[HLUG] distro

[Julian Robbins]

2009/11/9 AT Ege <andreas.ege at mymail.ch>

> Hi there,
>
> At the moment, and for the last few years, I am using Gentoo. And while
> I quite like the way to handle system and software administration, I get
> more and more annoyed by the time it takes to compile from source, esp
> if I have to install quite a few programms, like for system updates. And
> I just don't think anymore, that with modern computers I gain enough on
> performance side to justify the compilation time it takes. Not for me,
> anyway.
>

I think its a fair enough assumption. I also heard that the Gentoo community
isnt what it was a few years ago, which may not help.


>
> I tried SuSE 11.x and Linux Mint on our laptop, and I'm not really
> satisfied about them. I haven't tried fedora or (k)ubuntu yet, but I
> guess I'll have to pinch the laptop again to do just that. In the
> meanwhile, I would appreciate some thoughts and tips.
>

It always is a matter of personal choice, and there are so many distros, it
can be difficult to know what to go for. Still Linux is Linux, and there may
not be quite so much of a difference between distros as a few years ago.

Have you considered Debian? Stability, control, well reknowned?  I use
Ubuntu, which I have stuck with since Warty 4.10, (gosh a long time ago ;-)
), as it was more or less what I was looking for :- a reliable, debian based
distro, but has a 'just works' mentality. Upgrades from version of Ubuntu to
the next usually work without any problems, something that didnt always work
on Mandrake .

(K)Ubuntu doesnt seem quite so exciting as it once was, and it now is one
Linux leader in terms of numbers by quite a long stretch, but I still use
it, as its consistent.

FWIW, I've tried most of the distros over the years. Fedora is very cutting
edge, but occasionally does seem to be a bit too bleeding edge, with
annoying bugs; SUSE, I know what you mean, I could never quite get on with.
Mint is well liked. Mandriva has its fans, and is quite conservative in its
approach these days - not always a bad thing.

There are a few others worth looking out:- Pardus, which has had a good
press recently, and Slackware, if you like things simple.

The nice thing about (K)Ubuntu, is the number of deb packages for almost
everything nowadays, even closed source apps still have debs pretty often,
Adobe Reader, as an example.

So, although you may resist it, I would definitely try (K)Ubuntu as if you
do have a problem, there are so many people using it now almost certainly
someone else will have found it, fixed it, before you !

What do others think ?

Julian


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