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marcel
13th October 2007, 21:48
What Linux distribution are you guys using, and why?

jacek
13th October 2007, 22:42
and why?
The answer is simple --- because it's the best. You're really asking for a holy war. ;)

marcel
13th October 2007, 22:47
The answer is simple --- because it's the best. You're really asking for a holy war

You voted for other :). Did I miss any big/popular distro?
So what is the name of the distro?

Gopala Krishna
13th October 2007, 22:53
Yeah jacek, but this is also a nice chance to know some of goodies of different distros.. ;)
Whatever it is, i use kubuntu on my main system and recently installed yoper on my old 900 MHz pc. Yoper really is fast and good(10 mins install with all basic tools in one cd) . :-)
As far as kubuntu is concerned there should be many more people to post about it ;)

wysota
13th October 2007, 22:57
You missed PLD that Jacek uses. And yes, you are asking for a distro war. Oh, and your choice of distros is really weird :) No LFS? No Ubuntu but Kubuntu present? No Redhat (be it Enterprise or an old installation of RH 9-)? What about other Debian flavours and non-debian Distros?

Oh, forgot to argument my vote... Debian because it's very stable and very secure and very selfmaintaining for servers and Mandriva, because it was the first distro I managed to install and I didn't have a reason to uninstall it. Sometimes I also use LFS, but I decided not to vote for "other", as I haven't booted it for over a year.

marcel
13th October 2007, 23:04
Oh, and your choice of distros is really weird :) No LFS? No Ubuntu but Kubuntu present? No Redhat (be it Enterprise or an old installation of RH 9-)? What about other Debian flavours and non-debian Distros?

It was a hard choice, yes, but mostly because the poll can have a max of 10 options. I tried to choose only "veteran" distributions. And yes, I should have mentioned Ubuntu too.

fullmetalcoder
14th October 2007, 17:08
I tried them all since I first booted a live CD and I'm currently using Frugalware (Slackware derived) and Zenwalk (Other) because they are able to kick the living shit out of my low end PC which has lagged behind for a couple of years already... It may change when I get a new computer but its I guess I'll wait for KDE 4 to be released so I've got plenty of time left to make a choice... ;)

Brandybuck
14th October 2007, 20:57
I'm not using Linux, I'm using a real operating system! FreeBSD! :p

marcel
14th October 2007, 21:12
Come on... I admit that FreeBSD is one of the best but the poll was about Linux.
Anyway since you mentioned a Unix, I think Solaris kicks the asses of all BSDs out there.

wysota
14th October 2007, 22:57
Linux is GNU and GNU = GNU is Not Unix :)

Michiel
15th October 2007, 23:55
Gentoo! Because it's one of the few distro's that works for/with me. Because of Portage / use-flags. Because of the excellent Gentoo community.

Gopala Krishna
16th October 2007, 13:44
Is it possible to use two different linux distros on the same system along with win-xp ? Someone told me that though it might be possible, its likely to decrease the performance of system!
I want to try gentoo without spoiling my stable kubuntu(feisty) installation.

marcel
16th October 2007, 14:02
Yes, I have used xp + slackware + suse and sometimes xp + slackware + freebsd and sometimes xp + slackware + solaris :).

It is just a matter of who's bootloader you use. I've always used LILO, from slackware. Just add the other OS's to /etc/lilo.conf and runu lilo. Of course, grub can handle it too.



Someone told me that though it might be possible, its likely to decrease the performance of system!
That's a lie :)! Unless you decrease the performance, a linux distro can't :). A computer does only what you tell it to do.

Installing multiple os's is just a matter of having free hard-disk space.

Bottom line, you always have to use the bootloader from one of your linux distros, since XP's bootloader can't be configured that easily. I didn't even tried, although I have read some articles on the internet that stated it was possible.

For me LILO is just fine.

EDIT: just be careful when you create the partitions for the new system. Typically, all you need is a root partition and a swap partition. I always use cfdisk or even fdisk since it gives more control. So try to use those, if you can, not the installer's partitioning utility.
For example, the one from SuSE sucks, so I bet there are other systems just like that.

Gopala Krishna
17th October 2007, 13:08
Thanks Marcel, may be i can reserve one partition to try linux distros. :)

hgedek
17th October 2007, 16:48
Iam using SUSE.I tried debian,fedora,ubuntu,gentoo.But I couldnt use them long time as suse.I am happy with it and still using it.

