debian is way ahead

[cintra]

Agree with probono.
I've tried Gentoo before, and didn't suit me....I guess I don't have enough patience to wait for anything to compile everytime I want to install programs.
It's a good distro if you have enough time on your hands.

I guess in the long run its a matter of which distro you feel most comfortable and confident with. What you can "get your head around" and learn most from, if thats your goal.

In addition to Gentoo, I run Knoppix/Debian and Suse 9.1 on harddisk, and have played with numerous LiveCDs.

They each have a different feel, the forums too - some distros are just that much easier to update to 'cutting edge' than others.

"Cryptic messages and dependency problems", show me a distro that doesn't have those..

As for waiting around while new packages download & compile in the background.. its not as tho' you can't do other things at the same time - on your system - but it certainly helps to have a reasonably powerful PC, and enabling 'ccache' speeds things up a bit too.

Btw, those who prefer a quick install are able to install using Stage 3, and can install a number of packages from a binary Packages CD.

Please don't think I'm knocking Debian here. I just like to encourage others to 'taste a good wine'

mvh

[Cuddles]

Wow, and I feel good that I'm just changing from Knoppix to Kanotix - this is sobering

I can, and have, knocked apt, many times, but, never considered the "other" ways Distros install, never seen, or used, them... But, I have to admit, when you have to break-down, and compile, that gets really scarey... Nothing a newbie likes to see, and not having a clue what "is" and "isnt" good or bad, doesnt help matters... ( was that a "good" error? Or a "bad" error, kind of thing )

I have to admit, these forums have been a lot of my education, and I have only read one book about Linux ( a Sys Admin book, and it was written for RedHat, not that hard to translate into Debian-based ), I wont count the "other" book I read, considering it was "glossy" on the Linux subject, ( the blue screen of death book ).

Knoppix has been my "eyes" and "hands" to the world of Linux, I think I can "manage" to work, and know what to do, stuff... If I hit something I havent a clue about, I hit this forum up, either a search for previous posts on my issue, or, last ditch, a new post. I use my "knowledge" to post back on subjects I have learned, or have ideas about, and tend to "watch" posts, to see if something "catches my fancy"...

I dont think I will ever sway from anything Debian, I think I'm just a "Debian Girl", and I dont think that is ever going to change. I'm not one to go after installing new OS's just to see what they look like, or do, I tend to run what I need, or have to, to do what I want... And, I appologize for ANYTHING I have ever said about apt, it is got to be the best, considering the alternatives

Ms. Cuddles

[nishtya]

Yay Apt. And deb. You can actually use apt (am using synaptic as a mgr) on other distros. I am/was used it on Fedora (FC is going byebye, gonna run SUSE as a spare). And well, it is apt. But there is just something about the implementation of apt system in debian that they are perfect for each other!

Cuddles, do not apologize for being a Debian girl! Hey, debian is supposed to be hard, remember? I dunno...it's like if you cut your teeth on these live CDs (and I should say deb based live CDs, there are other distros' versions and they stinko) and Deb, well who coined the baby duck back in the other thread? I think it was you!

[garyng]

Agree with probono.
I've tried Gentoo before, and didn't suit me....I guess I don't have enough patience to wait for anything to compile everytime I want to install programs.
It's a good distro if you have enough time on your hands.

I guess in the long run its a matter of which distro you feel most comfortable and confident with. What you can "get your head around" and learn most from, if thats your goal.

In addition to Gentoo, I run Knoppix/Debian and Suse 9.1 on harddisk, and have played with numerous LiveCDs.

They each have a different feel, the forums too - some distros are just that much easier to update to 'cutting edge' than others.

"Cryptic messages and dependency problems", show me a distro that doesn't have those..

As for waiting around while new packages download & compile in the background.. its not as tho' you can't do other things at the same time - on your system - but it certainly helps to have a reasonably powerful PC, and enabling 'ccache' speeds things up a bit too.

