Have you got the distro fever?

[lao_V]

As a newbie to the world of Linux, it seems that there are far too many distros out there and more are being released almost every week.

I've had a pretty hard time (and fun at the same time) trying to chose a distro that I really liked. I went through a dozen or more. And I still can't stop trying the new ones even though I've settled with Ubuntu as my main one.

So my question to everyone is, have you got the distro fever as well?

[topcop]

not really.
I first tried mandrake 2 years ago (9.0 version?) but I or linux wasn't clearly ready for linux desktop then.
Then i decided to try it again this year and it was ubuntu's warty. I have been using it for 4 months atleast and haven't really felt the need to try anything else. I have installed a couple of packages from backports and unofficial repo's for uptodate software and thats about it. Seems very stable. I still have windows xp home on a partition when i need it for school sometimes.

[ubuntu_fan]

I used to buy all the old installation CDs to try on my 486sx-16 machine with 4Mb RAM.

In those days, it used to be limited to Slackware and Yggdrasil (IIRC)... I'm not even sure that RedHat was around in those days... I used to tinker and install about once every month.

The next few years, I messed around with Redhat as it seemed to give the best out-of-the-box device support and it had the bext X configuration tools.

I was still dual booting with Windows then as Redhat lacked some crucial bits of software and wasn't as user friendly for my wife to use.

Now however, rather than being on the bleeding edge the whole time, I'd prefer to have a low maintenance, stable system, so Ubuntu's got my thumbs up and I've stopped Distro-jumping...

[Bubbling Zombie]

well, the distro fever caused me to go for ubuntu. That, and a couple of friends ;)

i'm switching from slackware, when my box arrives (any minute now). I hope i'll like this distro.

[Buffalo Soldier]

I got that fever in November 2004. Started with SimplyMEPIS -> Ubuntu -> Fedora Core 3 -> Suse -> back to Ubuntu and sticking with it :)

[BWF89]

I used to have live cd feaver.

[Xian]

As a newbie to the world of Linux, it seems that there are far too many distros out there and more are being released almost every week.
There really are only 30-40 truly independent distros and that stays fairly stable. The vast majority of what you see being put out all the time are predominately based upon other releases, and so there actually are not anywhere near as many unique offerings as there might appear. In the main it should be said that choice is good and it inspires creativity. Besides which, if there had been a no new distro cap applied even recently then there would be no Ubuntu. It all works out in the end to the advantage of everyone.

[Lovechild]

I used to have, now I just switch between Fedora and Ubuntu - I think I'm settling on Fedora though, if I can get Mono of it at least.

[lao_V]

I used to have, now I just switch between Fedora and Ubuntu - I think I'm settling on Fedora though, if I can get Mono of it at least.
You mean you're settling on Ubuntu, right? RIGHT? :-)

[hard_i]

i had something similar when i decided to try linux.
first tried Suse 9.1 ( onyl a few days , it sceared the hell out of me with KDE :grin: ) > then Fedora Core 3 > Ubuntu 4.10 >
Fedora ( again :grin: ) > Ubuntu 5.04
Now i'm certain that i'm staying with Ubuntu.

[MaZiNgA]

*steps forward*
My name is Mazinga and I'm a distro-junkie.
:p

[lao_V]

*steps forward*
My name is Mazinga and I'm a distro-junkie.
:p

Well done MaZiNgA!!
We're making progress!

[Randabis]

Gentoo for my desktop; ubuntu for my laptop. I think I've settled pretty well.

[Lovechild]

You mean you're settling on Ubuntu, right? RIGHT? :-)

No. Ubuntu bugs me, aside the fact that they are willing to support Mono I cannot see a one reason to use it over Fedora.

[K6-III]

I had distro fever until I found Ubuntu.

Redhat 8-Redhat 9, Fedora Core 1, Fedora Core 2, Mandrake 10.0, Suse 9.1, Ark Linux 0.12 Alpha, Yoper Linux 2.0, Fedora Core 3, and finally Ubuntu...

[orion_114]

I am recovering from distro fever. I found the cure .... UBUNTU !!!! :D
I went Red Hat, Mandrake, DSL, Feather Linux, Slackware, Gentoo, UBUNTU !

[Quest-Master]

Ubuntu bugs me

Now, care to explain why Ubuntu bugs you? ;)

[jdong]

Distro fever... hmm, Dig up some of my threads in this forum.

