Linux Flavors

Geebs61 · Post by **Geebs61** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 12:48 am

Well, as I said in a previous post my linux partition went belly up. So I am now looking into reinstalling it, and I was thinking about changing distributions. In the past I have used Mandrake, K12LTSP(Terminal Server), And a whole slew of liveCD's. But my last Install was Slackware. I liked it a lot, except that to install anything I had to compile it myself. Dont get me wrong, I like having control over my OS, but not THAT much control. I also had to do a fair bit of jerry-rigging to get my wireless card to work. Its a D-Link DWL-520, Which hasnt been well supported on linux.

Anyway, I just wanted to get your opinions on what you think the best distro is.You may be able to sway me from slackware if you are convincing enough.

Post by **gannon** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 6:18 am

I say Debian is out of date and kinda crappy.
I'm kinda hooked on Fedora at the moment, but I used to use SOT.

Post by **SpongeBuell** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 7:44 am

I have tried Knoppix, Red Hat 8 and 9, Mandrake 9 for 64-bit processors and SuSE 9.1. By far, SuSE was my favorite. Then again, I was looking for a foolproof distro, as I am a fool

MM007 · Post by **MM007** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 9:17 am

I, personally, require a Linux which is easy to use and works similar to windows, complete with a GUI. I am completely new to the Linux scene, and need suggestions as well for the best Linux out there for a newly converted Windows veteran.

I prefer good driver support for components made from the Pentium-era to present/almost present.

I've tried Mandrake 10.0 with KDE, and I liked it, but I couldn't do all that much. All I learned to do is map and access my drives....

Post by **Sparkfist** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 9:56 am

I've tried out Knoppix, its alright, but they cluddered up the desktop too much.
RedHat9, well its great and all but out of date so if your interested go with Fedora.
Plack, well if they'd update they distro as they're only at v0.2 it could be good.
The one I liked the best was DSL (Damn Small Linux). First is a live cd (can be put on cf or usb thumb), the iso is 50mb, the partision for hd install is 300mb, has a simple and very utilitarian GUI (flaxbox). I will say that it is more command line orianted, and lacks many mainstream programs but if your doing a hd install you can fix that.

I'm hoping I be able to use Linux as my main OS within the next 10 weeks.

HK-47 · Post by **HK-47** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 11:52 am

I like Fedora core 3. I havnt tried any other distros and I cant get a second hard drive to work (I think I set the jumpers wrong or formated it wierd), but its a pretty good OS.

Post by **Sparkfist** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 12:03 pm

HK-47 wrote:I cant get a second hard drive to work (I think I set the jumpers wrong or formated it wierd

Do what I did and use google to check the jumper setups for thing like master, slave or cable select. Also if you have windows box its very easy to format the hard drive.

HK-47 · Post by **HK-47** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 12:08 pm

Yeah, my problem is I can mount it. I think I have the jumpers set right, and linux detects the drive, I just cant mount it.

MajorLag · Post by **MajorLag** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 12:52 pm

I've used a lkot of linux distros and, frankly, I don't like any of them. On my list as sucking the least are Debian, GoboLinux, and Slackware. I havent tried Ubunntu though, and I hear good things.

Post by **gannon** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 2:06 pm

HK-47 wrote:Yeah, my problem is I can mount it. I think I have the jumpers set right, and linux detects the drive, I just cant mount it.

Have you tried to manually edit your fstab?

HK-47 · Post by **HK-47** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 2:13 pm

Ohh... I just thought of something. What kind of filesystem does linux use? I formated it as fat32... Could this make any difference?

Post by **gannon** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 2:15 pm

There are lots of different filesystems that linux can use. It can even use ntsc or vfat(fat32 for windows users) if you want. The default is normally ext3 I think.

HK-47 · Post by **HK-47** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 2:23 pm

So, I got a 80 gig ext3 hard drive and I got a 30 gig fat32 drive. Should I manually edit fstab? When I try to get to hdb1 (secoond hard drive) is says...

Couldn't display "/dev/hdb2"

Post by **gannon** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 2:36 pm

well, hdb2 should be the second partition on hdb, so if there's only one partition that's your problem. Just remove that entry from fstab

Also, does anyone else find it odd that linux registers usb thumb drives as a SCSI device?

HK-47 · Post by **HK-47** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 2:41 pm

No, I have 2 hard drives with 1 partition each.