What distro to try?

xvedejas · Post by **xvedejas** » Tue May 06, 2008 10:35 pm

I have two blank CDs laying around. One is reserved for Elyssa Mint 5.0. That means I have one left. One.

And I want to use it, and I want to use it well. I want to use it to try a Linux distribution that I have never tried before.

Anyways, I don't know which one to try. I don't really care so much what it is, as long as it is different than mint so I can learn more about the world of Linux. Here are my guidelines;

1. It has to work with my wireless card out of the box (I think it uses the rt2x00 drivers or something like that). For comparison, Ubuntu 7.04 doesn't work it the card at all, 7.10 works a little bit, and 8.04 has it right on. Linux mint 4.0 works, and whatever the latest version of Sabayon is works. This I need working out of the box, but I don't care so much about other things like graphics acceleration as long as I can set it up later.
2. Whatever it is, it needs to have a somewhat decent package manager thingy. I don't care rpm/deb-based or whatever, I just want the ease that synaptic gives in Mint
3. It needs to be 32-bit, of course. I don't care what window manager or desktop environment it uses; I currently use Gnome, but I'm ready to try anything new.
4. It needs to have reasonable online support/community and the project needs to still be alive.

What do you guys suggest? openSUSE, Fedora, PCLOS, Arch, CentOS, Gentoo, Slackware, what? I don't really know these distros at all so I need your help in finding the one that will be the best in getting to know Linux a bit more, I guess.

Nomad · Post by **Nomad** » Tue May 06, 2008 10:51 pm

CDR or CDRW? If the latter then try them all

lakehousetech · Post by **lakehousetech** » Tue May 06, 2008 10:56 pm

CentOS is an enterprise distribution, but would be good to learn if you ever plan on working with servers. I would check out something like Fedora, since it's quite different from Mint and PCLOS...etc. Then again, CD-R's are wicked cheap.

GoustiFruit · Post by **GoustiFruit** » Wed May 07, 2008 3:09 am

Mandriva.

badmotor · Post by **badmotor** » Wed May 07, 2008 3:32 am

GoustiFruit wrote:Mandriva.

+1. I have just been trying Mandriva One 2008 from the live CD and am very impressed. Definitely work taking a look - wouldn't connect to the internet on my machine off the cd though. Not sure why that is.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed May 07, 2008 4:06 am

Try something thats not Debian. I would suggest something slackware based, maybe try wolvix, available in XFCE and Fluxbox on a 500mb iso.

exploder · Post by **exploder** » Wed May 07, 2008 4:21 am

I suggest Fedora 9 when the final release comes out. Fedora 9 really has some interesting differences.

miket · Post by **miket** » Wed May 07, 2008 6:45 am

Hi Xvedejas,

xvedejas wrote:I have two blank CDs laying around. One is reserved for Elyssa Mint 5.0. That means I have one left. One.

And I want to use it, and I want to use it well. I want to use it to try a Linux distribution that I have never tried before.

If you want to try something different then take a look at Slax .... http://www.slax.org/ ...
It is a very small, fast but fully functional distro ...

xvedejas wrote:so I need your help in finding the one that will be the best in getting to know Linux a bit more

Well what is wrong with Mint ? After all it is Linux as are all the other distro's ... why not delve into your Linux Mint setup a little deeper and get
to know the real operating system lurking just under the surface of the GUI interface

Mike.

rivenought · Post by **rivenought** » Wed May 07, 2008 8:40 am

Besides Mint, I would have to suggest Mandriva or PCLinuxOS. Those Live CDs have always worked flawlessly on every piece of hardware I have thus far tested. openSUSE is great, but it really shines best when you install from the DVD (4.2 GB). The openSUSE Live CDs (both KDE and GNOME) have been problematic in certain instances. Though, once installed and configured properly (after about 5 hours), openSUSE is fantastic. Good luck and have fun.

kanishka · Post by **kanishka** » Wed May 07, 2008 12:29 pm

I'd suggest Sidux for a real on-the-edge Debian experience; otherwise, I'd try Mandriva, XFCE edition!

Ookami · Post by **Ookami** » Wed May 07, 2008 6:29 pm

Sabayon is a LiveDVD, not a CD. You could try getting the slimmed-down version (which I'd actually recommend, I used to be a Sabayon advocate) plus it's gentoo so you're bound to get a lot of experience through it, but... there's not that much difference, really. It's just a big red mint with the feature-rich KDE instead of streamlined Gnome.

Why not use the spare CD to try an altogether different Operating System? Like BSD or Solaris or Minix, or even the likes of BeOS and Haiku and Darwin, and even GNU (Hurd) - get a bit of history down your disk drive

xvedejas · Post by **xvedejas** » Wed May 07, 2008 7:11 pm

I think I'll try fedora when it comes out. After that I'll be sure to get some more CDs!

NoClue! · Post by **NoClue!** » Wed May 07, 2008 9:18 pm

Why don't you install virtual box from the portal, no need to burn, your blank cd's will thank you.

Ookami · Post by **Ookami** » Thu May 08, 2008 7:52 am

sundayrefugee wrote:
Ookami wrote:Sabayon is a LiveDVD, not a CD. You could try getting the slimmed-down version (which I'd actually recommend, I used to be a Sabayon advocate) plus it's gentoo so you're bound to get a lot of experience through it, but... there's not that much difference, really. It's just a big red mint with the feature-rich KDE instead of streamlined Gnome.

Why not use the spare CD to try an altogether different Operating System? Like BSD or Solaris or Minix, or even the likes of BeOS and Haiku and Darwin, and even GNU (Hurd) - get a bit of history down your disk drive
Lots of mistakes here.