[JoWilly]

No. Ubuntu bugs me, aside the fact that they are willing to support Mono I cannot see a one reason to use it over Fedora.

What are the reasons to use Fedora over Ubuntu ? (never tried Fedora, would be nice to hear).

[kassetra]

I have to say that after years of being unhappy with every distro I tried (and I tried a lot, and bounced between versions, upgrades, even bounced between DEs at first) ... I have found my home with Ubuntu

(unless of course they stop doing what it is I like so much about them)

[stodge]

I've tried more distros than I care to admit. I want to stick with Ubuntu but it won't recognise my SATA drive. So I'm trying Slack 10.0 with Dropline Gnome.

[jdong]

What are the reasons to use Fedora over Ubuntu ? (never tried Fedora, would be nice to hear).

1. Latest desktop apps -- Fedora bumps versions of packages throughout the life cycle. I'm trying to do the same with Ubuntu Backports.

2. Widespread support -- Everyone has Fedora RPMs whenever they make a program! A good majority of HOWTO's are Fedora/Redhat oriented.

3. Coherent metatheme -- Use K3b from GNOME or Evolution from KDE, everything blends in.

4. SELinux, Exec-shield -- proactive security measures for servers.

5. Bleeding edge, tweaker appeal -- Xen, SELinux, Exec-shield, heavily modded kernel -- everything to meet a hacker's desire!

[mark]

I have to confess...I'm still a distro junkie. I'm quite happy and settled with Ubuntu as my main/working/playing system - but, gee, I don't know, the itch just comes on me all of a sudden...

This is why I have 2 drives permanently installed - hda for the current Ubuntu release (Warty), hdb for the next Ubuntu release (Hoary) - and enough free space on hdb to experiment.

When it gets really bad, I disconnect both "permanents" and plug in a "scratch" drive I've got. Which reminds me...I've been hearing a lot about Arch lately and I've never tried it...<g>

[panickedthumb]

No, nono, I don't have distro-fever ;)

This weekend I wanted to see how far I could push my hard drive. I installed Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo, Fedora, SuSE, Slackware, FreeBSD, Solaris, and Windows. I also had a swap partition and since all but 3 were logical, an extended partition, so the last distro was on hda11. Nuts. I set it up on the Linux distros so that grub was installed to the first sector of the partitions instead of the MBR, then had a master grub chainloading all the others. That way the kernel isntallation processes could update the grub.conf/menu.lst as they saw fit and not have to worry about changing it every time. Very handy to know that this CAN work for those who are testing something on multiple distributions. Also very handy for those who want to use chroot/uml/Xen to run multiple distros at the same time.

[defkewl]

I think I got the same fever. Haha. I'm looking for the distro that suits me best. I have installed Fedora, debian sarge, Gentoo and now planning to install MEPIS or Ubuntu

[Xian]

I think I got the same fever. Haha. I'm looking for the distro that suits me best. I have installed Fedora, debian sarge, Gentoo and now planning to install MEPIS or Ubuntu
This is a funny thread. I eventually decided after many, many installs to just select a few distros that have different packaging systems and then keep the ones that had the best developer support and vigorous communities. This decision resulted in:

* SuSE
* Ubuntu
* Slackware
* Arch
* Gentoo

Anyway, that's what I run on a permanent basis.

[Lynx]

Right now I am totally satisfied with Ubuntu, once I get a new HD though I will probably play around with Gentoo just because I feel like I could learn a whole lot from it, that may be a ways off though.

[Jspired]

I'm a "recovering" junkie. \\:D/ I've now picked my distros of choice:

Ubuntu on the desktop
SuSE on my laptop

I'm very satisfied with both.

[Randabis]

I've tried more distros than I care to admit. I want to stick with Ubuntu but it won't recognise my SATA drive. So I'm trying Slack 10.0 with Dropline Gnome.
Slack 10.1 is out in case you didn't know.

[KiwiNZ]

No, nono, I don't have distro-fever ;)

This weekend I wanted to see how far I could push my hard drive. I installed Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo, Fedora, SuSE, Slackware, FreeBSD, Solaris, and Windows.

We really have to organize you some time outside http://www.ubuntuforums.org/images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gifhttp://www.ubuntuforums.org/images/smilies/icon_razz.gif

[Lovechild]

What are the reasons to use Fedora over Ubuntu ? (never tried Fedora, would be nice to hear).