Tux-Slack
17th October 2007, 22:17
Is it possible to use two different linux distros on the same system along with win-xp ? Someone told me that though it might be possible, its likely to decrease the performance of system!
I want to try gentoo without spoiling my stable kubuntu(feisty) installation.

It's posible.
But you should rather try some Virtual Machine for testing out distros and you won't mess with anything. VMware, VirtualBox, qemu...

I'm using Slackware 12 on my work-laptop and Slackware 11 on my home file server.
Why Slackware? SSSS.
Stability
Safety
Speed
Simplicity.
In that order.
And because of the great Slack comunity.
Slack 11 on server because I'm to bussy and lazy to upgrade. And it does its job and never had any problems with it.

Kumosan
17th October 2007, 22:43
Currently using Gentoo, but this will change soon. I am not directly interested in Linux and I don't want to waste that much time anymore to search the Gentoo forum after each world update to get everything that broke running again.

Brandybuck
18th October 2007, 20:33
I needed a Linux on my laptop (because of the necessity to use a closed source proprietary video driver), and due to the lack of time, I put on Kubuntu. Other than knetworkmanager, which I like, the rest of the distro seems rather lackluster and somewhat buggy. When this project is complete, I am thinking about putting on Slackware.

marcel
18th October 2007, 22:29
When I started this thread/poll I was also in search for a distribution fit to be installed on a laptop.
I use Slackware on my desktop and never had any reasons to complain,but when I first installed it on my laptop it turned out it did not have any power saving features available.
For example, the cpufreq modules are not automatically loaded and I don't know if they even are compiled(they should be, I'll have to check this). Therefore the CPU was running at full voltage even when it didn't needed to. The videocard can also run in power saving mode, but I can't take advantage of it since nVidia saw fit not to distribute the GeForce Go 8xxxm series drivers themselves, instead they let the laptop manufacturer release them. The worst part is that there's no version for Linux, so I'm stuck with the generic 'nv' driver.

At that moment I turned my head towards SuSE. It seemed really good. I installed the 10.3 release and it had all support I wished for. Unfortunately I realized after using it a little bit that it sucks. KDE was completely modified, you don't know what's what. It doesn't even look like KDE. Basic tools are missing, such as mc. God knows what else was missing, but I didn't want to stay and find out so I quickly uninstalled it(actually installed slackware over it:)). I wonder if SuSE users really know how a freshly compiled KDE looks like...

So I installed Slackware 12 and I will configure the kernel myself for whatever I will need, whenever I get around with it. It is fast, simple, easy to update and easy to maintain. So I recommend it for a laptop, but only if you have the time to stay and configure it.

Brandybuck
22nd October 2007, 18:31
So I installed Slackware 12 and I will configure the kernel myself for whatever I will need, whenever I get around with it. It is fast, simple, easy to update and easy to maintain. So I recommend it for a laptop, but only if you have the time to stay and configure it.
I am thinking of dumping this Kubuntu and putting Slackware on my work laptop. My requirements are simple, but too simple for today's complicated *nix world. A fairly minimalist base install, decent package management, vanilla KDE, and open source drivers for my hardware. Slackware doesn't have decent package management, and hoping for open source drivers is still as delusional as it was ten years ago. Oh well. Slack still comes closest.

wysota
22nd October 2007, 19:29
I heard Windows has got good hardware drivers ;)

marcel
22nd October 2007, 20:01
Wysota, you are ruining my Linux distributions poll!
:)

wysota
22nd October 2007, 21:13
Why so? I didn't add a "Windows" option, did I? :) And I even voted in your poll!

marcel
22nd October 2007, 21:20
I was joking :|.

Why so? I didn't add a "Windows" option, did I? :)
If you add it, probably will get the most votes.

wysota
22nd October 2007, 21:28
Cheer up, it's not that bad.

Brandybuck
23rd October 2007, 01:36
I heard Windows has got good hardware drivers ;)
When I repartitioned my Thinkpad, I discovered that I didn't have any of the necessary Windows drivers. They were all on the "recovery" CD, when when you recover it will undo your partitions. So I had to hunt down and find wifi/video/touchpad drivers on my own. Definitely not user friendly.

wysota
23rd October 2007, 09:19
Maybe Windows detected BSD partitions and gave you something extra for them being there? ;) I lost my partition table a few times thanks to format.exe present on Windows installation CD that formated the first partition starting from block 0 instead of 1...

