Best Free Linux Distribution?

noel · Post by **noel** » February 4, 2005, 3:10 pm

Looking for suggestions as to what the best free Linux distribution is at present time. I could hit a torrent site and grab mandrake or redhat, but I figured I'd ask first.

Thanks in advance.

Aabidano · Post by **Aabidano** » February 4, 2005, 3:35 pm

If you just want something to install and use, Fedora.

Debian's a better distribution if you want to play with it. Not quite as pretty or user friendly out of the box, but much more flexible and easier to customize.

Debian seems aimed more at developers, RedHat\Fedora is aimed at consumers\corporate users. Haven't played with any of the other distros in quite a few years.

noel · Post by **noel** » February 4, 2005, 3:55 pm

Been talking to the guys in IRC, and I DLed Fedora Core 3. Mostly planning to get back up to speed on Linux. Going to set up a DNS/DHCP server at home, and maybe some other network related things (Firewall/proxy server/SSH server, etc.).

Thanks.

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » February 4, 2005, 4:53 pm

i always used RH at home (Fedora now), and I was always very happy with the installation, the harware support, etc.

I can only imagine that is much better now.

Kelshara · Post by **Kelshara** » February 4, 2005, 9:00 pm

RH has a tendency to be a bit bloated.. I prefere Debian myself. Pretty much personal preference though.

Llaffer · Post by **Llaffer** » February 4, 2005, 9:12 pm

I've been a fan of gentoo for a while. I just installed it last week on a new box I built.

Hoarmurath · Post by **Hoarmurath** » February 5, 2005, 10:25 pm

I personally use Debian, but that's because it's so stable and has an amazing package management system. The big downside is that it doesn't have the most up-to-date software unless you know where to look.

Fedore Core is a really nice. After RedHat 9, they split off the "free" version of the OS to Fedora, and RedHat just distributes their licensed Enterprise Linux stuff. SUSE is gaining a lot of ground these days as well.

If I had to choose a distro for a desktop/laptop, I'd pick SUSE or Fedora. For a stable server, I'd pick Debian. Once you go APT, you never go back! (dumb Debian joke, sorry)

Gentoo can be a lot of fun, since it builds eveything on your machine from source, so it should theoretically be optimized for your system, making it slightly faster. Of course, it can take a long time to install things since they have to compile from scratch.

Tenuvil · Post by **Tenuvil** » February 6, 2005, 3:54 am

I dual boot Fedora Core 3 and Win XP on my main PC.

One thing to note, there is a nasty bug in the FC3 installer that will abend the installer if you are trying to install to an ext3 partition on a physical drive that also contains an NTFS partition. There is a workaround but it isn't in the ISOs yet. If you do decide to go with Fedora Core 3, and you experience a drive geometry error on install, please PM me and I'll give you the lowdown on the workaround.

Fash · Post by **Fash** » February 6, 2005, 2:51 pm

I thought that was fixed in FC3 final?

Llaffer · Post by **Llaffer** » February 6, 2005, 3:42 pm

Hoarmurath wrote:Gentoo can be a lot of fun, since it builds eveything on your machine from source, so it should theoretically be optimized for your system, making it slightly faster. Of course, it can take a long time to install things since they have to compile from scratch.

I very long time if you're used to the hand-holding RPM-style instalations.

My old 800mhz machine would get a base machine with Gnome running in about 48 hours.

My new AMD64 3500+ got base system with KDE running in 12-18.

Tenuvil · Post by **Tenuvil** » February 6, 2005, 10:07 pm

Fash wrote:I thought that was fixed in FC3 final?

nup, this was FC3 final that had the problems (dl'd the ISOs from redhat in mid January 2005). The method of determining drive geometry was changed in FC3 and while there were bugs fixed related to this, the devs working on this module said the final fix will be in the ISOs of FC4. Despite all that it's an easy workaround that requires putting the updated module on diskette and running "linux update" at the install boot prompt.