tried the rest - sticking with the best :)

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.

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

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

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.

:D :D :D

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

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

Maybe that has something to do with it.

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)...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by nishtya

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

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.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by nishtya

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

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.

debian...

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. :D

I like Slackware 9.1 and 10.0, but I love Knoppix (3.3 to 3.7). I like its simplicity, nothing to install after the OS.
Don't know Debian. Isn't this unstable? I know Knoppix is based on it, but hey, it's a great OS. :wink:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by nishtya

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.

---

much as I agree with the end result I find the reasons wrong...
mostly bad marketing by Mandrake but CD4 contains NOTHING you need. what it dioes have are a few commercial progs (mainly demo's) and pre-made RPMS for NVIDIA/ATI and winmodems... all of which can just be downloaded from a website...


Once it is installed then the first thing to do is delete the CD sources...
and install the urpmi web sources for main/contrib and plf. If you didnt do this then you didnt really try the distro ....

second you need to find www.mandrakeusers.org ... ignore the official mandrake supoprt and try this...
It is much faster to get replies than here and certainly faster than kano's forum if you dont speak German!

On Suse -

Quote:

---

Apt has it beat hands-down and kpackage leaves Yast in dust.

---

In other words you didnt try apt4rpm :wink: so once again you missed out... but it is a lot harder to install stuff not on the Cd's and again the support forum is much faster than here tho less fun and a bit stuffy! http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/


In the end I prefer my deb installs and kanotix as a quick installmethod but I love by Gentoo installs and Mandrake is OK if a bit too noobified for me...

XP Pro (sorry). I do love Debian, though. It's getting there.

jd

gowator, I did, indeed, go to easy urpmi and went through the whole shebang there. urpmi still looked for CDs. Finally had it that it would look on the net for a lousey package and then it griped about dependencies. Oh well.

To be fair, debian makes you jump through hoops to install pkgs from CD. When I was still on dialup I would try to download at work on broadband and bring home on CD (with dependencies) and though apt would get the primary pkg from the CD it didn't want to look there for dependencies... it was added in sources and I tried a tool as well :( Other than that, for me, debian and apt is best.

I still have mandrake on here and haven't given up on it. But it just pales in comparison to debian and I hope the devotees to this distro and its derivatives grow. It is great 8) really is. Look at lindows/linspire. They have former windows-only people that can only handle windows merrily CNR-ing. Yes, it is costing them and plain old apt may be somewhat crippled but it is still the apt system that is running CNR for them. Not bad.

It seems to me to boil down to how a person relates to
the distros maintenance facilits in the end. And package
management of course.

I like the way debconf dosen't try to take over from
me. If i want to utilise it as a service, i may, but
there is no insistence to do this.

I also like the flat nature of debs packaging system.
Rather than having everything in mysterious binary data
base files. A package is basically an "ar" archive anyway,
and so, it's not hard to access directly.

Back porting, also, is trivial. Otherwise there
all the same really. Perhaps, differeing in the
init technique, and the patch level of the kernel (RedHat).

Knoppix, like other debs, seem to go with this user
rules policy. Which is good.

Personally, i find the Magician logo used by
Mandrake a bit childish. And the "lets be a windows
clone" attemp, as made by the major distros, to be a
bit of a sell out. So, i just don't trust their
competence/integrity, just for those reasons.

jm

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by nishtya

gowator, I did, indeed, go to easy urpmi and went through the whole shebang there. urpmi still looked for CDs. Finally had it that it would look on the net for a lousey package and then it griped about dependencies. Oh well.

To be fair, debian makes you jump through hoops to install pkgs from CD. When I was still on dialup I would try to download at work on broadband and bring home on CD (with dependencies) and though apt would get the primary pkg from the CD it didn't want to look there for dependencies... it was added in sources and I tried a tool as well :( Other than that, for me, debian and apt is best.

I still have mandrake on here and haven't given up on it. But it just pales in comparison to debian and I hope the devotees to this distro and its derivatives grow. It is great 8) really is. Look at lindows/linspire. They have former windows-only people that can only handle windows merrily CNR-ing. Yes, it is costing them and plain old apt may be somewhat crippled but it is still the apt system that is running CNR for them. Not bad.

---

removig the sources for CD's
urpmi.remove media -a (or Cd1,CD2 etc.) but this is on the easy urpmi site, just not so obvious...

on the dependancies, i would guess you didnt have contribs?

but I prefer apt myself ... :D

portage is also pretty good if you feel ready for Gentoo... and I hear good things about arch for bleeding edge packages...

Quote:

---

Personally, i find the Magician logo used by
Mandrake a bit childish. And the "lets be a windows
clone" attemp, as made by the major distros, to be a
bit of a sell out. So, i just don't trust their
competence/integrity, just for those reasons.

---

Can you believe they are fighting and being sue'd over using the magician ..LOL but I agree 100% about what sort of impression/trust does it give.

