Top Five Distros Of 2006 - Vote!!

[unlokia]

Hi people - thought it would be interesting to find out which five distributions you folks would like to put as the "Top Five Distros of 2006". Please consider things such as:

* Ease of Installation for a newbie
* Wifi 'out-of-the-box' setup
* Auto partitioning tools that don't require a degree in computer science!!
* The fact that you DON'T have to put Ubuntu as the winner, even though it is hotter than the sun

* Ease of package selection and automatic, pain-free installation of apps
* I am too tired to think of anything else to suggest that would deem a distros worthiness!

Please vote - have fun - I hope this thread is gonna run for pages!!!

:D :D

Oh and PS....... I **LOVE** Linux SO SO much, and thanks to my Uncle Micky from London, for posting me those Suse Linux 8.1 cds, years ago, to spark the fire inside for FOSS!!!.

YOU ROCK UNCLE MICKY!!

[Engnome]

1 Ubuntu
2 OpenSUSE //nice but a little bloated
3 Fedora //didnt handle my wireless
4 debian stable //nice server dist
5 Arch

These are the ones I like most/have had the most use of.

[unlokia]

Sounds very much like my provisional running order! :) - still thinking though :-k

[Kronoz]

Ubuntu - Ease of use, upto date and the works
Fedora - Technically great but just doesn't work for me
openSUSE - Er package manager fiasco.. But nice GUI design and concepts
Debian (Etch) - Stable, secure workstation, Slightly annoyed about the IceWeasel thing though.

Can't think of a fifth :p

[Anonii]

I will ignore your guidelines, and just post my 5 top distros (in no particular order.).

-> Ubuntu . User friendly, easy to use, great for beginners and advanced users, excellent community etc.
-> Debian. Original APT system creators, and a stable to death distro.
-> Knoppix. Great distro to introduce others to Linux. A PC magazine did the same for me with Knoppix's Live CD 3years ago. User friendly, nice hardware autodetection, and a great LiveCD.
-> Slackware. Simple, CLI banzai, text configuration, and every other thing that can guarantee that you will never get laid.
-> Linux From Scratch. I havent tried it, but it seems ******* great. It will be a great way to educate myself when school ends!

[AlphaMack]

Ubuntu - User friendly; "just works" out of the box most of the time. Excellent community and ******-free forums.

Mepis - A more polished version of Kubuntu.

Knoppix - Best live CD to use as a recovery tool.

Fedora Core - Runner up for 'best' on the desktop behind Ubuntu, although I'm not a huge fan of RPM-based distros.

Debian - When stability counts.

[unlokia]

Mepis is SO SO SO SO ugly :(

[~LoKe]

I'll probably give Suse a try when I get my RMA on my hard drive goes through.

[raqball]

Ummmmmm

Ubuntu 6.06 (NOT 6.10)
Don't care about the rest!
Suse --3 hour install, plus gnome looks horrid! Yum? Please spare me
FC6 YUCK Yum? Please spare me
BSD - No thanks
Linspire (rolleyes)
Um..... That's about it! :)

6.06.1 Rules :) :)

[unlokia]

@raqball... SUSE *three hours?!!*:confused: are ya installing it in graphic mode on a 286 dude?? :eek:

Mine was like 20 mins for 10.2 beta1 - what ARE you doing wrong?!?!?

[raqball]

@raqball... SUSE *three hours?!!*:confused: are ya installing it in graphic mode on a 286 dude?? :eek:

Mine was like 20 mins for 10.2 beta1 - what ARE you doing wrong?!?!?

Not doing anything wrong and I was refering to 10.1...

YA, 20 min to install, 45 min to look for server, 45 min to connect to server, 20 min to install updates ect..... It's a pain...

Have they solved this in 10.2? I have not tested it yet...

Thanks! :)

EDIT: And.... The looking for server and connecting to server are on a cox cable 10mbps dl speed, go figure :)

[unlokia]

I dont do online installs sorry - try it n see ;)

[ComplexNumber]

Mepis is SO SO SO SO ugly :(
you're telling me it is! :D. i temporarily instralled it the other week. the menu and the desktop overall are a complete mess.



my fave distros are:
-fedora - the only one that works out of the box for me. it also defaults to gnome and is nice looking with great admin tools. and i trust redhat more than the others. its also the most stable.
-suse - the best installer of all. lots of packages supplied on the dvd (great for those without an internet connection) to get the user up and running. the desktop is also one of the most attractive. yast is great.
-pclinuxos - the best kde distro by a long way. apart from opensuse, nothing comes close.
-ubuntu - although nothing seems to work with ubuntu and it has a sparse range of default apps, it gets such a high place due to its gnome default and range of available packages(about 19,000). desktop is quite attractive.
-i don't have a 5th. mepis doesn't work and has an ugly 'structure', mandriva is as buggy as heck, debian wouldn't even recognise my video card, and storm linux was installed so long ago that i can't remember.

