Re: linux distro recommendations?

[Graham Percival]

On Fri, May 08, 2009 at 02:11:40PM +0100, Anthony W. Youngman wrote:
> In message <address@hidden>, Graham Percival  
> <address@hidden> writes
>>
>> New users: ubuntu, because it's shiny.
>>
> And Ubuntu is a debian derivative, so they're just one choice anyway :-)

Not really.  Ubuntu is debian, minus a working package system[1],
minus a decent initial install[2], plus hordes of newbies[3].

[1]  I consider the "package system" to be the package manager
software -- which I admit is (virtually) identical in Debian and
Ubuntu -- plus the community of package maintainers.  Debian's
package maintainers are miles ahead of ubuntu's, redhat's,
freebsd's, etc.

[2]  If your initial install includes X11 or any graphical user
interface, then it's indecent.  ;)

[3]  You gain no points for guessing how much I enjoy this
"feature".  :)

> Well, I'd say gentoo (or similar) was the only sane choice for  
> developers :-) But it wouldn't be a sane choice for you, if you're  
> thinking of leaving Windows. It's NOT a good "first distro" choice.
>
> As a first distro, I'd agree with Ubuntu or Kubuntu (try and have a play  
> on someone's system with both Gnome and KDE - see which one suits you  
> best).

Absolutely.  All kidding aside, Ubuntu is the ideal choice for
"getting one's toes wet".

> And if you want a "learn the hard way" distro (which I *would*  
> *strongly* recommend, but you really want a bit more experience than  
> just Windows), then try Slackware. Oh - and the thing about Slackware -  
> it has the reputation of booting and installing on pretty much ANYTHING.  

Err, really?  I've never heard this reputation.  NetBSD is the
portable OS.

That's not to say that slackware is a bad learning experience,
although I'd personally lump Gentoo in there as well... but
really, neither holds a candle to "linux from scratch"... but
slackware isn't particularly portable.  I mean, it only runs on
what, 4-5 different chip architectures?  NetBSD does 32, ranging
from acorn32 to cats to playstation2 to zaurus.  :P

> A lot of liveCDs and distros have trouble booting on some hardware -  
> they'll recognise anything modern, but often will choke on something a  
> bit older. I could never get liveCDs to work on my system.

Oh, add "liveCDs" to my list of indecency in operating systems. ;)

Cheers,
- Graham