Prelink
SELinux
NPTL
UTF-8 (since forever basically - I'm a translator, yet I have to wait for ancient debian based solutions to catch up to... RedHat 9, Ubuntu will only have this in Hoary, several months from now)
Graphical bootsplash
Bluecurve (the icons are just much more professional looking than Human icons, and the set is far more complete)
Exec-shield
Default Firewall

Now in Development
GCC4
Stack fortification (think.. Propolice)
Xen
Fedora Extras

Fedora is simply much futher along than Ubuntu at the present time.

Reason to use Ubuntu:
Universe
Half Promised support for Mono in Hoary++
Rosetta (I'm still not 100% convinced that this is a good idea though, I have some thoughts on improving it at least)

[sard]

I’ve definitely got distro fever. This last month I’ve only booted into Windows to run Partition Magic and to burn the ISOs of other distributions I’ve downloaded. I just wish I had an Nvidia card so everything wasn’t so sluggish.

[crun]

I hate Ubuntu for curing my distro fever. I used to install a different distro every two months befroe some little glitch made me want to try another.

Now when I see in the morning that Suse/Fedora/Mandrake/Mepis/Arch etc etc has a new pointrelease out, my first reaction is no longer "I've got to have that", but "Why download it when I have Ubuntu doing everything I want it to?" Damn you Ubuntu!

[jdong]

Graphical bootsplash
Bluecurve (the icons are just much more professional looking than Human icons, and the set is far more complete)


Their integration between KDE and GNOME is a topic all of its own. Try installing KDE from GNOME.

Do random "control center" icons, or KCron entries show up in the GNOME menu without icons? no. Does RedHat openly praise/endorse KDE? No. Does RedHat support KDE? barely -- it doesn't have the newest Bluecurve work, it's horribly castrated due to "non-free" components, and it certainly doesn't get the same amount of attention to details!

However, they make a sincere effort of making the two DE's feel integrated.

[lao_V]

I agree with you crun. Even though I have only been using Linux for couple of months, I feel like I have been cured (almost..still have a slight itch).

Ubuntu - The new (and only) remedy for distro fever!

[jwb]

I was a distro junkie for a while. I tried *every* mainstream distro i could get my hands on, every time there was a revision. I finally got tired of it, and settled on Fedora. I resisted Ubuntu for a few weeks simply because I had swore off trying every new distro that popped up.

One day up2date failed (again) and I said "Heck, I'll try it."

Now I'm in the Ubuntu Clinic for Recovering Distro Addicts and I'm quite happy. :-)

[lao_V]

...
Now I'm in the Ubuntu Clinic for Recovering Distro Addicts and I'm quite happy. :-)

Lets hope you never get out of Ubuntu Clinic http://www.ubuntuforums.org/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif

[budyong]

mandrake 8.2 > redhat 9 > mandrake 10 > gentoo > freebsd 5.3 > UBUNTU is the best

[poofyhairguy]

Fedora is simply much futher along than Ubuntu at the present time

More like Redhat is father along (as in more bleeding edge) than Debian is at this time. Not a bad thing, I would never use most of the things in your list.



Reason to use Ubuntu:
Universe
Half Promised support for Mono in Hoary++
Rosetta (I'm still not 100% convinced that this is a good idea though, I have some thoughts on improving it at least)


The best reason to use Ubuntu is if you like Debian but hate having to hammer a server distro into a desktop one. Each to his own though. I just miss all those packages everytime I touch a redhat machine....

[TopDog]

Started with Mandrake 9.1, but it was unstable, upgraded to 9.2, then 10.0... still unstable, went for SUSE 9.1. Worked great, but after a while I discovered that SUSE did some stuff in strange ways... so I ditched it for this wierd distro I'd seen some guys at MUSB bragging about (BVC amongst others) called Ubuntu, and it rocks.

So I'm off the distro-wagon, I found home!

[binks]

More like Redhat is father along (as in more bleeding edge) than Debian is at this time. Not a bad thing, I would never use most of the things in your list.





