Ubuntu vs... ?

[1337455 10534]

I've been using (pretty much hacking) Ubuntu 6 hours a day for 4 months now, and I have never tried any other OS (save for Windows and Mac-based ones). What I mean is, how are the other Linuxes in terms of speed, ease, looks, and "power"??
My definition of "power" being compatibility, intelligence, CPU intensiveness (less is better), hardware detection, security, ya... It's elusive and flexible, so feel free to describe a distro using any words you want:

Ubuntu 7.10 beta:
> Speed: Not bad.. Not bad!
> Ease: The best!
> Looks: Could be better by default, but everything is as customizable as humanly possible.
> Power: People say configuration utilities are lacking (a.k.a YasT is "godly"), but I have found everything accessible. On the same box w/ XP on it, Google earth coughed and died, while Ubuntu excelled, while using Compiz Fusion!!! CPU hogging is a bit worrying, but not much. Security, compatibility etc. have never failed me. The only problem is that the beta has WAY too many bugs/

[-grubby]

Gutsy beta works better than Fiesty stable for me, but since it is a beta it's supposed to have bugs!

[blithen]

Gutsy beta works better than Fiesty stable for me, but since it is a beta it's supposed to have bugs!

w00t another Washington dude. Anywho

I have the same experience Gusty beta is amazing.

[vgrisham]

The only problem is that the beta has WAY too many bugs/

I have not hit ANY bugs at all in the two weeks I've been using Gutsy (big knock wood). So far, it's been the most reliable Ubuntu. It recognized the fact that I had a widescreen LCD monitor and that I had an ATI Radeon video card, and it configured them 1440x900 out of the box, which really blew me away considering how much grief I had getting that resolution in earlier releases.

To answer your original question though, I'm going to have to say the next best thing is openSUSE 10.2. Ubuntu's USB scanner regression ticked me off, so I thought I'd give suse a whir. It recognized everything out of the box, including a scanner that, worked in Dapper, then was not functional in Edgy or Feisty, as well as my conexant modem (both of which Gutsy now snuggles up to gleefully). And you're right; yast is a really nice tool. From my brief stint with suse, I get the impression that they have a pretty good online support community, though they seem much more corporately oriented.

On the downside, the software installation program in yast bites. It's unbearably slow and synaptic beats it hands down. And looks wise--yawn. Moreover while Ubuntu tilts gnome, openSUSE leans heavily towards KDE, which ain't my flavor.

In the end though, Gutsy drew me back. It promises to be the best release yet.

[mindtrick]

If you're updating your system regulary it ain't beta anymore. Release Candidate was released few days ago.

Virtualbox is a good application for trying out other distros.

[1337455 10534]

Ok, great comments all. First of all, when I say it has a lot of bugs, I have certain programs that are doomed to be buggy anyway (Swiftfox Trunk, Pidgin, Compiz Fusion, Rebooting and ACPI issues, Firestarter... No one can deny Gutsy is beautiful past comparison as far as Linuxes go!
Secondly, not to start a war, and I know this is a terrible place to say this; but I really hate, despise, loathe KDE. OK. Cool. I won't go into details. I tried it. It spat me out. I will say it has great apps developed for it, but, *sigh*, let's (OK, me) drop the topic...
Oh, and I have updated my system everyday, and I noticed the new linux headers, images, new xorgs, new gnome-panels, and new compiz packages. I thot it might have updated.... It asked for a reboot and all, and I updated today too.
It's still buggy, but it hasn't lost any functionality Feisty had.

How's SuSE? I'm about to partition my hard-drive and put it on.. 10.3 though, not 10.2.

[anagor]

Essentially all Linux distros are using the same programs/applicaions and libraries, maybe the versions are a bit different, but thats all.
The big differences are mostly, what modules and default options the kernel was compiled with, what applications and libraries are installed by default and how they are preconfigured.
It will only take a few hours for example to reconfigure default Debian Etch installation to look and feel like Ubuntu, well not exactly but close enough, same is true for Ubuntu to feel like pure Debian (it even easier :) ).
You can try OpenSuse or Mandriva, altough they use rpm and not deb as a packaging system, they both feel and look very polished and well thought.
I myself started with knoppix when they released they first beta, then I tried Mepis, Debian, OpenSuse, Ubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora Core, Sabayon and Gentoo approximately in this order.
But I always found myself returning to ubuntu, since they default settings are made the most sence for me, the deb packaging system is by far the easiest and stable to use and they just a little more on the edge while being reasonably stable and predictable than pure Debian distro.
I use gutsy now as my primary and currently have OpenSuse and FreeBSD installed for learning.
Surely the gutsy have some bugs here and there, but nothing serious and I can see the progress from update to update almost every day :).

