What is Digg?105 Comments
- cricketsymphony, on 09/25/2008, -3/+25that was 4-5 years ago. say what you will about ubuntu, but it has drastically changed "easy," "first-time" Linux a reality.
- zeroshiftsl, on 09/25/2008, -5/+26Why is it only about these 3? They're great (although, I've never been much of a fan of SUSE), but other distros are woth a mention. I would have to say Debain, although Gentoo is a close second.
- sloppychris, on 09/25/2008, -0/+21Because trying to fit in mentions of all 37,000 distros causes more harm than good.
- phreenet, on 09/25/2008, -9/+29I'm a fan of the Gentoo. Sure it takes a little longer to install, whatever.
- theaceoffire, on 09/25/2008, -2/+14Why bother with stable, fast and free?
Why not try Windows© XP™? - jellygraph, on 09/26/2008, -1/+12Debian and anything built on top of Debian (ie. Ubuntu).
- FreddieD, on 09/25/2008, -0/+11Every comment you make is so obnoxiously biased towards Apple that I can't figure out if you're serious or just performing some social experiment.
- 0phatpat0, on 09/25/2008, -1/+12I am an old slackware user, I was a Deb fan too, but am now using Ubuntu and loving it.
I like it, as even my sister could use it.
There are only a couple of distro's that can really get a nice chunk of the market share, which I hope they do. - DivineMonkey, on 09/25/2008, -3/+13Pffff, no Archlinux on the list....Lame.
- Origin415, on 09/26/2008, -1/+10Wine runs viruses just fine, if you want. I guess it takes away somewhat when the viruses can only affect the .wine directory
- coldmilk, on 09/25/2008, -1/+10Arch FTW !
- kiwimonk, on 09/25/2008, -0/+9I absolutely agree with the Gentoo crash course method.. It really gives you a great underlying understanding of the OS.. and understanding things in that manner leads to being able to troubleshoot. Arch is as you said, the best of both worlds. Pre-compiled and Optimized. As for having everything work, I enjoyed Mandrake for it 'just working' and again SUSE for its eventual one up in that area over Mandrake (Mandriva).
- craftyguy, on 09/25/2008, -1/+9TypeEE:
WTF does that even mean? - Zenham, on 09/25/2008, -1/+9I've been using Linux since the primitive days, when the installation process included cross compiling the kernel somewhere else and bringing it over on a floppy (CD ROMs were still kind of a new thing). I've used Slackware, Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise, Fedora, Debian, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Mandrake, SUSE (before and after Novell), Turbolinux, Mandriva, Damn Small, Arch, and probably a few I've missed on my desktop in production.
I prefer Ubuntu over the others, because having done all the hand-rolling myself dozens of times before, I've got no desire to tune and hone things myself at home now. I have to do that at work. At home, I just want to *use* it.
My only problems I run in to at this point with Ubuntu are the general problems, ie. MS-specific printers and scanners, and the like (and a Tascam MIDI interface that they don't support under Linux any more). Otherwise, it's what I need, with a nice clean interface. And a few toys, sure.
Picking the best distro is always going to be a lot like picking the best spouse; it's utterly subjective, but we can all agree on some minimum standards. - RoboDonut, on 09/25/2008, -10/+18"In reality, a first-time Linux user wants to grab an install CD, get a working desktop, and do their own thing from there."
Maybe I'm just wierd, but that wasn't my experience at all. When I first started using Linux (4-5 years ago), I tried all the major "easy" distros first: SuSE, Fedora Core 1, Mandrake, etc.
I hated all of them.
Sure, I ended up at a fancy KDE/Gnome desktop within minutes, complete with web browser, IM client, media player, and word processing software, but I still felt completely lost. The entire system was different and I had no idea where to begin with learning how anything worked.
It wasn't until I tried Gentoo (the furthest possible thing from "easy") that I actually enjoyed using Linux. Unlike the other distros, it didn't simply dump me into this strange new system and leave me helpless. Instead, it gave me a quick crash course in Linux. It explained each part of the system, listed my options, and allowed me to decide which I would prefer. Once I had everything up and running, I had understood enough about the system to accomplish the simple tasks that I couldn't figure out how to do in other distros. Not only that, but there was an excellent Wiki site and a forum full of extremely helpful Gentoo users which helped me solve any problems I ran into.
Of course, Gentoo isn't perfect. Compiling everything from source requires time and I've had issues with certain packages not linking to the certain versions of certain libraries. I used Debian for a while, but it just wasn't as flexible as Gentoo was. Now I'm using Arch, which is pretty much my ideal distro. - inactive, on 09/25/2008, -0/+7os x is hacked up bsd with a pretty gui. nothing more ***** sucks
- MrViklund, on 09/25/2008, -1/+8The Linux fanboys forked and there are now also Ubuntu fanboys. It's an epidemic.
- FreddieD, on 09/25/2008, -1/+8That makes no sense.
- tech10171968, on 09/25/2008, -1/+8Funny how you like to call other people nerds, but here YOU are posting on Digg...
- 4321234, on 09/25/2008, -0/+6How come novell's court battle with Microsoft gets zero press, but agreeing not to sue each other's CUSTOMERS is an infestation?
- Origin415, on 09/26/2008, -1/+7Having complete control over every feature using use flags/compiler flags/etc is the only way to go for a server type environment, and I love Gentoo for that, but I constantly ran into problems when I tried using it as my desktop. My server I'm fine with playing around with, but, particularly due to the many fold increase in problems from a X server/sound server/desktop environment/etc/etc, it was a bit too much for too little on my desktop.
- 4321234, on 09/25/2008, -0/+6I was going to switch to windows, but didn't for the same reason.
- coldkill3r, on 09/25/2008, -1/+7Nice comment history, buried.
