Other distributions

English Open Chat
1

Hi,

There is always talk of other distributions (Fedora, Ubuntu, etc). I thought it would be nice to see everyone’s top 5.

Mine is:

  1. openSUSE
  2. Arch
  3. Fedora
  4. CrunchBang
  5. Mandriva

openSUSE:
I think openSUSE’s implementations of both KDE and GNOME are outstanding.

Zypper is a great tool, as is YaST.

I think the thing that sets openSUSE above the rest is the community.

With the combination of community and easy to use tools, I think openSUSE is great for new users, whilst still being customizable enough for more experienced users.

Arch:
I like the Arch way, and it’s probably at number 2 because of this:

  • It is a completely customised to the user, by the user
  • There are no versions to reinstall, an update keeps it current

If there was no openSUSE community I would be using Arch.

Fedora:
I like the professional look and feel of Fedora and I like the YUM package manager (almost as much as Zypper).

Fedora is a distribution I would recommend to new users.

CrunckBang:
CrunchBang is a great, very fast, distribution that can handle multimedia without extra work, and for this reason it is my default carry along live-CD for emergencies.

However I couldn’t se myself using it all the time, due to the basic feel (I’ve been spoiled by KDE).

Mandriva:
Mandriva has a very solid KDE implementation and has a very professional look and feel, I don’t use it myself, but have tried it out a few times and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to friends.

"Where’s Ubuntu?" I hear you say.
I used Ubuntu for a long time, and it is fairly quick to start up, but after that it doesn’t have any advantage, as far as I’m concerned.
It has that terrible Brown theme, which means after install you have to spend time making it look acceptable.
I wouldn’t use Ubuntu again, or recommend it to anyone.

Now let’s hear your opinion…

Regards,
Barry.

2

Opensuse and CentOS, primarily. None of the others are stable enough, in my opinion. Of course, the one you should ask is my assistant, who has never met a distribution that he wouldn’t try. He has CDs and DVDs all over his desk at work, with names I’ve never heard of, from “TinyMe” to “Sabayon” to whatever.

And yes, he has tried them all.

3

I prefer Kubuntu to Ubuntu, I find GNOME at least in Ubuntu too basic, which is understandable given that they want to reach the masses.

Linuxmint is quite attractive and probably what I would recommend to somebody who just wants multimedia to work.

I admin some Debian machines and it’s nice (and also in Ubuntu) to grab pretty much any obscure package with a couple of lines of CLI.

I could probably cope with any distro.

Basically I’m not fussed about eye-candy (haven’t even tried compiz or any kind of rotating cubes yet) since I do most my work at the CLI and the GUI is mostly a way of getting multiple terminals sessions. But of course the GUI is essential for surfing and playing multimedia. I hope to delve into DVB-T soon.

4

Oh wow, spending five seconds to change the theme in the theme manager is such a bloody chore :yawn:
Hardly
Plus I am not a fan of the pea soup green in openSUSE 11.2, actually I think ubuntu karmics boot up and GDM theme look better then openSUSE 11.2’s boot up and KDM theme

Anyhow here are my faves right now:

1: openSUSE 11.2/ Mandriva 2010.0:
There is a big tie between the two in my eyes, both in ease of use and overall performance.
But the Mandriva forums are so bloody slow!

2: Fedora 12:
I got to give mad props to both Fedora 11 and 12, both are signs that Fedora is shaping up to be a great distro.

3: Ubuntu 9.10:
Despite what people think about its colors, I still think Ubuntu is a good distro.
However unlike most I am not judging Ubuntu for looks, but in performance.
The last 3 releases of ubuntu have been horrific in performance one way or another, Intrepid, Jaunty and Karmic have given me really bad issues and now Hardy is really showing signs of its age.
I am hoping Lucid Lynx will be better.

5

Here is mine list:

1- openSUSE(of course)
2- Mandriva
3- Linuxmint
4- Fedora
5- Ubuntu

Can’t go for more explanation here, discussed a lot of times in this forum.