The best reason to use Ubuntu is if you like Debian but hate having to hammer a server distro into a desktop one. Each to his own though. I just miss all those packages everytime I touch a redhat machine....
yes i did have but must say i left linux alone for the last 6 months as it was too much hard wok getting everything working
but now this is the first week of ubuntu and its totally changed my perception of linux , only been back into xp once in the week ive been into linux(warty)
althou i still cant get enemy-territory working but will keep pluggin away
ps thanks to all the people that make ubuntu so good and friendy a place to be in:):)

[Dylanby]

I still like to try out specialty distros like firewalls & live cds.

[Lovechild]

Their integration between KDE and GNOME is a topic all of its own. Try installing KDE from GNOME.

Do random "control center" icons, or KCron entries show up in the GNOME menu without icons? no. Does RedHat openly praise/endorse KDE? No. Does RedHat support KDE? barely -- it doesn't have the newest Bluecurve work, it's horribly castrated due to "non-free" components, and it certainly doesn't get the same amount of attention to details!

However, they make a sincere effort of making the two DE's feel integrated.

Do I look like I care about KDE?

KDE is castrated only do to it's poor media framework design, if it was as easy to install codec support as it is with GStreamer, it wouldn't be a problem - but now to enable such unfree elements (sadly needed by some people) requires me to recompile a major part of the DE... how intelligent is that, please don't blame RedHat for KDE's stupidity.

[panickedthumb]

naaah, its too cold outside ;) but really I don't have that much free time-- I work a little over 40 hours a week.

[Yukonjack]

I used too but not for the last year I tried enough distro's over the years to last me a life time.
My favorites are Ubuntu & Fedora Core 3 for everyday use and work, Libranet makes a rock solid server.

[jwb]

Lets hope you never get out of Ubuntu Clinic http://www.ubuntuforums.org/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif

I wear a brown straight jacket and they give me coffee IV's.

<homer simpson voice>"Mmmmmm....... intravenous coffee.......</end homer>

[jdodson]

i used to distro hop. mostly betweent fedora/redhat and mandrake. i tried gentoo, never really cared for suse(now we use it at work exclusively, wasnt my choice), tried debian(old version, could not get x working) tried knoppix, libranet, mepis(was pretty good, i just am not a kde person), tried bsd a bit. in the end ubuntu rocked the house. i still have fedora core 3 on a machine because i still think it is a great distro(for all the reasons jdong mentioned and some more). i am considering using centos 4.0(a source build of RHES) as a server because of the lifecycle and selinux. ubuntu has a one year lifecycle, but i believe RHES is 16 months(correct my if i am wrong). i will always have a place in my heart for fedora/redhat, they make a great distro. i just think ubuntu is better for many reasons, speed, apt-get, community.

[Kamping_Kaiser]

I HAD distro fever...i have gone through
Mandrake (7,9,9.2,10,10.1), RedHat 9, Fedora Core (1,2,3), Debian sarge, Simply Mepis, and some others i cant remember. (oh and FreeBSD, does that count?)

[wondering_jew]

I used mandrake 8.1 for a week or so fall 2001-ish but that didnt work out (something with xfree as i recall) Then about a year and a half ago I tried to install gentoo (absolute nightmare for a newb such as myself), and gentoo scared me away from linux until last october when I installed Ubuntu. Ubuntu was so nice compared to windows that I decided not to put windows back on my computer, and enough stuff worked after a fresh install that I could actually start to learn the basics enough to be self sufficient-ish with linux. I plan to stick with Ubuntu for a while...

[Stormy Eyes]

So my question to everyone is, have you got the distro fever as well?

I got over it a few years ago.

[defkewl]

Well I've tried several distro to find out which out that suits me best. But I don't know if I got the distro fever as you described.

I have tried Slackware, SuSE, RedHat, Mandrake Fedora, Centos, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Debian, MEPIS.

[XDevHald]

I switched from Mandrake 10.2 which was my very first distro, then from that too trying out Gentoo, which royaly sucked, it just wanted to fight with me on the install so I threw the CD away ;)

Then I went to Ubuntu Hoary, then I partition Mepis out I think it was the new 2.6 kernel, then I took that off and enjoyed Ubuntu ;)

Never wanted to get rid of Ubuntu, just wanted to see what Mepis was like, but it's NOT that good :?

[derrick1985]

OMG, I think I am too a junkie.

Started off with Caldera OpenLinux 2.4 back in the day, it scared me away for a few months because I couldn't configure the x server properly (I was running a res of 340x240 or something like that, I had to scroll everywhere!) then started off with Mandrake 8.

