Help me choose a distro

[eldrich_rebello]

guys. i finally got a dvd drive and now i'm faced with a dillema of sorts.I've got to install a new OS and i got some choices.
Ubuntu warty
Suse 9.1 Pro
Debian Sarge(indianised version)
Red Hat 9
Gentoo 2004(not fond of this)
Slackware 10(OK ish)
Knoppix
Windows?
I gotta pick 2 of them.
Recommendations welcome!

[nemin]

guys. i finally got a dvd drive and now i'm faced with a dillema of sorts.I'v got to install a new OS and i got some choices.
I think you could better tell us a little more things first. Choosing a OS is not the easiest thing ;)
What do you want to do with your computer? Use it as workstation? Server? How much linux experience do you have? Do you want to install the OS on an old computer? Any special preferences? Special hardware you want to use? Etc.

[jdodson]

ummmm asking people what OS to use on a Ubuntu forum is like asking Republicans who to vote for president..... :mrgreen:

for what its worth, i voted for ubuntu. 8)

[MaZiNgA]

Ummm...where's good ol' Win98? :p Ubuntu probably fulfills all your demands as a stable desktop OS...

BTW Novell SuSE 9.2 is out already (not 9.1)

[eldrich_rebello]

i gotta agree with you jdodson about my stupidity.the computer is my primary home pc.the other crummy lappies i have all run damn small linux and the networking does'nt work.i'm fairly used to linux and have installed gentoo ONCE though i did'nt like it at all.i tried the ubuntu live cd and it worked fine.guess ubuntu should too.i don't have a fast internet connection so downloading packages into ubuntu is not an option. the sarge dvd has all the debian packages on it.so.ubuntu or sarge?what about gnome on suse?no exotic hardware here.just stuff that works.

[jdodson]

i gotta agree with you jdodson about my stupidity.the computer is my primary home pc.the other crummy lappies i have all run damn small linux and the networking does'nt work.i'm fairly used to linux and have installed gentoo ONCE though i did'nt like it at all.i tried the ubuntu live cd and it worked fine.guess ubuntu should too.i don't have a fast internet connection so downloading packages into ubuntu is not an option. the sarge dvd has all the debian packages on it.so.ubuntu or sarge?what about gnome on suse?no exotic hardware here.just stuff that works.

then i would still recommend ubuntu. it "just works" for me pretty well. then again, if you want to play mp3s or dvds, ubuntu needs that net connection to install the packages. if you want a distro that plays mpgs mp3s out of the box, mandrake, suse, ximian all do that. though, you do trade a few things. all the mentioned distros use KDE by default and are pretty menu terse. what i mean by that is they really load up the menus with a zillion programs. that has both its benifit and negative, if you like choice, hey you got it. though one should wonder why one needs 5 CDS full of 50+ webbrowsers and the like.

i wasnt saying you were stupid, it was just a bit funny:) it was a good question i just wasnt sure where you were coming from. ;)

you could install sarge, though i am not sure if your version has the updated installer. pretty much the old debian installer was a jaunt through hell(IMO, please don't flame me :)). i know people used it fine, but i couldnt for the life of me get much to work right. ubuntus installer is based on the new debian installer, which is much easier to use.

[Randabis]

Ubuntu...suck it up and download a few packages.

[jdodson]

Ubuntu...suck it up and download a few packages.

hey now, be nice. not everyone has lightning fast DSL or Cable. i lived on dialup up until the last year.

[Randabis]

hey now, be nice. not everyone has lightning fast DSL or Cable. i lived on dialup up until the last year.
I don't think it would hurt dialup too much to download a few gstreamer plugins.

[jdodson]

I don't think it would hurt dialup too much to download a few gstreamer plugins.

i agree. i guess i misunderstood what you were trying to say.

[Randabis]

i agree. i guess i misunderstood what you were trying to say.
hehe. I wasn't telling him to go download a new kernel and 50 other updates. :p

Should have been more clear.

[BWF89]

I'd go with SuSE 9.2 Professional. I haven't tried it yet but it looks pretty cool. It's KDE & GNOME. Has an easy to use YaST and is commercial. Plus I think you get a big instruction manual when you get it because the box it comes in weighs 50 thousand pounds.

[Randabis]

I'd go with SuSE 9.2 Professional. I haven't tried it yet but it looks pretty cool. It's KDE & GNOME. Has an easy to use YaST and is commercial. Plus I think you get a big instruction manual when you get it because the box it comes in weighs 50 thousand pounds.
I have the manuals for 8.2 professional. I really hope Novell has done some revisions since then because while they are good general usage and administration manuals, they were VERY poorly edited (spellings, grammar, etc.).