[raqball]

I dont do online installs sorry - try it n see ;)

Agreed! but you still need to install the updates at some point.... And if you dont do it during install you will have to do it after... Either way it still searches for server and connects to server (can't remember the extact lingo) and it takes forever!!!!!

Have they fixed this in 10.2???

Thanks in advance :)

Edit: I noticed Suse now has a remastered CD/DVD that might cut down on that

[PatrickMay16]

Man, all I've used is Ubuntu 5.04, 5.10, 6.06, and 6.10 (Though I'm not getting the "true" 6.10 experience since I just did a server install and installed X and icewm, etc, on my spare computer, using dapper, then dist-upgraded and experienced some stupid problem with X not starting because the fonts weren't in the correct location but was fixable by copying them into the right location).

Can I get anyone's opinions on Fedora Core 6? I just ordered the CDs for it from linuxcd.org (because who can be bothered to download 6 massive CD images? Heh heh heh heh heh.)

[Vin¢]

Hm,

Kubuntu 6.06
Slackware 10
Knoppix
Fedora Core 5 (because if yer gonna have GNOME, ya may as well have good package management)
...something else w/ a KDE front end.

Vin¢

[kuja]

Kubuntu
Debian testing/unstable
Knoppix

I really couldn't care less about anything else.

[unlokia]

I must admit Fedora Core 6 is a mindblowingly subtle but VERY beautiful OS!. Mind you, if you can suss out how to get INTEL wifi to play ball, you're a better person than me - it is HARRDDDDDDDDD!!!.

I love the fact though, that Redhat have adopted AIGLX rather than XGL, which from what I gather is inferior, and more of a cobbled together "fix" rather than a purposely built layer, for 3d. Mind you, the amount I know about Linux 3d, could be inscribed on the point of a needle!.

Going back to FC6 and 3D though, it ROCKS with my intel 915GM graphics, and (unlike openSUSE) it doesn't stutter and drag my machine to a crawl, when I do something as mundane as simply rotate my desktop cube. Why on EARTH openSUSE have decided to adopt/develop XGL as opposed to AIGLX, is a sheer and utter mystery!.

Redhat is ohhh soooo beautiful, in the simplistic iconistic way - I never saw two distros such as Edgy Eft and FC that got the ugliest WM in the world, Gnome, so right... in fact as far as to say that I no longer think Gnome is ugly any more... (talk about self-contradictory LMAO!! :D).

I must say though that openSUSE, is hot for the top 2, because I love to follow its progress, AND it was the first EVER distro (SUSE 8.1 Personal Ed) I ever used - put it down to nostalgic memories of wondering where on EARTH was the "start" button in Windowmaker... DUUUH!!.

Have fun friends


PS: openSUSE people *IF* you are listening.... the sluggishness of YAST in 10.1 was simply (almost) unforgivable.... just DON'T do it again, it was a disgusting experience and you let us all down BADDD!! :) ;) ;)

[kuja]

I must admit Fedora Core 6 is a mindblowingly subtle but VERY beautiful OS!. Mind you, if you can suss out how to get INTEL wifi to play ball, you're a better person than me - it is HARRDDDDDDDDD!!!.

I love the fact though, that Redhat have adopted AIGLX rather than XGL, which from what I gather is inferior, and more of a cobbled together "fix" rather than a purposely built layer, for 3d. Mind you, the amount I know about Linux 3d, could be inscribed on the point of a needle!.

Going back to FC6 and 3D though, it ROCKS with my intel 915GM graphics, and (unlike openSUSE) it doesn't stutter and drag my machine to a crawl, when I do something as mundane as simply rotate my desktop cube. Why on EARTH openSUSE have decided to adopt/develop XGL as opposed to AIGLX, is a sheer and utter mystery!.

Redhat is ohhh soooo beautiful, in the simplistic iconistic way - I never saw two distros such as Edgy Eft and FC that got the ugliest WM in the world, Gnome, so right... in fact as far as to say that I no longer think Gnome is ugly any more... (talk about self-contradictory LMAO!! :D).

I must say though that openSUSE, is hot for the top 2, because I love to follow its progress, AND it was the first EVER distro (SUSE 8.1 Personal Ed) I ever used - put it down to nostalgic memories of wondering where on EARTH was the "start" button in Windowmaker... DUUUH!!.

Have fun friends


PS: openSUSE people *IF* you are listening.... the sluggishness of YAST in 10.1 was simply (almost) unforgivable.... just DON'T do it again, it was a disgusting experience and you let us all down BADDD!! :) ;) ;)
If I remember right, the two were being developed at the same time. XGL seemed to have developed faster at the time. As per the two of them, Intel graphics always seemed to perform better with AIGLX. Anyway, I do believe Novell/SuSE developed XGL (which is something of a fork of X), and that Red Hat + NVidia developed AIGLX (which is just a plugin for X). AIGLX is the better solution for a number of reasons. It's good to see it done.