I have searched a lot but unable to find a RPM based distro like Debian. A distro which is versatile, multi purpose or general purpose and not just limited to the Enterprise like Red Hat, Centos, Scientific or Suse. A distro which is rock solid stable like Debian and not testing and therefore unstable like Fedora, Opensuse, Mageia etc. etc. And one which has a large number of software like Debian. If you know any kindly inform me.

Debian is not an RPM based operating system. I think you meant to say DEB based operating system or Debian derivatives. You can find the list of Debian based operating system here.

It depends a lot on your taste which one you want to go with. You can try Ubuntu or Knoppix and see if that works out for you.

intelarmamd,

Welcome to LQ.

CentOS is not just an Enterprise edition for servers.

It performs very well as a RPM-based desktop OS.

There is a choice of Desktop Editions including Gnome, KDE, Xfce, MATE, and Cinnamon.

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/c...t-desktop.html

I know Debian is no a RPM based distro. RPM and .deb are two leading package managers in the linux world. .deb is Debian's package manager and a lot of distros are based on Debian and .deb. But what about RPM based distros? Is there any RPM based distro which is as stable, multi purpose havin large software repsitories like Debian?

CentOS can be used as a general purpose desktop OS but it has very limited software in comparision to Debian. I think the closest match to Debian from the RPM camp could be PClinuxOS, http://www.pclinuxos.com/.

Ah, my mistake, I comprehended it badly. I have no idea which will be the best candidate from RPM side to compete with Debian or Debian based derivatives. I have used CentOS, Redhat and SLES most of the time, didn't even use Fedora that much because of the frequent update policy they have. I have used Debian but only as a server OS and have not tried all the software that they have.

I have not tried PCLinux at all so have no idea how it is. You can try and see if that works out for you. Fedora is another candidate but it is not stable and you have already rolled it out.

I like fedora. its stable, leading edge (but not cutting or bleeding) and its RPM based. but this is my opinion.

You must have quite some experience with Debian to be able to mention the advantages so clearly. But you forgot one: the Package Manager.

So why do you want all good things of Debian, except the packages?

jlinkels

As far as I know, you will not find an RPM-based distro that is comparable to Debian. That's like looking for an onion that's comparable to a squash--they are separate families.

You might take a look at Mageia. It uses RPMs (but note that Red Hat RPMs are not necessarily compatible with Mageia), it's stable, and it offers an online version upgrade similar to Debian's dist-upgrade. Its repos do not include anywhere like the number of packages you can find in the Debian repos, but it does have quite a respectable library of packages. It is quite serviceable as a desktop distro.

OpenSuse also uses the RPM package format.

I do like Mageia, mostly. 4 was, IMO, a total disappointment, but 3 was great, and so far 5 is looking good. OpenSuse I wasn't a fan of, in order to get it working the way I liked, I had to add something like 7 3rd party repositories to it. Just too much work IMO. However, you may enjoy it, works quite well in a live environment, try downloading it and trying it out. I can definitely recommend Mageia for someone that's looking for a debian-esque experience with an RPM distro.

I have had no problems with Mageia; I started with v. 3 and am now running v. 4. It's not my first choice (that would be Slackware), but I've found it quite serviceable, and it's done everything I've asked it to do on my media-center machine. It's stayed on that box for over two years, so I reckon I'm fairly contented with it, though I'm starting to feel the itch to try something different . . . .

The most accomplished Linux user I know in person (he is a Red Hat sysadmin for his employer) started with Mandrake and is now using Mageia as his default distro of preference.

I've used OpenSuse only in VirtualBox, but I thought it worth mentioning, as I know folks who think very highly of it. OP can make his own choice.

Frankly, I prefer *.deb package management to *.rpm package management, but I think that that's just a matter of taste.

the closest to Debian 8 is RHEL7.1

install CentOS 7.1 and use the rpmfusion and epel and elrepo

intelarmamd,


Well that's two votes for CentOS. Why not give it a try?

The Debian equivalent in the rpm world would be CentOS, for sure. Makes a fine desktop with tweaking, or try something like Stella. I don't really care for the move to Gnome3 with CentOS 7, but 6.6 is good.

I'm just a little puzzled, you know how good Debian/Debian based distros are, so why do you want to change to an rpm based distro?