First be warned that this post is a rant.

I recently upgraded the hard drive on my laptop. Doing so gave me much more space than I actually needed. So I decided to try some other Linux distros as well as FreeBSD.

So on all this new disk space was installed:

Windows XP Pro
Slackware 12.1
Slackware 13.0
Ubuntu 9.10
FreeBSD 8.0
OpenSuse 11.1
OpenSuse 11.2

I installed all of these last October. And told myself I would give all of them a fair shot of a trial period of three months before removing any one OS.

Well as of today; Feb. 1; I've decided their trial period is complete.

Windows XP Pro is staying. Simply because my diabetes related programs only run on Windows. And I need those programs for doctors visits.
Oh yea; and it's needed for topping up my prepaid Virgin Mobile Broadband usb modem. It works great with Linux. BUT you must use Windows to add time every month. Bummer.

Slackware 12.1 was it's usual flawless OS. But Slackware 13.0 was good enough to replace it. So Slackware 12.1 is gone.

Slackware 13.0 is nearly perfect. It's only flaw is KDE. KDE4 is such a piece of crap. That for the first time ever; I've switched over to Gnome and installed GnomeSlackBuild.

Ubuntu 9.10; although I was at first impressed with how it appeared to work correctly out of the box. It actually has been a big pain-in-the-ass. It works fine; as long as I do not attempt to use the laptop in it's docking station. Then Ubuntu 9.10 turns into mud.
It usually freezes during booting when in the docking station. And the few times it doesn't freeze; the docking station's mouse refuses to work. Even though I've had no problems with it working in all the other distros. So it's probably going bye-bye.

FreeBSD 8.0; it took several failed installations before one successful installation. At first it looked promising. But the sound refuses to work, KDE refuses to run, the gnome terminal randomly fails to open, the buttons on the GDM login screen fail, it's console fonts are extremely limited, can't get the latest version of Firefox for it, etc ...
So it's going bye-bye.

OpenSuse 11.1 looked very promising - at first. But about two weeks ago it turned to crap. It started failing to boot. It refuses to remount the filesystem with write permissions. After fixing and reinstalling it several times. I finally removed it.

OpenSuse 11.2 has turned out to be the biggest piece of shit of them all. The logout and shutdown commands in Gnome and GDM login screen don't always work; they're extremely erratic. About two weeks ago the GDM login screen failed to launch Gnome. After logging in all that you get is the background image and a mouse pointer. And no errors appear in ANY log. In fact switching over to one of the other virtual terminals and using "ps" shows that all of the gnome programs; gnome-session, my desktop applets, etc..; are executing. But they're invisible and no keyboard shortcuts or mouse clicks will work.
Heck you can even launch an X program from the other terminals and specify it to display on the gnome session. It starts and keeps executing. BUt it just doesn't appear in the gnome session.
I've removed and re-installed GDM and gnome a few times. That fixed the problem; once. BUt the very next reboot caused the problem to reoccurre.

I've been using Slackware since 3.0. And it looks like I'll be sticking with it for quite a while longer.

SO I use Slackware because it works !

--ET

Welcome back! I've used the distros you've mentioned plus Arch, Debian and a few others.
Slackware all the way for me.

This is truly a testament of Slackware's design & philosophy. I myself haven't really ventured outside of Slackware much. Even if I do, (I am wanting to play with Debian, and play more with FreeBSD), but Slackware will always be distro/OS of choice. I am rather confused about Firefox under FreeBSD. I don't know why there isn't a more current version, and the fact that you need linux compatibility just to get Firefox under FreeBSD. I would have thought you could compile Firefox in FreeBSD, but oh well.

Fun post,
@Jeebizz: You don't need Linux compatibility to run Firefox under FreeBSD, you can just compile it. There are many versions in ports including 3.6

@hitest: Same here

@slacker_et: Isn't freedom great?
Here are my suggestions to keep playing/testing:
* Crux
* OpenBSD
* Mint (easily replaces *buntus, great for newcomers)
* LFS & DIY (I haven't done diy myself)

Glad to read about your experience with Suse, you just saved me some time. I also gotta keep xp for job reasons, bummer too. Wow, you've been a Slacker since 3.0, I wish I could say the same. Anyways, welcome home

@slacker_et: I had no such problems with openSUSE11.2 both in KDE and Gnome.Agreed about ubuntu9.10 though.

Ah well, I try Ubuntu/Kubuntu every once in while.

