Need some opinions about which distribution I should use. The only needs I have are that it be easy to use (no gentoo, slackware) and that it be free and GPL compliant.

I've been using Red Hat since version 7, and I switched over to Fedora which is working OK. But, Fedora changes so rapidly that it feels more like a testing distribution. I am interested in something a bit more stable to use as an everyday home desktop computer. What are your recommendations? Thanks.

if you are happy with the RH line, then go back to RH9, it has everything you need/want and are comfortable with. the updates are out there just no RHN for the auto updating.

i use yum on my RH box to get it up to date and keep it that way.

glock19; agree with lieb_Kcir. ? why would you change mid stream? or try
mdk9.2 for a change of pace. not familiar with other distro,s. but basically all about same with some exceptions. just to trial them download and burn on cd then try and decide which would accommodate your needs better.

Thanks for the suggestion. I do not want to run Red Hat 9 though since it's obsoleted by both Fedora and the new Red Hat commercial products.

nah, not obsolet, just no longer supported for instant updates. all of the updates that were there at the end of its life span are still there. to top it off RH9 is way more stable the FC is, and has more apps to pull from.

if you are wanting something that is RedHatish, and dont want to go back with RH9, then you might want to try WhiteBox. it is RH enterprise for FREE. it uses yum for updating instead of RHN, but its all there and currently will have the exact same life span as any RHenterprise edition has.

download from here

http://www.whiteboxlinux.org/download.html

view info from here

http://www.whiteboxlinux.org/index.html

I'd suggest SuSE. Most comprehensive documentation of all distros.

Regarding your impression about Fedora being a testing distribution is probably right. In fact, all the commercial distributors have now this strategy: Sell cheap boxes to home users and have them test new kernels and other immature stuff; sell the same thing two years later, when it has matured, for much higher prices to large enterprises, by renaming it from "Linux distribution" to something like "enterprise server".

Among the commercial distributions only Slackware follows another strategy: Up-to-date software, but no experiments, no matter if the customer is a multi-national trust or a private person. You get the same product. And it's well set up!

To illustrate this: For SuSE 9.1 there were over 700 MB of patches and updates within six weeks. Similar situation for Mandrake, I've been told. For Slackware 10.0 it's far less than 100 MB so far.

Another conservative distribution, and totally non-commercial, is Debian, of course.

gargamel

dude to be honest with you i am a pretty much complete newb to linux but all the crap you hear about Slackware not being for newbs is just that crap , true it is a litle hard to learn at first but wasnt you first pc hard to learn at first? once you get a few comand lines down pat slackware is the most stable and can be the fastest distro of linux PERIOD if you have problems installing progs or anything the slackware page offers a book to help you along with the most basic features of slack and this page is great for more advanced problems overall if your willing to have a stable fast system and are willing to learn a little go with slackware i mean every o.s. has its pros and cons but comparing the two in slackware the pros WAY outweigh the cons


go with Slackware and take it from a newb

Newb...I perfer, "Person who is not quite a expert, learns fast, and is one step above the average newb" for myself...LOL.

Anyways, he proves a very good point...plus, you learn a ton with slackware and you eventully grow to love it (no matter how much you hate it in the beggining...LOL). I have been using Slackware 9.1 on my laptop and it is realy fast (not considering boot time...I need to tweak that...) for such a slow laptop (deffinately beats Win98SE...even thou I still have it on the laptop...unfortunately can't live without windows, can't live with it either...LOL).

As for setup, it realy isent' that hard....probally the same as most distros except it looks for like some DOS semi text install program instead of flashy eye candy (I do like eye candy....I have done the imposible with eye candy on my 133MZ laptop and made it quite fast... ).

The biggest problem you may find with slackware however, is that you might as well get use to using shell (OK, you can get all those fancy file managers and visual extracting tools...but after using the comand line so long...you tend to not want to use that stuff since it is usuly quicker at comand line {I will say that I want to download Rox...but just for the eye candy...LOL.}...also, make your terminal "invisable" with just floating text on your background and it adds a special computer like effect to your wallpaper ...it will make your friends go ohhhhh and awwwwwww especilly when they know you can understand it...lol.)