I suppose SuSE is okay if you want everything and the kitchen sink on a DVD or two, but I still say ubuntu. :)

I think it would be a cool idea though to get the universe, multiverse, and restricted repositories packaged on a DVD though.

[BWF89]

I suppose SuSE is okay if you want everything and the kitchen sink on a DVD or two
It's not like you can't go into YaST and remove the packages you don't want/need.

[poofyhairguy]

It's not like you can't go into YaST and remove the packages you don't want/need.


Except when the package you most want gone is Yast itself. ;)

[akurashy]

i recommend ubuntu ! i was going to recommend gentoo but you really wont like to stick around 3 hours compiling lol. so go with ubuntu and update to hoary if you have high connection :D

[BWF89]

Except when the package you most want gone is Yast itself. ;)
Without YaST you can't do alot of things in SuSE. From what I understand YaST is SuSE's control panel. Why on Earth would you want to remove it?

[Randabis]

Without YaST you can't do alot of things in SuSE. From what I understand YaST is SuSE's control panel. Why on Earth would you want to remove it?
Because YaST sucks of course. :) It's a great concept, but poorly implemented.

[emperor]

With no broadband connection, I would recommend Knoppix. Knoppix is updated frequently and you could just order a new cd every couple of months to update your system. Just run it from CD and save your configuration to a some disk partition.

I would spend some time and money in an effort to get a broadband connection, there are several alternatives. I have had the following over the last few years: 19kpbs dail-up, ISDN, one-way satellite + ISDN, one-way satellite + 56K modem, 512kbps cable, 1500kpbs cable and now 3000kpbs cable. Many communities have wireless solutions as well. Direcway two-way satellite is a lot better than dial-up, the only negatives are latancy and the dreaded FAP (no distro downloads)!

[TravisNewman]

Oh my! 19kbps?!?! Wow.

Seriously, back in my pirate days (YARRRGGGGHHHH) I used to download big games over 56k modem with a download manager. It'd take me a week or so, but I never complained. Then I went to college with ethernet, and I've been spoiled ever since. But one of my friends used to have a 14 bps (not kbps) modem he'd use to dial into BBS's 800-numbers. Those were the days.

Anyway, chiming in for Ubuntu here. Yast sucks. Yum sucks but less (and you can always switch to apt). But regardless of whether you choose Ubuntu, I'd go for a Debian distro at least. Stability out the wazoo, and if you can get past the installer (if it's using the old one) a snap to configure.

[poofyhairguy]

Without YaST you can't do alot of things in SuSE. From what I understand YaST is SuSE's control panel. Why on Earth would you want to remove it?


Because in SUSE it is often the ONLY way you do things. So if a particular part of Yast is poorly designed, you are screwed.

[emperor]

But one of my friends used to have a 14 bps (not kbps) modem he'd use to dial into BBS's 800-numbers. Those were the days.

In my college days http://www.ubuntuforums.org/images/smilies/eusa_boohoo.gif, I used a 300 bps modem from home to connect the the mainframe so I could program and run some Pascal programs on Unix. In those days I had a 20 lb Kapro "lugtop" with 64K or Ram, two 51/4 floppies and the CPM O/S . I believe the terminal software I used was Kermit!

[Lynx]

I used SUSE for 5 months and found YaST to be rather clunky and hard to use and inefficient, I avoided getting any new software because YaST was so difficult to maneuver.

[eldrich_rebello]

uh...broadband is still on it's way here in India.when i was in the arabian gulf i had a super fast broadband connection.used to regularly download entire distros. that was back in the days of one cd distros.!now,are the packages and plugins for mp3 support in ubuntu large files like over 5-6 megs?that's fine .downloadable through dialup.bigger files I dunno.i have a sarge dvd whose installer looks remarkably similar to ubuntu's .except for improved HW detection for hardware available here...
about suse 9.1..is yast better than apt?

