tried the rest - sticking with the best :)

**nishtya** · 10-02-2004, 09:02 PM

Debian. My particular flavor, Kanotix sid. Been on a little distro whoring spree and frankly nothing else can touch the apt package install system.

First tried SUSE. Yast, I am sorry is very overrated and like every other downloadable-version of a commercial distro is intent on installing pkgs from cd or forget it. Yes, I got it going but it is still clunky, clumsy, non-intuitive. Apt has it beat hands-down and kpackage leaves Yast in dust.

Now trying Mandrake. Nopers, same deal. First you have the elusive CD4 (which can be remedied) on the downloadable version. It is tied so heavily to CD apron strings for installing it's just annoying as hell. Even the things that come on CD, it felt like I was playing that sequel to Myst (name escapes me) where you are changing CDs every other click or so. And for whatever reason I was stuck in KDE 3.2 land - totally not me.

Haven't tried Fedora yet, have the iso's but if it is as disappointing as the other rpm package distros I don't think it is worth the time for the install. Only plus is that all the redhat experts at work may be able to provide some more help than on my debian based distros. But I manage.

**garyng** · 10-03-2004, 07:42 AM

The best distro is the vanilla debian, how come there is no entry for it ?

**OErjan** · 10-03-2004, 10:48 AM

jupp, Debian Stable or Slackware for me in 98-99% of cases when not using knoppix.
Toms-root-boot for remainder

.

**shah** · 10-03-2004, 11:16 AM

Kanotix (Debian)--->Knoppix(Debian)--->Slax(Slackware)--->Morphix(Debian)--->Mandrake---->Fedora---->Suse
So the answer is:
Any Debian will do. Why? Because of the superior of apt.

**nishtya** · 10-03-2004, 03:07 PM

Looks like from our small sampling we are debian loyalists (then again, this is a knoppix forum

).

Was a debian-based distro your "first-time"?

Maybe that has something to do with it.

**OErjan** · 10-03-2004, 03:46 PM

my first working install was Slackware3.5 or4 that was after two failed Redhat and one disastrous at some graphic intensive dist, do not remember what distributon, perhaps suse? (nothing worked as it should). then i got a laptop without cd and did a Debian Netinstall (only way i could thik of to get a decently lagre install without having to use 20-200 floppies)...

**richb** · 10-04-2004, 03:31 AM

Originally Posted by nishtya

Looks like from our small sampling we are debian loyalists (then again, this is a knoppix forum

).

Was a debian-based distro your "first-time"?

Maybe that has something to do with it.

My first try was Redhat, but it did not last long. I struggled installing packages. I then turned to Xandros (debian based) which was pretty good but certainly not cutting edge. I also made forays into Mandrake, Fedore Core, and Mepis. Mepis (debian based) was the best of the lot. But i must say knoppix has given me the best performance and the least trouble so far.

**garyng** · 10-04-2004, 05:15 AM

Originally Posted by nishtya

Looks like from our small sampling we are debian loyalists (then again, this is a knoppix forum

).

Was a debian-based distro your "first-time"?

Maybe that has something to do with it.

KNOPPIX was my first attempt as that was the only way to have linux on my Windows occupied disk. It became the bootstrap. Then I discovered that I can install debian with debootstrap on to a big loopback file. The rest just fell into place naturally.

Another reason I choose debian is that it has full distro for other arch like mipsel(my WRT54G has it and I am hacking it) or ARM(the new NSLU2 has it and I intend to hack it too).

debootstrap and network install(all depends on the magical dpkg/apt-get) rules which is why I said vanilla debian is still the best. KNOPPIX and the like are great for general PC, but won't work for things like Xbox(which I put a copy of debian on it) or WRT54G or NSLU2 or colinux.

**chris-harry** · 10-04-2004, 10:46 AM

debian...

**champagnemojo** · 10-04-2004, 02:01 PM

I did try a few others when I was first trying out Linux. I know I tried Mandrake (which seemed ok), Lindows (which seemed too windowsy), and Slackware (which I couldn't figure out at the time) and a few others. To be honest, I originally went with Knoppix just because it was one of the few distros that would work with my old HPNA drivers (which I now realize is just because Klaus still uses gcc2 to compile his kernels unlike most of the other distros). Now that I can compile my own kernel I suppose I could use any of them, but I'm still using debian. I just don't see how the others could possibly be better.