How about:

http://kanotix.com/info/index.php
http://www.knoppix-std.org
http://www.phlak.org/modules/news
http://www.localareasecurity.com

Regards,
AJG

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by gowator

----------------------------------
Can you believe they are fighting and being sue'd over
using the magician ..LOL but I agree 100% about what
sort of impression/trust does it give.
----------------------------------

---

Oh really, :), not SCO by any chance, chuckle....


Just on the cdrom and dependency resolution thing
mentioned further up. I figure it's nothing that wouldn't
already be known,
but i'll mention it any way, just in case any one reading
this is wondering. If i'm not mistaken,
deb/dselect/apt will want to find some descripter info
on the cd, to verify it as an
official source
location. It's been a while since iv'e had much to do
with initialising a cd set. But,... if an official cd
set was handy, a person could use the files on one
of those to template that, Can't remember off hand
their names. I think one may be called ".dist".
It should be on the cd's root though. It will
basically just contain a descrition string that will
be added to a file in

"/var/lib/apt".

Probably "cdrom.list", then apt dselect will read
the cd, and place a file, something like...


"Debian%20GNU_Linux%203.0%20r0%20%5fWoody%5f%2 0-%
20Official%20i386%20Binary-1%20(20020718_dists
_unstable_contrib_binaryi386
_Packages"


in the "lists" subdirectory.

A bit of friggin around, true :), but...
deb will be deb :).

I generally just use "apt-get --dry-run install
<package>"

to get a depends list, then head for the "ftp" site
and then just back-port from src on a seperate partition.
All tree'd up to suite debs' helper scripts...

I know doing bulk upgrades/updates is basically what
"apt" is all about. And people haven't got a lot
of time to spend on stuff like this generally. But,
smaller, contained updating can be a lot of fun,
and informative.

Still, ... i wish apt-get, when pointed at a src
file would also reveal depends. But what the heck,
it's only a minor thing, and i get to learn so much
more, than i otherwise would :)

I was, very pleasently surprised too, with knoppix.
When i finally got "v3.3" to boot up,... to suite
my setup, (screen-resolution/vga, etc) and found

"sid" :).

jm

jj, I did install some tool or another that did what I believe you are talking about for to make a CD a genuine repository. Name escapes me. Was still a pita :)

as far as the mandrake and magician, I was thinking maybe it was the publishers of Mandrake the Magician comic. I have to go google :D

My fav: modified Knoppix. So far I've used 3.1,3.2,3.3 & 3.4.
Next best: modified Knoppix. So far I've tried....
I've best fiddling with Linux about a year and a half. Had quite a time getting started, first with Mandrake (got it to download, wouldn't load), then Debian (some problems trying to get it to install too. Then got a 'Freeduc' disk (a Knoppix derivative) from Linux Format magazine. Wow, it actually just installed & ran, big change from Debian, no tons of setup which I didn't know how to do, but it had 'only' XFCE for a desktop & I wanted KDE so I became a Knoppix fan. No slur on xfce intended, I just like KDE more, especially really impressed with konqueror. Also got used to apt-get, nothing else even comes close. The only negative was (and still is) that I customize quite a bit on initial setup so upgrading from version to version is quite a chore. Thus I'm reluctant to try 3.5,6 or 7 unless there appears to be some significant improvement not just minor changes.
From the same magazine I've also tried Yoper (wouldn't load), Slackware (needs lots of setup & no apt-get) , Fedora core, a SuSE live CD demo and Mandrake 9.2. Mandrake was impressive in that it just installed and EVERTHING worked, even my scanner but I didn't like the way it Mandraked everything (setupDrake this and menuDrake that etc). About a month later KDE 3.2 came out & it took another month to successfully accomplish the upgrade which I was only able to do after somebody more skilled than me posted the mdk-rpm's. Even then, it was necessary to install whole mega packages ie, to get kpat you had to take all of kgegames package. and, with MDK 10 out, nobody is making MDK 9 rpm's any more, this is not a problem with Debian, a .deb is a .deb is a .deb.
So Knoppix it is because it's the easiest way I know to get a Debian system complete with a backup run from CD. If I REALLY had to pick a second (non Debian) I would probably use Fedore just because it's generic redhat.

yes, fedora core will probably be my next try out on the spare partition. SUSE was the one that disappointed me the most because it was really polished, but Yast was no fun at all :(

combine apt and kpackage and you get shopping! Now that's fun.:D

===================================
howdy nishta...

>>
jj, I did install some tool or another that did what
I believe you are talking about for to make a CD a genuine
repository. Name escapes me. Was still a pita :)
>>

There's a tool to do that, hmmmm, makes sense. I must
find that.


I just mounted "disc 1" from my woody cd set, to
check on just how it's layed out.

There's a "hidden" directory, one prefixed with a "dot"
at the top of the tree, ".dist".

In side that, there's a file called "info", which contains
a description string, that dselect will use to recognise it.

" Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 r0 "Woody" - Official i386 Binary-1
(20020718)"

The next disc will have "Binary-2" instead of "Binary-1".

The rest would be just the same as for a local
repository i would think. I only keep a repository
on a seperate partition rather than on cd, so i'm
speculating that the layout for a cd would be the
same, except for the additional "dot" directory,
[ must get a burner :) ].

All that involves is creating a heirarchy, such as...

"dists/unstable/main/binary-i386/m"

main can be local/non-free etc.
unstable could be any thing.

The last directory "m" can be anything, containing
subdirectories, named after the package...

"m/modutils/modutils_2.4.26-1_i386.deb"


In the bottom of the "binary-i386" directory you just
need a file called "Packages.gz" that lists the
descriptions of the deb's. And possibly a "Release"
file, not really important. To get the "Packages.gz"
file, a helper script just needs to be run from the top
root directory, above "dists".


"dpkg-scanpackages dists override | gzip >
dists/unstable/main/binary-i386/Packages.gz"


"override", can be called anything and will more often
than not be zero size.

That will scane all directories below the dists
branch, and then create the file and put it in
dists/unstable/main/binary-i386.

To make it more specific you could do...

"dpkg-scanpackages dists/unstable/main override |
gzip > dists/unstable/main/binary-i386/Packages.gz"


That would scane all below "dists/unstable/main"

Put that on a cd, with the dot directory... ???
who knows, :).

I haven't tryed it myself though, just local
repositories.

Hope that wasn't to over the top, or anything... but,
i do tend to find debs documentation a bit on the vague
side myself. Which dosen't
help much, and tends to give the impression that deb's
some sought of rocket science distro.

Which it isn't. It's just that they can't write docs
very well :D


>>
as far as the mandrake and magician, I was
thinking maybe it was the publishers of Mandrake
the Magician comic. I have to go google
:D
>>


Hows all the screw ups there'v been doing over the year.
The great "LG drive" screw up, earlier in the year,
the occasional table scramble screw up... there's never
a magician around when there needed :)

hmmmm, i think iv'e forgotten the thread topic, next
favourite distro i think. Well, with knoppix, i
can see a sid, with heaps of things installed and set
up. So it's really good to use as a template to work
on my existing modified woody with, which is at sid
any way, except for libc6. And, as knoppix is deb...
and deb is about as straight forward, unhyped
as it gets... And it takes years to learn a system
anyway. Why blow it by hopping. I'll just stick
with these two.

As RH was my first Linux, and they are known for
their innovation/patching, i probably wouldn't
mind having FC in, just to have a look. :)

jm
===================================

I have to thank Knoppix for introducing me to Linux, but now I'm addicted to Gentoo & currently running 2.6.9-rc3.. EDIT now 2.6.10-rc1 ;-)

mvh

I like banana's... I mean... *cough*... i also have to thank knoppix for introducing me to linux in a not too hard but not too easy way... :D thanks...

Howdy cintra

>>
I have to thank Knoppix for introducing me to
Linux, but now I'm addicted to Gentoo & currently
running 2.6.9-rc3..
>>

I use the v3.3 Knoppix, with the same kernel. I just
copied over the modules directory from my main deb
and added an entry to boot Knoppix using the same
kernel. That is, from a common boot directory (hdb1).

It is a nice fast kernel, i had no end of problems with
the v2.6.8 series.

Just out of curiosity, the way i installed Knoppix,
was just to do a raw copy, using tar, of the
/KNOPPIX directory and relavent ramdisk directories.
A bit primitive, but it worked. Funnily, it ran very
slow. Until i realised everything in /var was trying
to point to a non-existing directory on the cd.

Not that this actually relates to anything to do
with the thread topic :). Now, the only thing that id
strange, is the occasional freeze of my filemanager.

I use "Filerunner", a Tk based program, compiled
against woody's v2.2.5 libc6, using gcc-3.2.3.

It should be ok in Knoppix, but... I'll just have to
recompile and see if that fixes things.

Iv'e heard a lot about Gentoo, it sounds like quite
a nice distro, with a bit of a BSD influence. Going by
their portage system...

Anyhow, enough yac for now :)

jm

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by cintra

I have to thank Knoppix for introducing me to Linux, but now I'm addicted to Gentoo & currently running 2.6.9-rc3..

mvh

---

yep why limit the choices to RPM based or other Debian based though to be fair I have a Deb box too. I love em all.... Im just a distro ho

I too thank knoppix for making Debian simple, after playing with knoopix for a while I went back to Debian and it was a breeze t o install; any time I need a new program: is apt-get and voila .

for me it's slackware and debian; I've always loved slackware and I'm glad they're still going,
and I like the way everything works properly in debian stable; I have a friend who swears by Rock linux (you compiile everytihing from source like gentoo) but I haven't used it myself; one of my worst experiences with redhat enterprise server was trying to build a kernel with a specific patch level from a source rpm, if you've ever tried you'll know what I mean (messy post-install scripts...)