6

Hmmm - I should be able to spout something here - after all, I’ve spent the last year installing and/or getting to run:

Debian Etch
Oracle Unbreakable
Fedora 10 (Fedora upgraded itself to 11, upgrade never ran)
Vector 5.4 and 6
Knoppix
emergency rescue cd linux
Ubuntu 7.something
Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.1
Mepis
openMamba
Mint “Gloria”
Sabayon 4.something Core, and Sabayon 5
openSUSE 11.1, and 11.2

My favs? openMamba, Vector, and openSuse. High scores for “just working” to some extent are Ubuntu and Debian. Scoring for “really pretty and I wish this were the way it was” is Sabayon 5. Realistically, openMamba should fall in the last category, since it seems to be the “son of abandonware”, with every sign screaming that heredity rules - the peach never falls far from the tree. Which is too bad, because it was really nice! Mint is similar in niceness, but it didn’t work on the machine I installed it on, and the reasons are unknown. My guess is video issues, but I haven’t got time to figure it out. Mepis just flat out wouldn’t install for me. Oracle’s version of Red Hat is pay-only for security updates. Fedora’s upgrade broke itself.

All in all, ALL the distros “just worked” this year to a FAR greater degree than they ever have in the past. Some of the problems I’ve had were my lack of knowledge. I could solve some of them now. Some of the problems I’ve had I’m STILL trying to solve.

7
  1. oS 11.2
  2. Debian / Sidux
  3. System Rescue
  4. What ever’s in my Sony TV :wink:
  5. Knoppix
8
  1. openSUSE
  2. Fedora
  3. Mepis
  4. Mint
  5. PCLinuxOS
9

On Tue, 08 Dec 2009 00:16:02 GMT, Barry Nichols
<Barry_Nichols@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:

>There is always talk of other distributions (Fedora, Ubuntu, etc). I
>thought it would be nice to see everyone’s top 5.

1 - Slackware
2 - sidux
3 - Debian stable
4 - antiX
5 - PCLinuxOS

10

  1. Debian- Lenny is my king of stable. the servers I depend on most run Debian.

  2. OpenSuse- opensuse is my primary workstation. Whether on a laptop or desktop for general duty, Opensuse offers the most for me

  3. PCLOS/Mint- I have these two as a tie for the home desktop.

  4. CentOS- last, but not least the spwan of RedHat source. it’s every server I can’t put Debian on.

Big Bear

11

For me it’s

  • SLED
  • openSUSE
  • SLES
  • Solaris (sparc)
  • Ubuntu (because every six months they ship me (for free) my computer
    desk coffee mug coasters :slight_smile: )

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (x86_64) Kernel 2.6.27.39-0.3-default
up 3 days 9:08, 6 users, load average: 0.06, 0.10, 0.09
GPU GeForce 8600 GTS Silent - CUDA Driver Version: 190.18

12

I have always thought that users of Mepis would have to resign themselves to snide jokes about the name. :slight_smile:

Hey relax, just joking. I have a Mepis variant: antiX.

13

antiX is super fast isn’t it.

If my first 2 choices didn’t work for me, I’d be devastated. Never happened yet. I’d probably change my hardware first, before moving to step 3

14

  1. openSUSE

  2. Mandriva

  3. Linux Mint KDE

  4. Kubuntu

  5. Linux Mint Main

IMO openSUSE has the best distro and the best forum.

Mandriva is very nice but a step below openSUSE in all areas and you can’t read the new posts in their forum without having to weed your way through the French threads. Other than that I found their forum to be very helpful and fast to reply.

Linux Mint KDE is a great distro, uses Synaptic and the Mint forums are very good. Many of the developers frequent the forum and listen to the community.

Kubuntu is the last KDE distro I would use but It is highly configurable. Can’t stand it’s package management though.

Linux Mint Main is the only Gnome based distro I would consider.