So, my list goes like this:

Caldera Openlinux 2.4>Mandrake8>Mandrake8.1>Redhat8(thank's to a Linux for Dummies book)>Mandrake 9>Xebian (Debian for Xbox)>Mandrake9.1>Fedora Core 1>Gentoox (gentoo for xbox)>Fedora core 2>Mandrake 10>Mepis 3.3>Mandrake10.1>Fedora Core 3>Ununtu 5.04

I'm quite happy now. Although, I will admit, I miss the Graphic Boot of Fedora, as well as trying to get APT working right for it.

[kanem]

The only ones I've used for any length of time are Gentoo and Ubuntu. But I still have distro fever and try something out about once every two months.

Others I've tried:
Yellowdog, Mandrake, Mepis, Quantian, Vida, Xandros and Blag. I still have Blag installed on another partition but it will soon be removed to put on PCBSD which I am downloading as I type

[carlc]

I have tried a lot of distros because I was never 100% happy. However, Ubuntu works for me so my days of distro hopping are over for now.

[SamH]

I've had distro fever in the past. Started in 1999 with Caldera OpenLinux 2.4. Continued with SuSE 6.4, whatever RedHat was out then, etc. In later years I tried more SuSE, RedHat, Lycoris, Gentoo, FreeBSD, Slackware, etc.

I've noticed in the last year that I am not testing distros as much as I used to. And now that I've found Ubuntu, I'm not near as interested in other distros as I used to be.

Although, SUSE 9.3 should be available for FTP install in another 3 months or so. Couldn't hurt to look, I guess....... :roll:

[baza41]

Choice has to be good. It's one of the many things that Microsoft is to blame for; removing choice from people about what they use on their PC.

It's good that there are some many 'flavors' of Linux out there, people can choose the one that's fits them best.

[MuckSavage]

I am a mac user mainly, a computer geek second. I have an old frankenpc I put together from spare parts, and have loaded FC2 and 3, Suse, Mandrake, Debian (wouldn't work), Mepis, and tried Gentoo (didn't get very far). I've found that ubuntu works the fastest on the old hardware I have (celeron 700mhz). It's mostly just to tinker with, and I find myself switching around whenever a new release is out for certain distros. I am going to download FC4 test 2 when I get home to try it out.

I'd like to think that if I had to depend on a linux machine for my main machine, Ubuntu would be my favorite so far.

[bored2k]

I have tried a lot of distros because I was never 100% happy. However, Ubuntu works for me so my days of distro hopping are over for now.
I feel the same way. Maybe one day I'll give Gentoo a try, but that would be on a secondary test box. I sense the big apt-get --learning factor with Gentoo.

[panickedthumb]

Gentoo is worth giving a shot, if only for the fact that you DO learn a lot. LFS, that's some hard stuff there. No package manager, nothing. Just you, a compiler, and some sources.

[bored2k]

Gentoo is worth giving a shot, if only for the fact that you DO learn a lot. LFS, that's some hard stuff there. No package manager, nothing. Just you, a compiler, and some sources.
I'm mostly afraid of the installation time. There are two more users here that need to have their files ready -whenever-. It wouldn't be cool them going "I need to check X file ASAP press cancel..or something". How many hours more or less to get this beast running?

[panickedthumb]

depends on what kind of system and how much you want to install.

OOo itself takes about 6 hours to compile, for me anyway, but I had a lot of use flags and stuff, and I rarely compiled it by itself, I usually had another compile going. A base system with fluxbox or something, you could probably get installed in about 6-8 hours on top-notch hardware.

[poofyhairguy]

Gentoo is worth giving a shot, if only for the fact that you DO learn a lot.

Its the only big distro I haven't tried.

I'll admit that it kinda sounds like not my cup O tea.

[lao_V]

You don't really have to build everything from source - unless you really want to.. Gentoo also has pre-compiled binaries for x86

[panickedthumb]

Well yeah, but installing Gentoo precompiled is like going mountain climbing and having someone carry you to the top. You enjoy the final result much better if you've done the work ;)

[lao_V]

In that case, be prepared to come down with a few broken limbs! :-)

[panickedthumb]

ha! :) yeah, you'll fall a few times, but it only makes you stronger.