One more thing, if you like RPM's...there is a tool on the slack CD to install RPM's on slackware (atleast I thought I saw that while going through hundreds of programs for a good 2 hours...LOL.).

Misc comments: Lleb_KCir is correct regarding RH9 - the release is still perfectly usable, although due to Redhat "end of life-ing" it, it no longer is officially supported. Should there be any important security-related issues or updates in the future, you would need to manually locate and install those patches. In other words if you're used to having up2date do it for you, you'll have to adjust to doing it manually.

Also, I agree 100% with the (repeated) statements made elsewhere that Slack is "too hard" or "not for newbies". That's just nonsense -- as already mentioned, really the only noticeable difference between Slack and most of the other distros is that they use slick GUI's during the install, while Slack uses a relatively primitive menu driven system. To see what a typical Slack installation really looks like read this article It's got screen shots, and starting in post #2 you'll see what the actual menus look like.

Additionally, Slack has a number of excellent resources dedicated to it. In particular, if you are looking for a package, go to LinuxPackages.net

Lastly, the question "which distro is the right one for me?" can only be answered by you personally. Try several, then decide which best fits your own needs and preferences. One good central source where many of the most popular distros are available for free download is LinuxISO Good luck with it. -- J.W.

go with debian.
apt-get just rocks. it's an awesome package manager.
I'm not going to get geek snooty and rag on other distros, but apt-get just makes a lot of stuff easier..

If you have trouble with the debian install, download a copy of knoppix.
It's an iso (cd image) burn it to cd. Pop the cd in you pc and reboot.
Make sure you change the bios setting to boot from cd.
open an xterm window sudo knx-hdinstall and take it from there.
The downside to knoppix is that it will install everything and the kitchen sink.

What's the point of having things easy! You learn more if you do it yourself (or make your own script to do it for you) He said he wanted to learn, not find another simplistic solution...

Hey...that update feature in red hat does seem pretty cool thou...it's a pain updating other distros...wonder if there is even a patch to upgrade my 9.1 to 10...oh well...LOL.

i dont think there is a patch to upgrade from RH to FC, but you can download and install the disk as normal for an upgrade with RH line of OSs.

there should be an option to upgrade IIRC when you put in disk 1.

as for ease, coming out of a windows world, that was one of the things that attratcted me to RH in the first place. the RHN is very nice to have and worked in a way i was already comfortable dealing with. that helped make the conversion from M$ to linux a bit smoother for me.

now that RH9 is no longer officially supported i am enjoying the powers of 'yum' for installing, and upgrading to my RH boxes. as a matter of fact i just yum install samba and got my very first successful samba server up and running here at my office.

i was able to do that very easily thanks to yum, not that it would of been horribly hard to download and install samba with wget, or rpm http:// -ivh, but yum just made it faster and easier for me.

after i gave the command, i waited for it to start, walked away, came back few min later after download and hit the Y button, then walked away again. when i came back samba was installed and i could take the time to learn how to edit the smb.conf file to make it work.

i did learn something, and learning how to download or install .rpm is not really that hard once you understand the -ivh -Uvh -e. there is an other argument for upgrading only what is on the system, but that one i just look up in the man pages.

the only reason i did not get slackware running was on the install it would cut off the bottom portion of the txt screen (about 2in was missing) and i could not really tell what i was doing. when i got the fdisk i was unable to partition my system so had to stop at that point. same thing happend with debian. yes its my hardware not either of those distros. they just dont like the way the txt installs work. same thing happens in RH txt installs too, but the GUIs work perfectly every time. go figure.

What about SuSE. It's easy to install, has it own auto update system(yast), and now they have an ISO version that you can burn into a CD rom?
I used it for awhile and liked it, but decided in the end to go with Slackware 10. I like to tinker with my OS.

I'm interested in Debian, but I really wanted to wait until sarge comes out first.

Slackware does not fit my needs. I really just want an "easier" distro that provides a nice set of GUI tools for common tasks. (Even though I *do* know how to administer from the command line). I'm just looking for a good desktop replacement that is easy to use (other people will be using this computer).

Go with MEPIS. I'm tired of continually writing about it. Google it or do a search for my posts on it on this site. It is the easiest debian-based live-evaluation CD there is. It installs to the hard drive in a trivial manner. It has apt-get goodness.