15

I don’t have much exerience with others, but I tried Ubuntu ONCE for two weeks and HATED every moment and vowed never to allow the horrid brown virus anywhere near my computer again. I was also annoyed by the stupid “Hairy Hippie” and “Dancing Dopehead” naming conventions and the patronising faux-African nonsense. I suppose if I am going to have an OS written by hippie geeks in a shed, I will choose one written by German engineering hippie geeks above any other…
The other day I fired up an old laptop which had lain idle for two years. I was amazed to find I that installed Debian on it, I have no recollection whatever of doing this. Unfortunately I neither had any memory of username or password…
I fired up unetbootin on my other machine and made a USB live of more or less at random PuppyLinux, to mount the disk and delete the passwords. I was amazed at how much is packed in to Puppy’s tiny space req’s, So I recommend puppy for anyone with really old HW. I did not bother in the end to revive the Debian install.

16

Personally I like Ubuntu’s naming scheme, a name like “Hardy Heron” or “Dapper Drake” sounds more fun then say Linux Desktop system 7.0, Linux 2010.1 or some numbering scheme alone.
OSX has animal names for its releases too.
I like Ubuntu’s naming scheme, its much better then calling it Ubuntu version XXX, Ubuntu year number. It is more fluid and not boring.

17

Have never been much of a distro-hopper but have tried Ubuntu (quite extensively, especially 8.04), Fedora, Mint, sidux, MEPIS, and PCLOS at times. Can’t really say in a sentence or two why openSUSE won but it’s a combination of solidity and cutting-edgeness, plus the good community here. Still think of Ubuntu as the main fallback if something should happen to stop me from using SUSE (I prefer KDE4 now but I’m quite comfortable with Gnome), and could probably live with Fedora.
The rest aren’t in the game as far as I am concerned.

18

I take it you all thought of Zenwalk first, but then didn’t figure that it needed mentioning because it’s so obviously ‘teh awesome’.

Just checking.

Other than that, I like Arch and Debian testing.

[Oh, and also, moblin seems like a very promising direction to me. Not that I ever actually boot it - waiting for version 2.2 before I bother to reinstall…]

19

  1. Ubuntu - can’t say exactly why, but I do like it. While I’m not a fan of the brown scheme in 9.10, the themes in earlier versions were fine by me - maybe not what I’d piece together on my own, but they looked good as packaged. I’ve spent some time fussing around with Debian in years past, so most of the apt-get/aptitude stuff ‘makes sense’ to me. I will say that as I get back into things a little more, the bit about the current release of Ubuntu being (basically) based off Debian ‘unstable’ aka ‘Sid’ bothers me. ‘testing’ I could understand; ‘sid’… explains why so many posts about this, that or something else being broken in whatever the current release of Ubuntu. As things mature and get patched/fixed, surprisingly enough the complaints die off - about at the rate that most of whats in Ubuntu would have migrated into Debian ‘testing’. That and the whole ‘upstart’ thing seems a bit… non-traditional. It works, though.

  2. Debian. Older, more stable, and I’ll be the first to admit my surprise, but it’s ‘just worked’ on the last couple machines (older PCs and laptops, plus some VMs in Virtualbox) I’ve installed it on - video, audio, everything. Definitely spend more time reading how to make package ‘foo’ work, though.

  3. openSuSE. One of my long-time favorites that leaves me kind of conflicted… very stable, very smooth, just not sure I will ever be 100% comfortable with the gui admin on it, despite how well they usually work.

  4. Fedora/CentOS. I remember using the original Redhat distro coming from Slackware (because that was dang near all there was back then). I haven’t messed too much with Fedora (yet) due to lack of time, and part of me worries about the ‘moving target’ nature of Fedora. For somethings that might be great, for others… it bothers me somewhat. CentOS would be great but their forums absolutely suck out loud so I feel a little less love for it in the support department.

20
  1. Mac :slight_smile:
  2. openSUSE
  3. Don’t care.