[DJ_Max]

Yeah, I'll be installing Gentoo on my iMac once I get a new, bigger Hard drive to replace my little 10GB HD, which I have two OS's on.

I've installed Gentoo before, and loved it.

[fordfan753]

I always like to try new distros..it's just fun to see what is new. I also have to install new packages and source all the time, I can't just settle down and use my system, I have to bugger about with everything...I find it a little funny in a way! :-P

[DJ_Max]

depends on what kind of system and how much you want to install.

OOo itself takes about 6 hours to compile, for me anyway, but I had a lot of use flags and stuff, and I rarely compiled it by itself, I usually had another compile going. A base system with fluxbox or something, you could probably get installed in about 6-8 hours on top-notch hardware.
Heh, thats it. On the PPC arch it takes longer, no matter how powerful the processor is, which i due to have the IBM processor handles commands.

[rpm]

I begun years ago with Corel Linux and Red Hat7.2.

Later I tried Mandrake, then again RH8 and 9 and now I found home with ubuntu.

I think ubuntu is the best free distro and my favourite one and suse is the best commercial one.

bye

rpm

[poofyhairguy]

You don't really have to build everything from source - unless you really want to.. Gentoo also has pre-compiled binaries for x86

I know. But how well tested are those binaries? It seems that most (as in 90%+) Gentoo users want to compile their own stuff, so these packages don't get the testing that Ubuntu binaries do.

No....If I try Gentoo it will be because I want to compile everything and because it (seems to be) much easier to add the orinoco monitor patch (its an ebuild in Gentoo).

[jimcooncat]

Unisys/Burroughs, QNX, RedHat 6, SourceMage, Gentoo, Fedora 2, Ubuntu. I don't think Cygwin counts, right?

Gonna stick with Ubuntu and Gentoo for a while. I suppose I'll have to load a router up with OpenWRT to see what I can do with it, though.

I'll probably get into mini-distros soon, maybe try my hand at publishing one -- probably using Gentoo as a base. But Ubuntu will stay my desktop as long as you guys are around. I'm tired of destroying my primary machine just to see how something works.

[XDevHald]

I hate Ubuntu for curing my distro fever. I used to install a different distro every two months befroe some little glitch made me want to try another.

Now when I see in the morning that Suse/Fedora/Mandrake/Mepis/Arch etc etc has a new pointrelease out, my first reaction is no longer "I've got to have that", but "Why download it when I have Ubuntu doing everything I want it to?" Damn you Ubuntu!

LOL that post really made me laugh, hehe, and hey, it is true, Ubuntu does it all, which is why they say it's, Clean, Easy, Ubuntu!

And I for one will not be switching at all, and who knows, what distro is coming out that we do not even know about that COULD be on top of Ubuntu?

The World May Never Know....

[Spoofhound]

Can't say that its a fever - unless you include the cold sweat the first time I did a disk install of Mandrake on a dual boot system and had to set up the partitions (scary when you're totally new to this)

Have tried mandrake, suse, and several live cds (still like to try out live cds). I "found" Ubuntu a bit by accident. In the other distros I found that I preferred Gnome to KDE. When Gnome 2.10 was released they offered a live cd version to try. When I booted the live cd I found it was based on Ubuntu. The whole thing looked really cool - so I checked out ubuntu, liked what i saw, and now its my distro of choice - so a Gnome led me to Ubuntu.

[Raven-sb]

I've also suffered from distro fever. My first distro was Red Hat 4, followed by Red Hat 5 and 6, Mandrake, Suse, Corel Linux, Red Hat 7, 8 and 9, Gentoo, and finally Ubuntu.

Personally I love the coolness factor of building an OS completely tailored to your computer that a successful stage 1 install of Gentoo supplies. What I hate is how long it takes to get such a system functional. Still it's a great way to read through all those 1000 page novels I own, not to mention watching all 3 extended versions of the Lord of the Rings movies.

As much as I love Gentoo I also love Ubuntu and will stick with it as being my distro of choice. Why? Well a number of reasons,

1. The Ubuntu Community. I'm not saying that the communitys that exist for the other distros are bad, but there is something special about the Ubuntu community that makes me want to continue being a part of it.

2. Gnome based Distro

3. Easy to set up, configure and update.

4. My wife has recently become addicted to World of Warcraft and would make my life miserible if I took up all the internet bandwidth downloading Gentoo :-\"

[kleeman]

Yeah I've had it!

