Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 8:30 pm Post subject: Recommendations on which Linux to choose
I have been fooling around with Linux for a couple of years now and decided I wanted to try out a basic Linux distro. I am looking at Arch Linux or Linux from Scratch. Does anyone have any experience with either of them and a recommendation as to which you would choose and why? I am looking to get a slimmed down distro that still has all the things I want and use like the multimedia, office, email, web browsing, etc and is relatively easy to keep up to date. I figure if I play this one right I can end up with a real winner of a system and learn a lot more about how all this stuff fits together.
I had thought of going with Gentoo but with the problems they seem to be having personnel wise and the way they seem to be pulling so many different directions I passed on that one.
Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Joined: Aug 17, 2004 Posts: 29 Location: georgetown,oh
Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2008 2:46 pm Post subject: linux recommendation
i'm not too familiar with the distro's you mentioned but,if you're looking for a basic distro i would suggest ubuntu or kubuntu.ubuntu uses the gnome desktop and kubuntu uses the kde desktop.i have used kubuntu in the past and found it to be pretty solid,easy to install even for a beginner and hardware support is pretty good.i have also read on the net that meipis is pretty good.i use sabayon which is basically gentoo with things configured for you.although,you may have to enter some cheat codes to get your video working.all 4 distros come on a live dvd or cd so,you can give them a try without installing them.performance will be slow because they are running from your dvd/cd drive.once installed i think you will be happy with the performance if you have a decent machine.check out ubuntu.com kubuntu.com and sabayon.org for more info and images to download.hope this helps. _________________ Brian Edmisten
teufel36@maysville-linux-users-group.com
i refuse to use anything but linux.
Toshiba Satellite P205D AMD Turion X2 TL-58 1900 Ghz Each
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Sabayon Linux
Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 3:43 pm Post subject: Good but not what I am looking for
I already have those. I have the following distros on my computer now that I am looking at:
Pardus, BlueWhite64, Mandriva, Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS Mini Me, Sabayon 3.5_64, Mepis, Open SUSE 11.0_64, Kubuntu, Wolvix.
What I am thinking of is building a Linux from scratch type situation, but not Gentoo. Too much aggro with the various factions there. Both Arch and Linux from Scratch give you a basic which supposedly gets you on. Then you take it from there and select all the modules you want in the kernel and the applications you add to it. Essentially you are using them to design your whole Linux. I figure that if I can get that done I should by then have a really good understanding of the PC and Linux, something I do not have right now.
Joined: Aug 13, 2004 Posts: 335 Location: Maysville, KY
Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 8:49 am Post subject: Re: Good but not what I am looking for
You may want to check out rock linux - ROCK Linux is a flexible Distribution Build Kit. It can be used for building your own Linux distributions. It uses build scripts and source code.
I have used rock linux before and the built process is pretty straight forward, plus it gives you a great look into how everything in linux fits together.
I noticed you mentioned gentoo and not wanting to use it, but if you are designing your own distribution, gentoo is actually a great candidate. It doesn't matter what the devs do or don't do, once you have a boot strapped system, its up to you after that. Really I dont see the big deal ppl are dealing gentoo, I have used it for many years. Its not for the faint of heart or new linux user, but its a great building platform. Sabayon Linux by the way is based on gentoo linux - its really just a binary gentoo with the added equo package manager. Both gentoo and sabayon are built based on source code.
dick wrote:
I already have those. I have the following distros on my computer now that I am looking at:
Pardus, BlueWhite64, Mandriva, Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS Mini Me, Sabayon 3.5_64, Mepis, Open SUSE 11.0_64, Kubuntu, Wolvix.
What I am thinking of is building a Linux from scratch type situation, but not Gentoo. Too much aggro with the various factions there. Both Arch and Linux from Scratch give you a basic which supposedly gets you on. Then you take it from there and select all the modules you want in the kernel and the applications you add to it. Essentially you are using them to design your whole Linux. I figure that if I can get that done I should by then have a really good understanding of the PC and Linux, something I do not have right now.
Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 10:17 am Post subject: Gentoo
I got very turned off Gentoo when they came out with that LiveCD version of 2006.0 or 2006.1, something like that. It just did not do what they said it would and when I asked questions, as did a lot of people, I got as did they a lot of snarky responses back. The developers and experienced Gentoo people essentially told those of us trying to understand what was going on that we were too stupid to handle it. I ask questions only when I need to understand something and I can't find the answer elsewhere in terms that make sense. I don't need to hear crap from the mavens. It rather turned me off Gentoo.