[Randabis]

uh...broadband is still on it's way here in India.when i was in the arabian gulf i had a super fast broadband connection.used to regularly download entire disrtos. that was back in the days of one cd distros.!now,are the packages and plugins for mp3 support in ubuntu large files like over 5-6 megs?that's fine .downloadable through dialup.bigger files I dunno.i have a sarge dvd whose installer looke remarkably similar to ubuntu's .except for improved HW detection for hardware available here...
about suse 9.1..is yast better than apt?
For mp3 in ubuntu you need gstreamer0.8-mad it's only 135 KB. You'll then be able to play them with rythmnbox.

apt runs circles around YaST as far as package management goes. The advantage YaST has is that it is an all-in-one utility that manages virtually every aspect of SuSE. This in theory is great, but unfortunately YaST in general is poorly implemented.

[ubuntu UsER]

uh...broadband is still on it's way here in India.when i was in the arabian gulf i had a super fast broadband connection.used to regularly download entire distros. that was back in the days of one cd distros.!now,are the packages and plugins for mp3 support in ubuntu large files like over 5-6 megs?that's fine .downloadable through dialup.bigger files I dunno.i have a sarge dvd whose installer looks remarkably similar to ubuntu's .except for improved HW detection for hardware available here...
about suse 9.1..is yast better than apt?

Hello, my English isn't too good (yet) but i try to say my opinion.
As you can see I'm using both : SuSE 9.2 and Ubuntu. And I think both of them are very good. First you have to be ready for some security updates after new distro installation, it is standard and in Ubuntu Warty it will be about 100MB today but security updates are so important that you have to download them. SuSE 9.2 have something better than 9.1, it has "deltas". "Deltas" are small packages updating old package so you don't have to download big new security package because your package is simply updated by the "delta", not new rpm (SuSE is rpm based) and this is good for dial-up users. YaST is very good tool where you can do almost everything, system update, hardware configuration etc. Howerver SuSE 9.2 is liitle buggy, and it is very annoying i.e. after Ubuntu installation my SuSE clock had change time and i can't force that stupid clock to work properly :) SuSE supports KDE the most and there are always the newest packages for KDE, but Gnome is always outdated i.e SuSE 9.2 has Gnome 2.6 so if you like Gnome, you should try Ubuntu with Gnome 2.8 or you will have to wait until James Ogley makes new Gnome packages for 9.2.

Ubuntu has great and helpful community you can always count on, the same as SuSE has great community so you don't have to be worry about that. I couldn't decide which is better for me so i have them both ;) In my opinion you should choose between SuSE 9.2 and Ubuntu Warty (or Hoary if you want, it is still unstable but i had it for few days and it worked very good as for unstable distro). Ubuntu is much easier in installation, SuSE has many options and if you are newbie, you can be confused.

Second "is yast better than apt?" hmm, YaST is something different. Apt is only package manager (very good indeed), YaST is something like "all-in-one", it is package manager and configuration tool so you can't compare them. YaST is sometimes buggy and i noticed that YaST sometimes doesn't save changes you made, so you have to save them twice or make manual change in configuration files.

There are 2 articles comparing SuSE and Ubuntu with FC3. It can be helpful for you :

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=8885 FC3 vs. SuSE 9.2
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=8964&page=1 FC3 vs. Ubuntu

I hope you will make a good choice :D

[BWF89]

To eldrich_rebello: It's not a good idea to post a poll asking what distro you should use when one of the distros is on a forum with thousands of people who use that distro. You'd have much more un-biased results posting your question on a forums like Linux Times http://www.linuxtimes.net/modules.php?name=Forums .

[poofyhairguy]

about suse 9.1..is yast better than apt?

No. Apt is just a package management tool (way to get software). Yast is a configuration tool that also acts as a package management tool. It is a good configuration tool, but it sucks as a package management tool. Its bad at installing programs- I often got in dependancy hell when I used Suse 9.2!

Not that Suse doesn't have its place. Its a nice, polished distro- if you only need the software that comes with the install. If I had to convince my boss to switch to Linux, I would showcase Suse (if only because Ubuntu's name -"warty the warthog"- would make milk come out of his nose).

[eldrich_rebello]

To eldrich_rebello: It's not a good idea to post a poll asking what distro you should use when one of the distros is on a forum with thousands of people who use that distro. You'd have much more un-biased results posting your question on a forums like Linux Times http://www.linuxtimes.net/modules.php?name=Forums .
ya. i acknowledged my stupidity and ignorance before.finally i setled on debian sarge and can't figure out how to connect to the net.dual boot works fine.kde...gnome...everything fine.only when i try to log out in gnome/kde i'm stuck at a black screen.neither does audio work in gnome.works in kde.had the same prob in ubuntu.finally ditched that for want of broadband to get packages.any ideas?