Started out with RH 7.1 in 2000 which I bought from Best Buy and didn't recognize my promise ata controller. After abusing RH support without effect I switched to Mandrake 7.2 which worked after a fashion after hacking the promise controller.

Upgraded to Mandrake 8 and then switched to RH8 and Fedora 1.

Being a non-noobie by this stage (in my own mind of course ;-)) I then tried gentoo but got bored with tying the computer over the weekend with emerge.

Tried Suse but for some reason was singularly unimpressed: It cost quite a bit and there were still many post config issues which annoyed me. Also the rpm base was smaller than RH.

One thing that always bugged me was how hard the updating is in linux so I tried Debian (and Knoppix and Libranet) next however I was quite disappointed by how much post configuration was required in all these Debian derivatives (meaningless drudgery in my view) and how lousy the fonts looked (I know: superficial!). One thing did strike me though: Debian was quite fast and apt was a gem.

Tried Slackware then which was OK (I like the philosophy) but updating and finding apps was a bit rough so switched back to Fedora 2 and 3 which had by then good rpm repositories controlled by apt for rpm. I was annoyed however by the bloat, slowness and the number of post configuration irritations there were with Fedora. The fonts were nice though ;-). I also objected to being part of Red Hat Inc debug team particularly when they charge so much for RHEL.

Finally tried Ubuntu late last year: Post config was minor, fonts were nice, community (here) was excellent, Howto collection solved any problem I had. Very painless plus all the advantages of Debian. I haven't considered another distro since. Just hope Shuttleworth doesn't pull the plug at some stage!

[rickwood]

I'm not a distro junkie! I'm not! I'm not! Really, I'm not!

Started with Slackware back in 1994 -- same time I was running OS/2 and beta testing Windows 95. Moved to Redhat -- wow, what an improvement! Oh, hey, what's this Solaris? Then Mandrake -- even better! Then Libranet. Then Debian -- ooh, nasty install! Then Xandros. Then Mepis. Back to Mandrake. Hey, this new SuSE is pretty nice! Back to Mandrake. Wow, Yoper is really fast!

Oops -- wife is getting really pissed off -- every time she turns on the computer it's a different distro. No problem, get another computer -- one for wife, one for endless distro cycle. Hey, six months has passed! All new versions! So many choices!

Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. Mandrake! How about Ubuntu Warty? No, let's try knoppix. No, kanotix. Hey, what about Lindows? Oh, how about Lycoris! Now Fedora! Now Mandriva! Wow - new SuSe with Beagle! Hey what about Ubuntu Hoary?!

(OK, enough denial -- maybe I am a distro junkie!)

My assessment? There are many fine distros out there, and they just keep getting better. So what will I settle on? Who knows. I like Ubuntu -- Debian base, easy to update, easy to add software, bleeding edge packages, and by far the best forum and user community for solving those little problems that every distro seems to have! If not Ubuntu, then Mandriva. Multimedia works very well, great system administration tools, lots of software to choose from. Currently triple booting - WinXP, Mandriva, Ubuntu.

Now, where was I? Oh, yes -- back to distrowatch.

[jawbreaker]

I've always have a bit of the fever. It's more of a OS fever than a distro fever though. There are suprisingly few Linux distros that I can tolerate for very long (Slackware, Debian, & now Ubuntu). Instead I like looking at other operating systems that run on x86 hardware. I've used Free\Net\OpenBSD, QNX, BeOS, Solaris, UnixWare ](*,) , and some others I can't think of now. Of course, with most of those I wasn't looking for or expecting anything to replace Linux; it was just good clean fun.

[charlieg]

Mandrake 8.1-8.2 -> Gentoo 1.4-2005.0 -> Hoary Hedgehog!

Mandrake was an absolute nightmare. RPM hell made me stear well clear of any RPM based distro. Installing even trivial apps was a complete nightmare, and none of the Mandrake tools worked well or were really usable - frequent crashes or 'inifinitely moving progress bars'. It was a bad, bad experience.

Gentoo is nice and I have it on my desktop (have had it running for nearly 3 years) but I didn't want to have to continue compiling everything when I got a laptop so I opted for...

Ubuntu has been a great experience thus far [24 hours] on my laptop.