Sabayon is available as both a live DVD and a live CD. I can prove it. I have a LiveCD in both x86 and AMD64 versions.

“You could try getting the slimmed-down version, which I'd actually recommend, I used to be a Sabayon advocate.”

sundayrefugee wrote:It's not just Gentoo, it's *forked* from Gentoo *unstable*, but is unable to do a proper emerge. And if you don't know what package masking is in unstable, you're in for BIG problems.

Thanks for that.

sundayrefugee wrote:Not much difference? How could it be *more* different? At least with SuSE, Fedora, or PCLOS, you're going from one binary distro to another, the only difference being the format - RPM vs DEB. In Gentoo, you're compiling from source. *That's* different

You can still compile from source in Debian-based and RPM-based distros - I regularly do.

sundayrefugee wrote:"A big red Mint" couldn't be a statement any further from the truth! I wouldn't recommend it personally (I'd recommend Gentoo proper, instead), but come on. That's a wopper there!

I'm basing this on the community, not the OS itself. Both take a pre-existing established distro, and add their own ways of doing things. Mint adds the Mint-tools and software repos and portal, Sabayon adds its own package manager (Entropy), so it's a little bigger.
The artwork is redder, too.

sundayrefugee wrote:As for the others - BSD: good. Solaris: it might actually even *work* if you have the magical hardware combo that supports it at the moment, and you don't need much in the way of packages. Minix3: a great way to see what Fluxbox would have looked like, if it were made in the '60's - *if* the microkernel works on your hardware. BeOS: Died 10 years ago. Good luck getting that one going. Darwin: Why would you even mention this one? Another dead project that was never even completed. Hurd: still vaporware, 20 years later - let me know if you get it working Those suggestions are largely a waste of this person's time, as they're just looking to try out a different Linux

BSD - good indeed.
Solaris - works on x86, might as well have a go and see what it's like.
Minix3 - might as well have a go and see what it was like.
BeOS - might as well have a go and see what it was like. Plus, Haiku.
Darwin - might as well (&c.)... And I'll let Apple know its flagship operating system was never completed.
Hurd - Linux provides the kernel for the rest of GNU, might as well have a go and see what it is like.

I know they're a waste of time, they're history

So, erm... apart from knowing you can't emerge on Sabayon, I can't see many mistakes.
Being a novice user, I didn't know doing an emerge was going to break my Sabayon, especially as I regularly did it to compile a lot of extra programs

Thanks for the info, I'll make sure to use Entropy from now on.
_____________________________________________________

xvedejas wrote:I think I'll try fedora when it comes out. After that I'll be sure to get some more CDs!

Fedora is gorgeous, if you can handle the bleeding-edge nature of it, I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

MagnusB · Post by **MagnusB** » Thu May 08, 2008 3:56 pm

sundayrefugee wrote: Hurd: still vaporware, 20 years later - let me know if you get it working

http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install
Still a bit complex install, but I seem to remember some students made this process allot easier last year or something, not sure. And Hurd is actively developed, and is usable today, but there need to be someone implementing it, for now it is only debian who has a Hurd branch, if you want something else you need HFS (Hurd From Scratch

).

rfpa · Post by **rfpa** » Thu May 15, 2008 12:40 pm

You could try Pardus, the second best Linux distribution I ever tried, only second to Mint. They have incredible own created features! A must look!

They have two cd's. One is a Live Cd and another the installation cd (Kurulan).

http://www.pardus.org.tr/eng/

http://worldforum.pardus-linux.nl/index.php

AK Dave · Post by **AK Dave** » Thu May 15, 2008 4:55 pm

I agree re: Sabayon. I've run and compared Kubuntu (both KDE 3.5 and Hardy/KDE4), Sabayon, and Mint KDE.

Kubuntu is Ubuntu with KDE bolted on top. Nothing special. Their focus seems to be on Gnome. Thats fine. Ubuntu is a fine distro.

Sabayon (I recommend the Lite CD x86_64 version) is indeed a big red KDE. Nice. Glitzy. On my laptop it did a great job of identifying all of my hardware and installing appropriate drivers. For example, it found my ATI Radeon, identified it specifically, and stepped me through configuring the restricted driver so that Compiz worked properly immediately upon boot. Very slick. But Mint-Elyssa installs with EnvyNG, which does the same thing. So unless you like red, its no big deal. It does have a very slick and polished look to it, but that is the desktop theme. I'm not a big fan of red, but I keep a Sabayon LiveCD in my collection as a "3D desktop demo" because of how well it does this. Sabayon = Eye Candy

Mint/Daryna KDE I'm new to, but I see it as a more solid merge of the two. At first blush, I said "green Kubuntu". But I like the features that it offers. Nicely done. I look forward to seeing Mint/Elyssa KDE. Mint KDE with EnvyNG and restricted video drivers on install could make me turn that Sabayon LiveCD into a frisbee.

Something to try? Give a look to OpenBSD. You spend some time with OpenBSD and you can easily turn yourself into a crypto geek.

Something else? Give a look to my roots, and try OS/2.

Fred · Post by **Fred** » Thu May 15, 2008 5:03 pm

Or.... You could give a look at my roots and try an abacus! lol

Fred

GoustiFruit · Post by **GoustiFruit** » Fri May 16, 2008 2:51 pm

You can try PCLinuxOS Gnome version. Very nice

deki999 · Post by **deki999** » Fri May 16, 2008 3:07 pm

PCLOS

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