Your Favorite Non-Debian/Ubuntu Distro?

[forrestcupp]

Arch linux is my new favorite distro period. Installed it for the first time about a month ago and i love it.

After the thrill of working your butt off setting it up, are there really any noticeable advantages? I know it's a rolling release, which could be considered good or bad.

I remember when you first announced Fuduntu on here, and I didn't think you had a snowball's chance in the netherworld. But it seems like you've done a good thing, and everyone who tries it seems to love it.

This, without any doubt. In its own way, it's much simpler than Ubuntu - by rejection the notion of simplicity of learning the system in favour of simplicity of the system itself.

So you're saying that Arch is simpler than Ubuntu?

[mamamia88]

After the thrill of working your butt off setting it up, are there really any noticeable advantages? I know it's a rolling release, which could be considered good or bad.

I remember when you first announced Fuduntu on here, and I didn't think you had a snowball's chance in the netherworld. But it seems like you've done a good thing, and everyone who tries it seems to love it.

So you're saying that Arch is simpler than Ubuntu?

well it's not really working your butt off installing it. you just read the begginers guide and make sure you type in commands verbatim and it's simple to setup. it might not have a pretty graphic installer but it's not hard. the 2 main advantages to me is that i know nothing is installed on my computer that i don't need and that the documentation is so good. also the aur is awesome but it's only an advantage if you can't find what you need in ubuntu repos/ppas. most users probably won't need anything from it. is it worth it? depends on the hardware and the user. if you don't mind sacrificing some speed for a quicker initial install time and want everything slightly complicated to be hidden from you then use ubuntu. If you want a lean mean machine and want the peace of mind knowing that if something breaks that the answer is on the wiki somewhere then use arch. i used to think that arch was hard and then i tried it. I'm on a netbook and ubuntu seems to be getting more and more bloated. With arch i don't have to hope that canonical optimizes the os to run better on my hardware.

[cwsnyder]

Since you state non-Debian as well as non-Ubuntu based Linux, my votes are for PCLinuxOS, Puppy, Tiny Core, and Slitaz. If only one vote allowed: PCLinuxOS.

Fedora/CentOS/RHEL has given me too much grief installing, OpenSUSE would give me mysterious crashes on bare metal. That is why I have basically stayed with Debian based distros like Knoppix, DSL, Debian, Ubuntu, and Mint.

[fuduntu]

I remember when you first announced Fuduntu on here, and I didn't think you had a snowball's chance in the netherworld. But it seems like you've done a good thing, and everyone who tries it seems to love it.

Most everyone thought that, even I did at first, as I didn't expect anyone to use it.

There are still some out there spreading FUD about us, but fortunately we don't see that here at Ubuntu Forum.

We are almost two years into the project, and it's continuing to grow like crazy. I couldn't be happier with how we've come along, and the direction we are heading.

Hopefully people will continue to enjoy it!

[BeRoot ReBoot]

So you're saying that Arch is simpler than Ubuntu?

You can set it up so that the system itself is much simpler than ubuntu - ie, fewer layers of abstraction, less services running to accomplish the same thing, etc. However, no matter how hard you try, you probably couldn't get it to be as simple to learn and use as ubuntu, but that's not the kind of "simple" I'm talking about. I'd much rather have an OS that's simple to use than an OS that's simple to learn.

[forrestcupp]

There are still some out there spreading FUD about us, but fortunately we don't see that here at Ubuntu Forum.

Well, the first 3 letters of your name are FUD.

You can set it up so that the system itself is much simpler than ubuntu - ie, fewer layers of abstraction, less services running to accomplish the same thing, etc. However, no matter how hard you try, you probably couldn't get it to be as simple to learn and use as ubuntu, but that's not the kind of "simple" I'm talking about. I'd much rather have an OS that's simple to use than an OS that's simple to learn.

So you're saying that it's worth the pain in the backside to set it up because you can end up with a system that's simple to use. Arch is not as simple to learn, but after you get it all set up and learned, it's simpler to use. Is that what you're saying?

[cecilpierce]

There are a few Arch DE's that are already setup pretty nice.
The first time I tried arch I gave up! Too complicated, but kept tring it and if your bored and have time to get on the forums its not as hard as you think, if I can do it anybody can...

[GreatDanton]

[BeRoot ReBoot]

So you're saying that it's worth the pain in the backside to set it up because you can end up with a system that's simple to use. Arch is not as simple to learn, but after you get it all set up and learned, it's simpler to use. Is that what you're saying?

You can certainly set it up to be that way, although it's still a "high-maintenance" distro compared to Ubuntu. Once you're used to how it works, it's a lot less hassle.

[rhlegion]

I love Arch! yeah to the newer Linux user it might be a little tricky to install, but it's so customizable. It just feels like it is your operating system and not someone else's that you just downloaded.
It's fast
It's stable
It's how you want it
It has rolling system updates.
All the packages I've downloaded so far are very up to date!

What's not to love?