Brandybuck
23rd October 2007, 18:45
It's just that the recovery CD reformats the entire harddrive, regardless of partitioning.

ucntcme
12th November 2007, 18:40
I use Gentoo at home (and Mac), and RHEL at work. Without regard to which is "best", if you are going to poll and claim "veteran" distributions, you can't put any Ubuntu up without listing Red Hat. Not disparaging any of the *buntus, of course.

GreyGeek
27th March 2008, 23:47
You voted for other :). Did I miss any big/popular distro?
So what is the name of the distro?

Just a FEW!. The distro I use is PCLinuxOS 2008 MiniMe.

Visiting distrowatch.com would give you a list of those distros that folks query the most. You missed Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, Mint and Sabayon.


Rank Distro Pagehits
1 PCLinuxOS 2400
2 Ubuntu 2329
3 openSUSE 1461
4 Fedora 1291
5 Mint 1175
6 Sabayon 1018

przemoc
28th March 2008, 15:01
Servers (including my home one): Slackware 12 - because it works^TM
Desktop & laptop: Ubuntu 7.10 - because it works mostly out of the box

yogeshm02
28th March 2008, 17:13
My first was Mandrake (2002) then SuSE 9.0 and since then I'm using SuSE (now openSUSE).

lack
27th April 2008, 00:37
first.. does it really matter? :D

i used zenwalk once - slackware derivative i suppose, lightning fast!
and now for development, openSUSE 10.3. why? coz it came shipped with all the tools (and Qt) in one dvd, i don't have to search repos anymore.

about drivers, IMO it's always an adventure with linux :)

ComaWhite
14th March 2009, 20:04
Is Slackware still preferring 2.4 over 2.6? ;)
And Lilo over Grub ;P

jay
11th April 2009, 09:56
Dear All,

We are running our Server application in Slackware. This server application doesn't have GUI. Its running fine now. Do you feel any other distribution supports better by considering more user connection. please give your views.

Thanks in advance.

MTK358
22nd June 2010, 22:58
Arch Linux, because it's fast, customizable, and doesn't hide anything.

I don't use Windows any more :D

shmerl
29th September 2010, 19:18
Linux is GNU and GNU = GNU is Not Unix :)

It doesn't change the fact that Linux inherits practically all of its roots from Unix, since it was modeled after Minix :) And Linux is not simply GNU. It was born out of cooperation between GNU and Linus, but since then it incorporated a whole bunch of different sub-projects such as Gnome, KDE, X.org etc. So it's far from just GNU anymore.

I like Debian, because of their spirit and the fact that they aren't controlled by any corporation. Out of open Unixes I like OpenSolaris (which was recently frozen by Oracle, but reborn by community as Illumos/OpenIndiana).

MTK358
29th September 2010, 19:46
Also, Linux is not GNU. GNU's kernel is called the HURD and it's still unfinished. But since Linux, like GNU, are buth Unixes, they dropped in Linux instead of the HURD and called it GNU/Linux.

Some Linux distros have a HURD edition, such as Debian GNU/Hurd and ArchHurd.

GuL
13th October 2010, 20:37
Arch Linux and Chakra

genjix
25th October 2010, 19:43
When I first got into Linux, I was switching between tons of different distros all the time like Slackware, Gentoo, TinyLinux and others. Now I just run Kubuntu.

I don't want to waste time building packages, admin'ing my computer (boring!) and fiddling with configs all the time. I just want to write code and have it all work. No hassle. And you don't gain much anyway by doing all that stuff.

Says a guy who runs a tiling window manager (Awesome) ;)

franz
1st November 2010, 16:49
Gentoo, because I generally get annoyed by other distros and this one does what I want it to do. I can live with the compile times. Also usually I find the solution to a problem is easier to fix in gentoo than in some other distros. Customizability FTW \o/. Maybe I'll try LFS or Funtoo some day.

HelderC
11th January 2011, 12:19
Oh come on? Where is the Ubuntu?

So, I use Ubuntu because is stable, fast and much more easier to programming using the most different libs!

ChrisW67
15th February 2011, 00:10
Gentoo now. Have used Slackware and Mandrake (now Mandriva) in anger in the past. I even used Yggdrasil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yggdrasil_Linux/GNU/X) for a while.

jendral_hxr
2nd May 2011, 17:44
Mine is mostly Slackware or Slackware-based distros for my personal use.
My laptop runs Salix64, Zenwalk for some old boxes, Slackware in my personal pc.

But I still have Linux Mint on lab, despite another box still runs Wolvix :)