hey people,
i have been using linux for a year now. I have tried out many distributions till date...mandrake,red-hat.SuSE,debian,slackware,gentoo but i have not been able to pick out my favorite.
i was using SuSe for most of the time but then i was not too impressed with 9.0 so i dropped it.i always wanted to use debian but i can never get X working on it...so i have stalled that till i get a good howto to do this.
right now i have slackware installed...it is good but i did not find anything special in it.people keep writing in LQ that it is the best distro 'cause it boots fast...gives u total control etc. but that kind of stuff is also available through debian so why should i go to slack even though debian is much more widely used for system administration.
i am confused....i do not know which distro to install...i am fighting between gentoo....slack and debian. i would love to get debian working but that just seems like a dream....i have tried knoppix but that thing comes with way too many applications for my liking and so i scrapped that one too.
i know that i might be kinda fussy about all this but i really want to get to one distro and stick to it rather than keep on trying various distros.
i would really appreciate any help from anyone.
thanks a lot

We are all just like you in that we try (tried) to find the distribution that works 'best for us' personally. That's about all you can do.
Obviously I would tell you that (I think) Slackware is the best, but that's because I use it every day, and it works 'best for me.' Just like someone who runs RH exclusively will probably tell you RH is the best. It's all a matter of personal preference, individual needs, and choice.

If you've tried all the major distributions and found none to be ideal for your needs, then maybe you need LFS. We can't tell you which one is 'best for you' because we aren't you.

Good luck!

So install all three.

I agree - nobody can make the call for you.

Don't worry about what other people are using - most people are using Windows. Only you can say what *you* want to use.

I personally like Suse9.0. Its one of the newest so it comes with the latest versions of everything. It also has a huge list of customized RPMs at the Suse.com FTP site, although it doesnt have j2sdk or cinelerra. It's also the only distro I could get my sapphire 9600 pro to work with, since it came with the 3d-accelerated RPM for ATI cards. Easy as pie.

If you are installing a personal PC and not a "100% uptime for 7 years" server, you will enjoy Slackware over Debian IMHO. Debian is reliable, but out of date when compared to other new distributions. I'm sure Debian guys will jump me for using the words "out of date", but they will tell you the same thing, just is nicer words. Also the Debian startup scripts are some of the most convoluted things you'll ever try to interpret. Sheesh, I wish someone would do something about that.

Again, IMHO, Gentoo is nice, but then you get in the land of diminishing returns. Day to day stuff is just too involved and not very intuitive.

Other than that I can't tell you which one is better to use. Thats up to you although you've picked 3 total different styles. You've got some thinking to do.

Sorry, didn't notice this was a month old.

The first distro I used was Slack 3, way back in '97. Since then I've used RedHat 7 and SuSE 6 and 8.2. So far, SuSE 8.2 is my fave. I've just built a few machines with Debian Woody, FreeBSD 5.1, Solaris 9, Knoppix (well KnoppMyth for MythTV ) and Slackware 9. I'm still finding Unixes that are better at one thing and worse at another. Since the acquisition of SuSE by Novell, I'm leaning towards Debian, purely because of how straightforward the install is. It's not the flashiest distro, but it works.

Fedora has been getting a lot of flak, but IMHO it is pretty stable. I migrated my RH9 servers to Fedora C1 and it I like it so far.

i have been hearing a lot that slackware is good since you get to configure it to your likings after you have installed it.however i did not do ne such thing after installing it.
did i miss anything or is 9.1 built this way.what files do you have to configure?
plz help me.
thanks
Rishabh

With Slackware it's as configurable as any other distro, but it's just a lot cleaner. You don't have to change anything if you like the stock look and feel. That is perfectly acceptable. For those of us that do a little or a lot of custom configuring, it's nice to know that the conf files will be readable and in one spot. The initialization file system is different in Slack than in the others. I think that is more what people are talking about. Also a "full" Slack install is a really good starting point for most people that don't want 20,000 files loaded from the start.

What problems are you having with Debian? Its the only distro that I have ever ran so maybe I can be of service.

The only problem i have with debian is that i can never get X to work.
i have tried coping the XF86Config file from knoppix,Suse etc. all working on the same CPU and monitor but to no avail.i finally had to install knopipx but the reason i dont like it is that it comes with too much software and also the kernel needs recompiling(not such a big problem other than the fact that i am new to compiling kernels).
i love apt get...and that is why i want to use it.
also is it better to install sid or woody...i mean woody comes with pretty antiquated software....how will i upgrade it to kde 3.1 etc.?
i would really appreciate your assistance.

I also had a problem with X on Debian Woody 3.rc1 - what I realised was that everytime you configured XFree config file with xfreeconfig it saved it as XFree86Config while at the same time, X was using XFree86config~4!

All I did was rename the file and it worked.

I'm also interested in whether if it ok to run sarge or sid on my desktop. I have distros run the latest software with little to no problems...

Can anyone enlighten me?