Rival distros

[Dave_is_sexy]

Ubuntu is the *nice* version of debian then....
and college linux is the nice version of slackware

my limited linux distro knowledge is that debian has apt-get and is super stable.

Given that my system is totally unstable, i'm not too impressed by the stabilty card. I was wondering if anyone knew what the forte of slackware was? I know it's minimalist, which i think will make it easier because nothing will be set up strangely before i get there.

How well supported is slackware? Do I have to use tarballs? (I hate them!)

[desdinova]

Slackware is very much a purer form of Linux then many others, it holds truer to the ideals of Unix - it uses tarballs with its own package manager.

As you want something a little easier - I'd suggest either

Mandriva
or
Suse

[Dave_is_sexy]

Suse is evil. It's installer wipes harddrives when it's obviounly told not to (good thing i can un-wipe them). So I hate it.

I like Mandrake it's lovely, but.... er... .isn't this supposed to be linux for humans?

[desdinova]

I used Suse for a long while and never had issues with its installer, strange - which version?

Mandriva is actually a very good distro, and one of the most user friendly ... they've recently bought out parts of Lycoris...

Perhaps Xandros or Linspire then?

[Dave_is_sexy]

The version that was released last august... 9.1 personal. It said something like "NAME OF INSTALLER has detected no partitions and will now format your harddrives"

I was just like... "it.. how.. wha... no no no. stop. power. power"

[desdinova]

The version that was released last august... 9.1 personal. It said something like "NAME OF INSTALLER has detected no partitions and will now format your harddrives"

I was just like... "it.. how.. wha... no no no. stop. power. power"
Strange - never heard of that before.

[Dave_is_sexy]

Yeah... i doubt it'd ever happen to anyone else. No, I hate Suse.

[Joeb]

Ubuntu is the *nice* version of debian then....
and college linux is the nice version of slackware

my limited linux distro knowledge is that debian has apt-get and is super stable.

Given that my system is totally unstable, i'm not too impressed by the stabilty card. I was wondering if anyone knew what the forte of slackware was? I know it's minimalist, which i think will make it easier because nothing will be set up strangely before i get there.

How well supported is slackware? Do I have to use tarballs? (I hate them!)

It might be good to determine what is making your system unstable under Ubuntu, because there is a good chance it will be unstable under the other distros mentioned. So, what are your system specs and how is it being unstable?

[angrykeyboarder]

Suse is evil. It's installer wipes harddrives when it's obviounly told not to (good thing i can un-wipe them). So I hate it.

I like Mandrake it's lovely, but.... er... .isn't this supposed to be linux for humans?

Um... Linux for Human Beings, actually.

No...wait.. Linux for Human beings who don't want common garden variety multimedia support. :-P

[professor_chaos]

I tried Suse and Mandrake/Mandrivia and prefer by far Ubuntu.
If you want to pay for the software and or support then by all means, use suse and mandrivia. I don't recommend that by hey, to each his own.

Ubuntu is by far in my experience the best and most stable OS I have even used. Like someone allready mentioned, stability might vary on different hardware platforms but I think it also varies by user.

[mpa]

I was wondering if anyone knew what the forte of slackware was? I know it's minimalist, which i think will make it easier because nothing will be set up strangely before i get there.

How well supported is slackware? Do I have to use tarballs? (I hate them!)

Since I was a slackware user for some time, I figure I could help you in this.

- Slackware teaches you UNIX, meaning that once you are familiar with Slackware, you can dabble in most form of UNIX (Solaris, BSD, Linux-es)
- Slackware is frankly much more suited to intermediate-advanced user who wants to LEARN to ADMINISTER Linux. If you just want to USE a DESKTOP system then you are better off using other distro. Otherwise, you will be FORCED to learn.
- You usually know everything that is going on in your system (an exaggeration of course). You know exactly which service is being offered, the exact configuration of that service and why you enabled it in the first place. What libs you have installed, where and why. All this is because there is no automated package manager such as dpkg / apt, therefore you either have intimate knowledge of your own box or watch it fall apart.
- So if you are the IDEAL Slackware user, you are going to be the local UNIX Guru whose box is blazing fast, super stable and when you use the box, people are going to gape at your arcane skill. \\:D/

All this comes at -great- cost of _time_, *energy* and most likely frustration ](*,) of not being able to actually USE the desktop, there is just something else you want to tweak / install / upgrade. ;-)

I also think using Slackware as a server is not a very good idea, best to use another distro. As long as you have the knowledge gained from using Slackware, you could as well use other distros filled with nice GUI and automated features cos if a problem arise your "leet skill" gained from using Slackware could help save your butt :-P

To answer whether you have to use tarball :

You dont HAVE to use it. Many if not most Slackware user compile and create their own package. That said, there are many packages made especially for Slackware in linuxpackages.net and installing them is as easy as :

installpkg <something>

and removing them is also easy :

removepkg <something>

I also find querying and looking at installed files is much faster on Slackware (but it aint important to most people).

In essence, desktop user should stay away from Slackware. Budding novice user with willpower and -lots of TIME- wanting to be a guru or a Unix Guru himself will feel at home in Slackware.