Btw, those who prefer a quick install are able to install using Stage 3, and can install a number of packages from a binary Packages CD.

Please don't think I'm knocking Debian here. I just like to encourage others to 'taste a good wine'

mvh

If it is simply i386(native boot), I believe most distro is more or less the same, a matter of taste. But Debian is unmatched when it comes to odd cases which is what I am facing. I can't find an easy way to "install" redhat/suse/mandrake for my colinux, or my Xbox but debian is easy as I just need to debootstrap a rootfs on another machine. Gentoo is fine based on what I have read. I also need to occasionally compile/install some programs for my WRT54G and Debian is the only distro that has mipsel arch(I run a NFS rootfs on my WRT54G to compile quick and dirty packages for it). The same applies to my will be acquired device NSLU2, that has ARM, again only debian has such distro.

The strength of Debian is that it is so comprehensive that one can easily fork something based on it, witness the derivatives we have.

[firebyrd10]

My first taste of a linux system was a Red-Hat based distro. I didn't like it and it kind of swayed me against linux. After awhile I found the knoppix cd and gave it a try again.

Enjoying that I then install dehbain useing one of their install cds.

Thats my other base system.

I got three.
In order of most used.

1. Windows XP, It just got all my games and programs really.
2. Pure Debian sarge, wanted to give it a try and I run it often.
3.Knoppix 3.6 install, uses it to make dvds because it already has what I need.

I don't plan on ever moving from debain.

[cintra]

Read others' thoughts

in a new thread "your experience with Linux Distros" found at:

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.p...315&highlight=

regards

[baldyeti]

I can't find an easy way to "install" redhat/suse/mandrake for my colinux

I had no need to install any new distro to run under colinux - my existing debian can be booted on its own or under XP via colinux. This is especially easy since they introduced device aliasing, so the (virtual) partitions of colinux (as declared in the xml config file) can be named just like the real ones. I also have a tiny startup script which adapts the IP address depending on whether linux is the main or hosted OS. I bet this all would work with any linux distribution, after the initial careful setup of colinux config file. Try it I bet you'll all love it.

BTW, you need 0.6.2 for device aliasing to work (makes it much easier to boot existing install, eg fstab is the same since partition names are the same). This version has not been released yet, so grab the latest snapshot. The colinux support & dev mailing lists are also mirrored at news.gmane.org, which makes it real easy to access.

[ZeroKun]

I tried FC3 test 3 and it was slow.......so slow. I mean it took like 30 seconds for the terminal to pop up when on my debian system it was almost instant.

[nishtya]

Same experience here with FC2. It acted like a doze computer full of spyware or something. Awful slow, preoccupied with I don't know what.

[garyng]

I can't find an easy way to "install" redhat/suse/mandrake for my colinux

I had no need to install any new distro to run under colinux - my existing debian can be booted on its own or under XP via colinux. This is especially easy since they introduced device aliasing, so the (virtual) partitions of colinux (as declared in the xml config file) can be named just like the real ones. I also have a tiny startup script which adapts the IP address depending on whether linux is the main or hosted OS. I bet this all would work with any linux distribution, after the initial careful setup of colinux config file. Try it I bet you'll all love it.

BTW, you need 0.6.2 for device aliasing to work (makes it much easier to boot existing install, eg fstab is the same since partition names are the same). This version has not been released yet, so grab the latest snapshot. The colinux support & dev mailing lists are also mirrored at news.gmane.org, which makes it real easy to access.

I have to stick with 0.6.1 because I can only work on 2.4 kernel for now(The Xbox support in 2.6 is not complete and WRT54G also use a 2.4 kernel). Transporting an existing roofs for a distro is not too difficult, it is the initial installation that is a problem. Say I want a SUSE, I need to give it a "real" computer to install to before I can extract its rootfs. This cannot be done on my PC which has one big HD with one big NTFS partition, nor on my Xbox. The only way is to use VMWARE or VirtualPC but I am poor and don't want to pay for it.