Winblows 3.11, so he's a kapitalyst :rolleyes: Lulz

I thought this is what Ballmer uses, :p.

nah... :D LMAO

BLFS is more user friendly than that... :)

WTF, he was already bald in the time of windows 1.0???

Oh wait, he must have pulled his hair out because of windows 1.0...

Linus is one of us and has a personal interest in a few distros and I would think like most of us will attempt to use any distro... even a Mac...
http://www.osnews.com/story/16132/Li...ntel_Mac_Mini/