- omgdiaf, on 09/26/2008, -0/+6Well awesome. Another Linux guide telling how pretty the desktops are. I've only been reading this same article for the last ten years now guys. I want to know deep in where the differences are other than the different package managers. What's the default config. How hacker-safe is a vanilla install? How are updates managed? Lets get some real meat out of these fluff pieces.
- mattvogt, on 09/26/2008, -0/+5Mac OS X...a 'distro'? I do not think it means what you think it means...
- TypeEE, on 09/25/2008, -0/+5When they list 10, then someone else will ask, why only 10 and not 100 until you include all the hundreds of distributions no one care.
- shakin, on 09/26/2008, -2/+7Shhh! If you're not careful everyone will find out about us.
- Disfnord, on 09/26/2008, -0/+5I couldn't have put it more clearly myself.
- Origin415, on 09/26/2008, -0/+5The problem is that Novell is basically saying linux infringes on MS' patents.
SUSE is great, I've used it a bit, and if not for that whole deal, I would definitely say it was the best KDE based distro. - Spr0k3t, on 09/25/2008, -8/+13I like Fedora... I like Ubuntu... and if Novell didn't have such a Microsoft infestation, I might like SuSE as well.
- kiwimonk, on 09/25/2008, -2/+6Suse 11 is great, I run it on a dedicated file server.. No problems. I recently tried ubuntu, and found it a little too unlinux like. As a desktop however, this may be what is desired :)
- specialK16, on 09/25/2008, -6/+10XP is stable and fast.....
albeit,
not free. - MadHarvey, on 09/26/2008, -0/+4I ran a hand-compiled (non-distro) Linux all through college. I switched over to Gentoo when my job didn't afford me enough time to ***** around with it, and used Gentoo for a long time.
I loaded Arch Linux on a new PC recently, and have been really impressed. I think it bridges a nice gap between Gentoo and the other distros. You don't have to compile everything, but it gives you the flexibility to do so easily if you want to. Their package system is extremely up to date, and surprisingly stable. It doesn't try and hide things that users should really understand like some of the more elaborate distros.. - kotrin, on 09/26/2008, -1/+5ain't life a bitch
- derkles, on 09/26/2008, -0/+3pacman FTW!
- manutd8611, on 09/26/2008, -0/+3yaourt FTW!
- InorganicMatter, on 09/26/2008, -0/+3These battles always have the same three distros, and result in the same comments:
Fedora/Ubuntu fans complain about Novell's deal with Microsoft.
SUSE/Ubuntu fans complain about Red Hat's lack of user-friendliness.
Fedora/SUSE fans complain about Canonical's poor support of the GNU/Linux project.
A real battle needs to include more mainstream distros. Notably missing: Debian, Arch, Mandriva, Slackware, and Gentoo. They can't (and shouldn't) try to include all distros, but a "battle" needs to include more than the top three. This article is a solid FAIL. - DangerCollie, on 09/25/2008, -1/+4We use Ubuntu at the office because it's an easier transition for the Windows users and still tweakable enough for the hard core Linux developers. I think for an older machine or laptop, I'd try the latest PuppyLinux disk because of the excellent hardware detection.
Haven't tried Fedora recently but I've heard good things about it. The longer I use Linux the more I slide back into command line, text file mode. So the Compiz eye candy is nice for showing off but for getting work done it's not entirely necessary. - Plotinus, on 09/26/2008, -0/+3Just been forced to use RHEL (Dead Rat). Yum is their 'Apt' equivalent. Oh dear. Almost prefer windows to RPM hell. Yum is pants. No apt-cache search, no apt dist upgrade.
Debian FTW - Atomic1fire, on 09/26/2008, -1/+4OS X/= gnu/linux (or just plain linux if you must)
OS X = Unix (for the most part)
Linux is a lot like Unix, and fits with parts of the Unix certification, but its not Unix. - frazw, on 09/25/2008, -0/+2It is interesting looking at the voting stats.
Either the article is only attracting users of the three distros mentioned or the three mentioned really are the most popular.
When I started using Linux, Fedora was ruling the roost, I'm surprised to see how much that has changed in such a short time.
Even the Ubuntu variants seem to be more popular than anything else. That is of course only if the votes are a true representation. - 3leggedHorse, on 09/25/2008, -0/+2That is just the main three they mentioned, you can vote for most of the others.
- ArthurSucks, on 09/27/2008, -0/+2Enlighten us with your reasons for such bold arguments.
- 1LordAnubis, on 09/26/2008, -0/+2Wow, I can't believe Arch linux isn't on the list; it has an awesome package manager, just go through the base install, then you can install whatever you want, and its a hell of a lot faster than ubuntu
- dougle, on 09/26/2008, -0/+2you could try to get someone to burn you a live CD with everything you need on it (reconstructor for ubuntu springs to mind)
- jemka, on 09/26/2008, -1/+3I avoid the whole controversy by just using only the kernel. That's it. Some say it's hard core, but it's really just my lifestyle.
- John6000, on 09/26/2008, -1/+3ubunchew
- FreddieD, on 09/25/2008, -0/+2What I like most about Gentoo is that it gave me the best of both worlds in that I had package management as well as free reign to compile my applications with (or without) specific features. It's not a distribution I would recommend for someone using Linux for the first time, but it really does a good job of putting you in control of your own system.
I also love their model that allows for constant upgrading so I never have to shut my machine down to upgrade via CD from version 4.0 to 5.0 of some other distro. - reconsldr74d, on 09/26/2008, -0/+2Have you tried DSL (Damn Small Linux)? I use it to run an old '96 compaq with 24MBs of RAM and barely a hard drive to speak of. Of course you could also just use Knoppix.
- coldmilk, on 09/26/2008, -4/+6Ignorance of Apple fanboys
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