What non Debian distro to try.

[phread59]

I know this may be an akward questian. I am loving Ubuntu make no mistake. Buy I was wondering what other Distro that was non-Debian I might want to make a spin around. I will buy another hard drive and stick it on that. I was leaning towards Fedora. I love the ease of use here in Ubuntu. I am looking for something similar to the ease of use here in a non-Debian Distro. I was just wanting to expand my learning some. Any suggestions for a second Distro just to tinker with and learn from?

Mark Shuman

[mikeyphi]

A few good words in the Forum Sticky: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=709685

[sandysandy]

Mandriva 2008 is cool

regards

[skymera]

If you want a more advanced system try Gentoo.

Or plain Debian, its Ubuntu without the 'hand-holding'

[spacegypsy]

Besides Fedora, you can take a closer look at;

PCLinuxOS, openSUSE and Sabayon.

greats.

[Gen2ly]

if I had a chance I'd try arch.

[KLR650]

I have settled on Ubuntu as my main/big distro and play with Puppy Linux and SLAX as small/portable distros to carry aroundon a flash drive.

SLAX is Slackware based and Puppy in't derived from another distro

[phread59]

Mickyphi, Yea thanks for the post. I kinda surmized that. What I want to do is use Ubuntu as the main focus. I love the forums and I like the way Ubuntu works. I just wanted to try a Redhat type version. I appreciate the resposes. I'm gonna take them and run on over to Distrowatch and take a peek.

I am too much a beginner to take on Gentoo right now. I have little hair left and don't want to loose more if'n you know what I mean. I would appreciate the hand holding. So a user freindly RedHat based distro would be the ticket. I have been to Distrowatch, and I can get info there. But nothing beats hands on experience. That is why I asked the question here. The people here have a very good background in Linux and maybe you people can point me in the right direction.

I just want to add this. Ubuntu has been a breath of fresh air for me. I learned to run computers with punch cards. I got so used to the Windows babying I forgot how much enjoyment a computer can give. Ubuntu is finally giving my knoggin a challenge. I am truly enjoying my experience here. Only real problem was getting the OP sytem in. That was a fiasco (bad HDD and incorrectly burned image on CD). This experience has been fantastic and it is only getting better. God Bless Linux and God Bless Ubuntu, the penguins will inherit the Earth:lolflag:!!!!!!!

Mark Shuman

[daengbo]

Since you're going to install this new distro on a second HD, I'm going to assume that you're not goign to be doing a lot of real work on it and will be using it mostly for education.

If that's the case, the you should really consider doing Linux From Scratch (LFS). There's no installation. There are no package managers. You compile and install everything from the metal up. Just getting to a bootstrap environment will teach you a lot. When you create the init scripts and boot process by hand, you will gain a great understanding of System V and how it all works.

Never again will you be lost at the command line or wonder how you'll recover from something you've mucked up.

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

[DBrocks]

Mandrake, or SlackWare.

[will1911a1]

Give Arch Linux a shot. It's a great distro to jump into and learn with, especially when you have Ubuntu to fall back on. It's got a great wiki and installation guide to help you out.

[wolfen69]

Mandriva 2008 is cool

regards

+1 for Mandriva Spring 2008.1 http://www.mandriva.com/

it is one of the best OS's ive ever used. and ive tried most of them.
I just wanted to try a Redhat type version.
Mandriva is based on Red Hat. I think it is much better than Fedora.

[reyfer]

So...the rumor is true? There really are non-Debian Linux? :shock:

[meborc]

So...the rumor is true? There really are non-Debian Linux? :shock:

here is a map for you http://httwww.kde-look.org/CONTENT/content-files/46315-linux_timeline_poster_v1.1.png it lacks the last few years, but you get the overall picture ;)

[cardinals_fan]

Zenwalk, or vanilla Slackware. Or you can try FreeBSD... :)

[GrueTamer]

Crux if you're willing.

[finferflu]

Arch Linux + Beginners Guide (http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide) ;)

[seanc7]

Fedora or Arch (if you want a little more control and work in the beginning)

[CM Xtasy]

+1 for Mandriva Spring 2008.1 http://www.mandriva.com/

it is one of the best OS's ive ever used. and ive tried most of them.

Mandriva is based on Red Hat. I think it is much better than Fedora.

I used Mandriva 2008.1 today. It was really nice, but was I reading it right when it said it was using 700mb of RAM when nothing was open?! :shock:

[cardinals_fan]

I used Mandriva 2008.1 today. It was really nice, but was I reading it right when it said it was using 700mb of RAM when nothing was open?! :shock:
Open a terminal and enter 'free'. You should see the following (but with different numbers):
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 904292 458812 445480 0 30208 241996
-/+ buffers/cache: 186608 717684
Swap: 0 0 0

What is the bold/red number on your Mandriva?

[jpmontalbo]

Zenwalk, or vanilla Slackware. Or you can try FreeBSD... :)

+1 for Zenwalk. Works great on my laptop. Don't have to pass extra kernel parameters ie: noapic irqpoll noirqdebug. For some reason I'm also not experiencing high load and unload cycles on my laptop hard drive with default install. :guitar:

[GSZX1337]

OpenSUSE, Mandriva, and PCLinuxOS.