[anagor]

to answer your last post, Suse is very nice and feels speedy :)
Default installation have very good range of apps for every day use and the default settings are quite sensible.
But quite easy to break if you start fiddling with it too much, partially because of it being rpm based. ( I really prefer debian way for binary packaging :) )

[rsambuca]

Essentially all Linux distros are using the same programs/applicaions and libraries, maybe the versions are a bit different, but thats all.
The big differences are mostly, what modules and default options the kernel was compiled with, what applications and libraries are installed by default and how they are preconfigured.
It will only take a few hours for example to reconfigure default Debian Etch installation to look and feel like Ubuntu, well not exactly but close enough, same is true for Ubuntu to feel like pure Debian (it even easier :) ).
You can try OpenSuse or Mandriva, altough they use rpm and not deb as a packaging system, they both feel and look very polished and well thought.
I myself started with knoppix when they released they first beta, then I tried Mepis, Debian, OpenSuse, Ubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora Core, Sabayon and Gentoo approximately in this order.
But I always found myself returning to ubuntu, since they default settings are made the most sence for me, the deb packaging system is by far the easiest and stable to use and they just a little more on the edge while being reasonably stable and predictable than pure Debian distro.
I use gutsy now as my primary and currently have OpenSuse and FreeBSD installed for learning.
Surely the gutsy have some bugs here and there, but nothing serious and I can see the progress from update to update almost every day :).

I agree with most of this, except to say that I think the biggest difference between the major distros is the actual package management. Debian based uses apt, gentoo based use portage...

[mindtrick]

How's SuSE? I'm about to partition my hard-drive and put it on.. 10.3 though, not 10.2.
Package manager sucks. You miss Synaptic a lot. Otherwise, really cool distro. Yast is great, etc.

[mindtrick]

And I can recommend Zenwalk (http://www.zenwalk.org/) if you wanna try something interesting. It's XFCE based and very fast.

[67GTA]

Package manager sucks. You miss Synaptic a lot. Otherwise, really cool distro. Yast is great, etc.

The new 1 click install has apt and Synaptic for install on 10.3. You have to use the "run command" in the menu to open it.

[1337455 10534]

Excellent. I suppose I will stick to Ubuntu, but for a while, I had fantasies of some arcane distro that can achieve godly speeds on a P4. Ah well, mite as well keep on hacking. Anyone know any speed tweaks :)? I turned off unnsecessary services already...
Btw: I love Synaptic to death, and would crawl through a Vista fanboy forum to preserve it!
Is SUSE rpm or apt? Can this be changed?

[Martje_001]

Ok, great comments all. First of all, when I say it has a lot of bugs, I have certain programs that are doomed to be buggy anyway (Swiftfox Trunk, Pidgin, Compiz Fusion, Rebooting and ACPI issues, Firestarter... No one can deny Gutsy is beautiful past comparison as far as Linuxes go!
Secondly, not to start a war, and I know this is a terrible place to say this; but I really hate, despise, loathe KDE. OK. Cool. I won't go into details. I tried it. It spat me out. I will say it has great apps developed for it, but, *sigh*, let's (OK, me) drop the topic...
Oh, and I have updated my system everyday, and I noticed the new linux headers, images, new xorgs, new gnome-panels, and new compiz packages. I thot it might have updated.... It asked for a reboot and all, and I updated today too.
It's still buggy, but it hasn't lost any functionality Feisty had.

How's SuSE? I'm about to partition my hard-drive and put it on.. 10.3 though, not 10.2.
Mwa.. it's not really buggy, you just have to install it again. I too thougt is was buggy untill I installed the RC clean :D

Suse = rpm. Yes, it can be changed (as linux = linux ;)), but it's very very hard to do.

[bonzodog]

Excellent. I suppose I will stick to Ubuntu, but for a while, I had fantasies of some arcane distro that can achieve godly speeds on a P4.

Like a previous poster said, try Zenwalk Linux, derived from Slackware, or, if you are feeling brave, and are confident with conf files and the CLI, try Slackware itself. Slackware has no package manager as such, though it does have binary packages. Mostly, they have to be downloaded from a particular site on the net, and dependency handling is as close to zero as it gets.
Zenwalk however has a package manager called netpkg, which does dependency handling as zenwalk packages it's own software.

Also, if you are feeling *really* 1337, then try Arch linux. This one doesn't hold your hand in any way shape or form.
It can be built to be lightning fast, and is still binary packages, and has an amazing package manager called pacman. Some people would argue that pacman outperforms apt.
Before you think about it, go to their site, and have a look at the manual for installation. Yeah, this requires that you read a manual to install it.
But, once you have cracked tweaking the rc files, you will have a lightning fast system, with things installed *exactly* as you want them.

[1337455 10534]

I may partition for Arch soon! Arch to learn/speed, Ubuntu to work.
Thx. Yes, I have looked at Zewalk before (on the web) and I find Ubuntu a lot cooler.
Why does everyone say "Gentoo is so fast?"
I mean, maybe it is, but if you custom compiled every program you use in Ubuntu for yourself, it'd be faster too, right?

P.S: Is Arch Compiz Fusion able?

[rsambuca]

...Why does everyone say "Gentoo is so fast?"
I mean, maybe it is, but if you custom compiled every program you use in Ubuntu for yourself, it'd be faster too, right?

You are correct in that Gentoo is fast because of the custom compilations. Also, yes, Ubuntu would be much faster as well if you compiled every program. The big difference, is that Gentoo and its package managent system does the compilations for you, and keeps track of updates, etc. It just really isn't feasible to do this manually with a debian based system like Ubuntu.

[1337455 10534]

Gentoo's speed comes at a price regardless, your sanity. I would hate to spend 5 minutes compiling a program before I could use it!!!
But that' just me.
Anyone know how much faster it is?
Say; opening OO3 on 7.10 takes, ahh, 9 seconds on aP4; how bout on Gentoo?