Sabayon was a totally different experience for me. I installed the Sabayon mini 3.4 and used it for a good while and it did pretty well. My only problem was getting the world update to work. Had a couple of bad experiences with 3.4. I recently installed 3.5_64 and it has been a piece of cake to keep updated and it works fairly well. Not as fast as some of the others but remarkably stable for me so far.
I will look into Rock Linux. It might be what I am looking for. I would like to find a distro that tells me what the various modules do. Some of the names don't give a clue as to what they are all about and when I get a list to pick from I really need to be able to look p what the choices are about before I pick them out. The alternative is to just load it all but that is what I am trying to get away from. Otherwise why would I bother building my own distro like that in the first place.
Thanks for the heads up. I will look into it and maybe I might even take another try at Gentoo also. I have a couple of partitions open I can much around with that are 20 GB each. That should give me enough to get some good ideas.
In the meantime I am having a great time with Wolvix. Minor problem getting the internet to hook up because it didn't recognize my ethernet adapter but finally got past that one. It is an amazingly fast distro and it seems to recognize almost all the multimedia stuff and has most of the basics. It can use XFCE or FluxBox and if you want it to you can also add in KDE or GNOME, though why would you need them. Very nice people to deal with as well. It seems to do everything I want it to and do it toute suite and right now!!
Joined: Aug 13, 2004 Posts: 335 Location: Maysville, KY
Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 3:19 am Post subject:
hahaha, yes, I remember the first gentoo live cd....and I hated it. But, what you can do if you are like me is to use an even older version of gentoo pre-livecd, and do the manual installation method - stage 1 or stage 3. As soon as you bootstrap the hard drive and get the internet up and working, you can sync portage for the latest packages. Do the latest kernel and gcc + the build tools first. However, once you do that, you have to rebuilt world twice to get the system in sync. Gentoo from scratch stage 1 using a manual method for me takes about a week...give or take depending on workstation or server. I have heard you can use the live cd and use the old method to install but I have never done it personally.
I too have been using sabayon since 3.1 or 3.2 version. But I use it more like a quick way to get gentoo installed. As soon as it is installed, I remove what I don't want, modify my cflags and use flags, and then rebuild it using portage and not equo. It cuts the manual method of gentoo down to about 3 days. After I get the system the way I want it, I remove equo and entropy plus related packages. Don't get me wrong, a lot of people like equo and entropy for package management, but I am still gentoo at heart and prefer to squeeze as much performance out of the system as I can. The sabayon binaries are rather stable but not performance tuned.
I built several different versions of linux using rock linux. It is pretty solid distro. Being source based, its a matter of trial and error to find what works with what. Its not a quick process, but it works very well. Its command line driven with a menu system for the build. You can take a basic workstation configuration and modify it. Save it under a new name, and then build from there. Takes a lot of hard drive space. Basically, you are creating a cd/dvd image when you use rock linux. The first MLUG distro disk was made using rock linux as its foundation.
Puppy Linux and slackware (slax) are rather nice for building distros from too. There is much documentation on the net for doing it.
I have been working on something rather different lately myself....called tooback. Its a gentoo spinoff of backtrack security but aimed more at forensics and security audits and amd 64 based instead of i586/i686.
Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 8:10 am Post subject: Slight problem with the older version
I got a new computer (Intel Core 2 Duo E4400) last year and it cam with an Attansic L1 Gigabyte Ethernet Adapter. If you try to do anything with a Linux kernel prior to 2.6.22, it does not connect. I even had to get a module from Wolven at Wolvix to install before I could get Wolvix to work. When I tried with the full PCLinuxOS it would not work at all. I was going to try a couple of others but when I checked they were also way behind the times on the kernel they used. I think the full PCLinuxOS right now is 2.6.18. The PCLinuxOS Mini Me works but it does not use that kernel.
I wanted to try enlightenment and was thinking of Elive CD but it uses an older version as well and does not support what I need. I finally put E17 on Ubuntu and Sabayon 3.5_64 just to see how it worked and they took just fine. Interesting screens there. I rather like them.
Now I am also thinking of going with a wireless router and that looks to be another adventure. I really should cut down to just a couple of distros and get them fully settled as well. However, so many of them have parts I like and parts I don't. I am waiting for the x86_64 distros to finally get all the drivers and modules they need before I figure out which ones to jettison. Life is good!
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