What would be a good distro to have alongside Ubuntu?

[Happy_Man]

Hi everyone,

I was just wondering what distro you think would be a good counterpart to Ubuntu-same level of difficulty and all, just something new and refreshing. I'm not talking about Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and all that. I'm talking about other distros like MEPIS or Mandrake. Just wondering what you guys thought!

[meng]

PCLinuxOS. New version (2007) coming out in the next couple of weeks!

[darweth]

Some version of BSD.

[DrainBead]

Hi everyone,

I was just wondering what distro you think would be a good counterpart to Ubuntu-same level of difficulty and all, just something new and refreshing. I'm not talking about Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and all that. I'm talking about other distros like MEPIS or Mandrake. Just wondering what you guys thought!

What would the point be? Get yourself some knowledge about your system and use Slackware or LFS or try out one of the BSD's instead.

You could use SuSE, Mandriva, Fedora or whatever as a second distro but all you would learn is the different tools, with Slackware, you would learn Linux.

[Tomosaur]

I too would recommend LFS or Slackware, since it'll give you a great deal more knowledge about how Linux actually works 'under the hood' so to speak. No point in having the same distro twice, so you may aswell have one to tinker with.

[bionnaki]

www.archlinux.org

[DrainBead]

www.archlinux.org

While archlinux is a very nice distro i have to say that it is a tad to experimental in it's current state which at many times renders it unusable to a degree where not even a pacman --fix will fix the problems without reinstalling. (disclaimer - personal experience with it, it is a great distro)

[Mateo]

why have more than one distro on your computer?

[runningwithscissors]

why have more than one distro on your computer?
Not everyone is an "average user" who just wants to do things that "human beings" do, like "browse porn without getting a computer virus".

Some people like to experiment and maybe learn something without messing up their primary productive porn browsing installation. :P

[Mateo]

sounds reasonable, as long as porn browsing is affected in no way.

[Donshyoku]

sounds reasonable, as long as porn browsing is affected in no way.

:D

[RAV TUX]

moving to the other OS forum

[K.Mandla]

www.archlinux.org
+1!

Not everyone is an "average user" who just wants to do things that "human beings" do. ... Some people like to experiment and maybe learn something. ...
That's why I keep an extra laptop around. For the experimentation, that is.

While archlinux is a very nice distro i have to say that it is a tad to experimental in it's current state which at many times renders it unusable to a degree where not even a pacman --fix will fix the problems without reinstalling. (disclaimer - personal experience with it, it is a great distro)
Hadn't run into that problem here. Yet.

[xhaan]

Not everyone is an "average user" who just wants to do things that "human beings" do, like "browse porn without getting a computer virus".

Some people like to experiment and maybe learn something without messing up their primary productive porn browsing installation. :P

Exactly.
Currently I only have Dapper, Edgy and XP running but I plan to add something like Gentoo or LFS or both and if I still have space left I might add a BSD in there too, just to have things to tinker with and learn.

[xabbott]

www.archlinux.org
Another vote for arch. It's the perfect mix of slackware, gentoo, and debian. :D

[manmower]

On the one hand I would suggest maybe Fedora Core or OpenSuse, since they are so widely used you never know when a bit of hands-on experience with them might come in handy (I have yet to try either one myself though).

On the other hand I would also recommend to go with something to learn from, and keep your Ubuntu install as your dependable OS for the time being. I wholeheartedly recommend Arch, and Slackware, Gentoo, LFS are other good candidates.

[Enverex]

You could try Gentoo if you're into the whole masochism thing. The principal is nice, but you'll find too many things fail to compile for obscure reasons, dev's care very little about, well, anything and you spend far too long trying to get your system actually usable with everything you want. You also need a very powerful processor unless you like spending weeks compiling. (personal experience from using it on 3 machines for quite a few years).

[mips]

Sabayon Linux (http://www.sabayonlinux.org/)

[Rodneyck]

You could try Gentoo if you're into the whole masochism thing.

LOL...I think that short but sweet sentence sums my experience with Sabayonlinux/Gentoo. The cups printing mechanism failed on me and I tried everything, the Gentoo wiki, the forums and nothing regarding fixing it worked. I just gave up. It is fast, I will give it that, but sorry, printing nightmares and taking FOREVER to install anything was all I could take.

[doobit]

It looks like Mandriva is back on track with some decent innovation. That was my first intro to Linux a few years ago. It might be worth takng a look because it would show you how the "other" packaging system works.

[pissedoffdude]

You should give sabayon a try

[mips]

You should give sabayon a try

He does not like it, had a issue or two.