[wvslkr]

mpa; Well said. IMHO that is the strength of Slack. It is a good distro to teach the concepts of Linux-Unix. It gives enough handholding + well documented scripts to more or less grasp the fundamental layout of the Linux environment and then go on to explore any and all distros without fear. If, however one is not willing to invest the time or effort, they will only end in frustration. It is by no means hard or magical, rather taking the time to work with it and absorb. In the end the same could be said for any flavor when you get down to it.

Slack 3.6 was my first, so I am partial, but here I post from K(Ubuntu). :)
Nuff Said!

[angkor]

How well supported is slackware? Do I have to use tarballs? (I hate them!)

:grin: :grin:

Better find another distro.

[Dave_is_sexy]

lol.

I don't know why my ubuntu's gone all crappy. I mean I have no idea what i'm doing on it, and it does'nt tell me what it's doing just more "yeah i've done that. it went ok"...

I'd like to know what it did. What files it put where. And when I say apt-get install, not to install half of something then say error and suggest i fix it else i may get problems. Just don't install it at all if it's going to break.

There seems to be something wrong with Squid - it wont stop at shut down time.

At the mo i just want to make something bearable, that actually has some use. Once I have a desktop I can sit at and use i will go back and look at what is happening. Once I know that it's wipe off tme and do again manually - to ensure all the broken apt-gets are gone.

Ultimately he systm will be the best desktop possible for other users to just walk up to and use, and in the background will be running some net servers, and will of course be the internet portal (shared gateway) and will be firewalled very well and i'll know IP tables

I will also have complete control over process priority, and bandwidth priority.. and i'll have made GUIs for these

[Mart]

Ubuntu is by far the longest lasting distro on my workstation. I have even put it on my laptop. I've tried many different versions Mandrake, Red Hat, Fedora, Suse, BSDs. (having access to a T1 is a bad thing) but this one is by far the easiest. btw I did have Fedora 4 on another system today since I refused to replace Ubuntu on my main one. I may never touch an RPM again at this rate.

[vega44]

I used Suse for a long while and never had issues with its installer, strange - which version?

Mandriva is actually a very good distro, and one of the most user friendly ... they've recently bought out parts of Lycoris...

Perhaps Xandros or Linspire then?
suse pro 9.1 deleted my hard drive

[bored2k]

I used Suse for a long while and never had issues with its installer, strange - which version?

Mandriva is actually a very good distro, and one of the most user friendly ... they've recently bought out parts of Lycoris...

Perhaps Xandros or Linspire then?
Not that I am bashing, but the learning capacity of linspire and xandros is incredibly, absurdly low.

[weekend warrior]

SUSE 9.1 was a bit of a....uhm.... dog by most accounts as I remember. The Personal Edition was a one off experiment that didn't go well. Pretty telling that there aren't any more Personal Editions (AFAIK). But try not to judge them by 9.1 They had good releases before that and what they offer now is probably much better.

(Personally though, I've had my full share of non .deb distros)

[jdong]

If stability is what you're looking for, perhaps CentOS? I recently wrote up a quick review for it. It's a free clone of RedHat Enterprise Linux. I'm currently using it, and I find it to be very professionally designed and managed.

[bored2k]

If stability is what you're looking for, perhaps CentOS? I recently wrote up a quick review for it. It's a free clone of RedHat Enterprise Linux. I'm currently using it, and I find it to be very professionally designed and managed.
Say Jdong, regarding Fedora, in your wise opinion, do you think it's worth it ? I have it paused on bittorrent, thinking things over.

[jdong]

Say Jdong, regarding Fedora, in your wise opinion, do you think it's worth it ? I have it paused on bittorrent, thinking things over.

FC4 is too unstable and bleeding-edge for me. It's fun to play with, but I want to wait till it stabilizes. I wouldn't trust it to work when I need it to.

Give it like a month or two before trying it... Major 3rd party packagers, like RPMForge aren't ready for it yet, so you'll be seriously lacking in software. Also NVIdia/ATI have some glibc+selinux+gcc4 issues to sort out with their drivers, so you'll be without 3D in the mean time.

P.S. As of now, there's more than 30 update patches in the first week of release :)

[bored2k]

FC4 is too unstable and bleeding-edge for me. It's fun to play with, but I want to wait till it stabilizes. I wouldn't trust it to work when I need it to.

Give it like a month or two before trying it... Major 3rd party packagers, like RPMForge aren't ready for it yet, so you'll be seriously lacking in software. Also NVIdia/ATI have some glibc+selinux+gcc4 issues to sort out with their drivers, so you'll be without 3D in the mean time.

P.S. As of now, there's more than 30 update patches in the first week of release :)
Thanks for your input, greatly appreciated. You just saved me a buck or two on car insurance.. erg.. I mean.. you just saved me 3GB of DL time :D.

[mrtaber]

I can vouch for what JDong is talking about; I have FC 4 installed on a VM, and we've had at least 30 updates on it; it's going to be nice, but I've been advising people to wait at least a month. It's not quite baked yet.

Mark :)

[jdong]

it's going to be nice,

I'd like to echo that. I don't want people walking away thinking that I'm giving a negative opinion about Fedora's latest release. The new changes are very exciting, and I simply can't wait for things to start stabilizing a bit to the point where an average Linux user can try it out.

Remember that Fedora is, after all, designed as a testing ground for RedHat Enterprise Linux releases. It's the best way, IMO, to see what's new in Linux. Looking back at the original author's concerns and needs, he values stability much more than anything else. In which case, Fedora Core 4 is not a good choice at this time.