running out of distros

oskar · 07-02-2008, 07:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ErV

Didn't have problems with that. Compiling and etc is simple (and fast enough on my system), although it isn't instant.

I disagree here. If someone "knows what he's doing" it doesn mean that what he is doing is what you need. Systems with "normal" package manager often pull tons of packages via Internet, and with my internet link constantly downloading updates is more time-consuming.

I get 1MB/s down, so that's not a problem. If I compile it myself, I can be sure that it's not what I need because I have no idea what I'm doing.
Compiling has rarely been simple for me. Maybe you're just smarter.

crashmeister · 07-02-2008, 07:21 AM

I like tweaking and compiling things and I don't.

For that reason I run a regular distro for my real needs and whatever I want to tweak around with in a VM.

Nobody sane wants to find out that the latest little project just hosed the system right this minute when you need to write the most important report in the world.

Oskar: What exactly is that hardware we are hearing so much about?

Did you try to enable S.M.A.R.T

Takla · 07-02-2008, 07:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by oskar

Eversince Ubuntu 8.04 came out I'm hopping from distro to distro trying to find one that works.
Ubuntu worked perfectly until now. But recent updates even broke 7.10 for me, so there's no going back either. I get hard lock-ups on both 7.10 and 8.04... same for my sister.
I tried PCLOS-2007 - refused to connect to my router after some time.
PCLOS-2008 boots into a kernel panic
It's still in beta, so no suprise there.
OpenSuse 11 - scroll wheel won't work despite that it's configured exactly as on every other distro, and that I never had a problem with that after Suse 9.2 In addition I get a "knotify crashed" on every startup, and various programs I installed didn't work as expected.

Gentoo/Slackware:
I'm sorry, but I neither have the time nor the ambition to compile my stuff... I know about the pre-compiled packages, but the selection isn't very amazing, and I'd still have to spend a lot of time compiling.
Fedora... well... Fedora 7 if anything, and I'm not the biggest fan. I'd still end up with a couple of extra repos that are bound to break the system sooner or later.
I'll download Madriva now and hope for the best.
Debian... I'm kind of sympathizing with debian, but the packages are too damn old.

Maybe it's a problem with my hardware... but XP runs fine... as fine as XP can run anyways.

It's a shame... everything worked basically trouble-free from Ubuntu 5.something to 7.10.

+1 for Debian Testing. I experienced all the tedious lockups with Xubuntu 7.10 (previous versions were stable for me) and went looking for alternatives. Best for someone familiar with the Debian way of doing things but also looking for similar low maintainance are imo antiX and Debian itself. Testing(Lenny) right now is a lot more up to date than stable(Etch) and it's an awful lot more reliable and stable than *buntu 7.10 or 8.04. Debian Unstable can be demanding, you need to pay a lot of attention to updates and upgrades and things do break fairly often.

I think you should also look outside of the distrowatch top 10 and check out Zenwalk. The live CD is installable so it's easy to try it out. It has a different way of doing things than the rpm or deb based distros but it certainly isn't a difficult one to install or administer, quite the opposite.

ErV · 07-02-2008, 07:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by oskar

I get 1MB/s down, so that's not a problem.

Sorry, my link allows only 128kbit/sec connection to "external" net (i.e. not within provider's IPs, where it's much faster). So, for example, ubuntu updates are really slow (big update can take up to several hours), while source packages are generally much smaller than binary ones and there'll be less trouble with downloading.

Quote:

Originally Posted by oskar

Maybe you're just smarter.

I'm a C/C++ programmer, so when I wrote last reply I simply forgot (again) that not everyone else is skilled in programming/C/C++, and compiling stuff isn't intuitive for all people. My fault, I guess.

Ok, I've got the idea what you are looking for and why. I can't recommend you anything, so I won't interefere with discussion anymore.

Good luck finding your distribution.

H_TeXMeX_H · 07-02-2008, 09:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Berticus

Actually yeah, that's what so great about, as I call them, the Big 4 (Arch, Slackware, Debian and Gentoo).

You could also add LFS to the list, but it takes a long time to install, even longer than Gentoo in most cases.

AceofSpades19 · 07-02-2008, 11:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by oskar

I think it is a hardware issue... just one that xp manages to ignore. CentOS is starting to act funny too. The Add/Remove program disappeared from the launcher. I don't know how to start it manually... I tried all known yum frontend names - no luck. Yum doesn't always work and the mouse starts to jump around - like it's turning on and off in even intervals while the programs stay responsive and cpu ,usage stays low. x-server restart doesn't help, only a reboot does...

If CentOS is having problems then something is really wrong.Have you tried running a mem test?

Berticus · 07-02-2008, 11:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by H_TeXMeX_H

You could also add LFS to the list, but it takes a long time to install, even longer than Gentoo in most cases.

Yeah, I suppose I should add LFS there. Well the thing about LFS is it's not recommended nearly as much as the others. In Distrowatch, although popularity is determined by pageview and not users, the Big 4 make top 20 with increasing popularity in the last 6 months.