Which distro?

[Lorem-Ipsum]

My laptop is currently running Ubuntu 9.10 for which support stops early next year.

My desktop runs Arch and I am leaning towards using it on my laptop as I'm starting to get annoyed by the way ubuntu does stuff.

Are there any other distro's people would recommend I take a good look at.


Oh and BTW. If it uses RPM's chances are I hate. it, including RedHat, Fedora, CentOS etc...

[Spaceboy]

Only flavours I'd really recommend and have played much with are Ubuntu and Fedora...

Been a few years since I did a gentoo install - worked well eventually but took about 3 days to get everything installed and running right

Tried Debian ?

[Lorem-Ipsum]

I tend to use Debian for stable servers but it is generally a bit behind.

Good distro though.

I may have another look at Gentoo. Its not exactly dis-similar to Arch.

[andyn]

Not really, I find that people put too much emphasis on distributions in the linux world. To me, linux is linux, and once you get past the installer and have made the decision as to which package manager you like, they are all operating on the same pool of GNU software, and assuming you have a basic working knowledge of gcc you can make almost anything run on almost any of them.

I use ubuntu for my desktop lately, but that's purely because it's debian based and convenient if I just want to get a pretty desktop with compiz and the usual bits and bobs running without spending ages tweaking .

If you've tried a red-hat based one, a debian based one, and something 'old school' like slackware or arch you've pretty much covered the major families.

Never tried gentoo myself, but I should probably get around to it. I know it was jhorner's personal favourite.

[Lorem-Ipsum]

I think I'll give Gentoo as shot and if I don't like it then Arch it is.

Tried Slackware a while back and wasn't too keen on it.

May have changed though. I'll have to try it in a virtual machine.

[Spaceboy]

Gentoo taught me a great deal about kernel building etc, so in that regard it's great, also everything is built on your machine, for your machine, from source... so it should be one of the quickest distros to use. The flip-side naturally is that it can be a complete pita to install

Need a gui? Install it from source. Need graphics drivers? Install it from source. Need a firewall? Install it from source... you get the idea

[andyn]

Yeah arch has much the same ideology.

Personally I CBA with all that, I actually HAD to do that back when linux came on 20ish floppies, and nowadays I don't really have the inclination to go to all that hassle to bum an extra 10% worth of CPU cycles out of my system . You're right in that it is the 'best' way though, especially in terms of learning stuff and having full control over your system.

[DoubleTop]

Oh my oh my, the joys of emerge and masked packages Gentoo is my OS of choice for production servers, built properly the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Redhat for those who need supporting Dev is done on simple plug and play Fedora. They all have horrid dependency trees in package managers, right across the range, it's just how it works

DT.

[Jackster]

Just to annoy DT,

BIG up CentOS ;P

[joker3327]

Mint is looking better and better...and if you go over from windows...PCLinux has the same feel lol

[Lorem-Ipsum]

I just installed Xubuntu 10.10 as I haven't tried Xubuntu for a while.

....... I don't think it's improved much.

I am either going to use the new crunchbang #! when it comes out or use Arch / Archbang.

[mikeyuk3]

i was just about to recomend that or Ubuntu10.10 lol Will you say what the new xUbuntua as i havnt herd much about the new one.