As you said, first I'm impressed I really like the way you can add software easily.
Then after a week or two it just won't work anymore teh way it is supposed, like there is an update killing the xserver, sound or something else.
Prolem with this is, you just never get why it happend. And by now, I actuelly don't feel like googling the web once a week for two hours just to get my previously running fine OS up and running again.
On Slackware whenever it is broken, I know why and what to do. And nothing ever just happens, when it breaks there is reason not just pure coincidence as it feels on a lot of other distros .....

So I always return

My experience with other distros is varied but I suppose that the distro choice is a very personal issue. So I hope that no one will get offended with my frank opinion.

Due to my lifestyle, I only get very limited time to hack and a quick glance at the Slackbook encouraged me a lot. I suppose that no other distro manages to empower their users as quickly as Slackware. It is unpresumptuous and users are warned that they will have to work to get what they want but nothing gets in their way - except GNOME dependencies. It is an honest distribution.

As for the others, my experience with openSUSE 11.0 was very good but it felt slightly too much bloated, but the community is great. If for any reason I need to change distro, I would go for openSUSE.

I hate two things about UBUNTU. Their philosophical paternalistic approach and their brown desktops. I hate it when something makes a point that nothing of what they offer is politically incorrect. I feel that it limits my freedom. So my experience with Ubuntu has been only under duress, but I wish this distribution a bright future. Only Ubuntu can challenge Microsoft, and they earn my respect.

I installed FreeBSD during my spare time. It was not easy as for some reason it failed to detect my DVD drive from which I booted. I installed it through the Net, but frankly I did not have much time to play around. Their extensive documentation is a bonus that scares me a bit.

I only tried Debian once and it ruined my MBR. This was the only instant I managed to give up an installation. Otherwise the political undertones of this distro also scare me away. We are hackers not philosophers or politicians, right?

Absolute Linux 11.1 was a mess. It looks like a compromised and ineffective Slack.

Zenwalk is good, but I do not really like netpkg, so I do not use it much.

Slax is great. For a Live CD, it is probably the best there is. It is a pity that there is not enough collaboration between Slax and Slack.

I would like to try Arch one day, but with the goods Slack delivers, I do not get much motivation.

Chris

I agree KDE 4.2.4 in Slackware13.0 is absolute bol***ks, but KDE 4.3.4 in current is excellent and you should consider installing current to a test partition. The newer kernel also appears to offer quite a speed boost as well.

samac

Most likely your fault (who bothers reading the documentation these days, right?)

Sucky hardware? Read the handbook? No skills to make it work? There are a lot of devices which don't work on Linux too.

You're doing it wrong.

See above.

No they're not.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cg...irefox3-devel/

To sum it up: FUD. Bye bye.

I sort of agree with carbonfiber, but the OP had said this was just a rant so obviously he didn't know what he was doing. Maybe just needed an excuse to come back to slack? :P

I don`t think so. BSD might be great on server but on desktop it sucks. It lacks hardware support (webcams, wifi, etc.), which makes it unusable.

Besides its stability with everyday desktop usage was disaster. I tried PCBSD and DesktopBSD, based on FreeBSD 7.x series. Very funny was that unplugging usb pendrive could crash whole system as well as an attempt to mount and write to xfs partition. Bang! and system reboots. Situation unparalleled on Linux.

I don't think so. Linux might be great on server but on desktop it sucks. It lacks hardware support (webcams, wifi, etc.) which makes it unusable. Windows > Linux.

FreeBSD != PCBSD, FreeBSD != DesktopBSD; NetBSD exists; OpenBSD exists. Also, I'm sure no person has ever crashed a Linux system by doing similar tasks as those you have mentioned. Join a {Free, Net, Open}BSD community and see what they think of Linux stability.

I`m sure that, too. Linux cannot be crashed just by unpluging a pendrive, unlike BSD.

I joined several forums dedicated to BSD systems. People there seems to hate Linux, because it has mess in config files, its booting process looks like a christmas tree, and os on. No, thank you, I quit BSD world.

I was being ironic, some people have a hard time realising it.

It reminds me of Slackware users' attitude towards distributions such as Fedora, openSUSE and Ubuntu.

All in all: stop being a troll, Stop The FUD.

I have PC-BSD on my second box and its a bit flakey but usable...I have been trying all the BSD,s and have yet to find one that will run on my 64 bit box... !

This article at distrowatch.com is interesting and casts a shadow on the Open BSD community... they must be joking if they think that GUI,s would be detrimental to them... I think they are just plain mean.http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?is...100201#feature