Your favorite Linux distro and why?

[LazerTag]

I snagged an extra 30Gig drive for my box and want to install Linux again. I had always used either Redhat or Mandrake myself so I am familiar with those two. I have not used SUSE since about version 5 something I think. I hear Gentoo is quite good?

What's your favorite distribution and why do you like it over others?

NOTE: This thread is not meant to start a bash war between various Linux flavors, just looking for general information. And I have not interest in Solaris or any BSD variants so we can leave that at the door.

 

[Malcolm]

Suse is a nice distro and I'd choose it over Red Hat (actually I'd choose windows ver 1 over Red Hat) and over Mandrake.

Personally I likes Gentoo much better because I have control over all the packages that are bring installed; theres also a lot less bloat.

 

[Hacktarux]

I'm using gentoo because installing/removing a software is very easy, you always have up to date software each time you install it and if you have a problem the gentoo comunity in the official forum is wonderful.

Some people will also tell you it's the only distro that'll let you optimize it for your own computer as it'll compile every packages before installing it and you can define the compiler settings as you want.

But there are some drawbacks to this... you'll have to wait a long time when you will install it (it will compile everything), i suggest you to start the installation before going at work or before going sleeping or something.... The only difficulty to install it is to compile the kernel, it can be quite hard to do the first time you do it, especially if you don't have any linux experience. Lastly, it's quite annoying to use if you don't have a permanent internet access imo.

From what i've heard the only distribution that have gentoo's qualities is debian but i have never tried it.

 

[mesman00]

i like gentoo because of the ebuilds

 

[radTube]

Gentoo, because of it's customizability and the wonderful ebuild system. The helpful gentoo community is a big plus.

 

[The Khan Artist]

Where's Slougi? I haven't seen him around here in a while...

Anyway:

Gentoo is good, but the optimization makes no difference in the vast majority of apps. I highly recommend compiling with Os instead of O3, and maybe using -f-omit-frame-pointer, and of course -march-type, but that's it.

The only problem I have with Gentoo is sometimes it just seems like a bunch of disparate pieces that don't quite fit together. Mandrake or SuSe will give you a much more polished feel, at the loss of a small amount of control.

If you don't my horrid installers, don't want to spend days installing with Gentoo, but still want maximum flexibility, go for Debian. Make sure you add in some -unstable and -testing repositories, or you'll have super-oudated (but super-stable) software.

 

[blight]

If you have a good internet connection and a fast pc i'd suggest gentoo (but not -Os which optimizes for executable size - thus creates smaller executables which load faster but run slower)... also use -pipe as it speeds up the compilation process... -O3 creates big executables, -O2 is good IMO (like -O3 without size-expensive optimizations - inlining and unrolling)

but if you have never compiled a kernel yourself this might very well be the reason to fail gentoo installation... debian feels kinda like gentoo but i like gentoo even more

:w00t: 800 MHz FSB and 3.2 GHz ram??

 

[LazerTag]

:w00t: 800 MHz FSB and 3.2 GHz ram??

Was that for me?

My new system is 800Mhz FSB, but the PC3200 RAM is actually rated 400Mhz when used in any 800Mhz FSB.

Well I'm not sure if Gentoo is for me. I'm all for control of the PC and I have compiled many a programs and kernel's before, but it sounds to be more of headache then I wish to take. I think I'd rather go with something quick and easy that's a little more bloated for now (time is always a factor, lol).

Anyway thanks for all the insights. I plan to steer clear from RedHat and try out the latest Mandrake for now. I may go grab Debian and have a look as well.

 

[euphoria]

Well i'm no expert, but i wouldn't suggest RedHat (but that you already excluded). They seem to have non-standard sources/binaries. Trying to apply kernel sources pathces fail == you have to dload ~30 meg whole kernel source packages with 5.6k modem . They have their own update system, but i don't want to use it.

 

[The Khan Artist]

If you have a good internet connection and a fast pc i'd suggest gentoo (but not -Os which optimizes for executable size - thus creates smaller executables which load faster but run slower)... also use -pipe as it speeds up the compilation process... -O3 creates big executables, -O2 is good IMO (like -O3 without size-expensive optimizations - inlining and unrolling)

I have read a couple of very well-informed works on optimizations. The basic gist of it all was that on modern CPUs, the performance decrease from cache misses far outweighs any benefits from -f-inline-functions and -f-unroll-loops, which are two of the main extra optimizations applied by -O3.

Unfortunately, I can't find any links right now. Sorry.