DEFINITIVE: Which Linux Distro? (poll)

By markwolfe
in Linux

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Which Linux Distro do you prefer?  

773 members have voted

  1. 1. Which Linux Distro do you prefer?

    • Slackware (or derivatives)
      33
    • Debian
      56
    • SUSE Linux (or derivatives)
      99
    • Fedora Core (or Redhat, or RHEL)
      120
    • Gentoo (or derivatives)
      86
    • Ubuntu
      273
    • Other Debian Derivative (Mepis, Kanotix, etc)
      25
    • Arch
      19
    • Linspire
      22
    • Mandriva
      40

Recommended Posts

Grand Master

DjmUK

Posted
Posted
Gentoo gets my vote. Fedora is a close 2nd. Have played with SuSE, Devian, Slack, FreeBSD. I always end up going back to Gentoo. I have 4 Gentoo boxes, 1 Fedora Core 3 box, and 2 Fedora Core 2 boxes currently.

585569372[/snapback]

Why 7 computers? surely you don't use them all (do ya?).

I have one WinXP box and one FC3 box. At the moment it's all good :)

Mentor

Porsche Design

Posted
Posted

i have 5 computers in my house and the majority of them is under pentium 4

there are less than 5 pl in my house so i might consider setting one up as a server, but would i be wasting it because the specs of a working pentium 3 is too high for for the distro

btw, what's a server

then, i play a lot of music on my computers, i share files a lot between my desktop and my laptop when i'm on the go

i have wireless network set up

would it be smart to set up some kind of firewall and can i set up a global proto wall sort of program around the network

i tried knoppix for like 2 seconds on my dektop once

Grand Master

MulletRobZ

Posted
Posted

Although I preferred Slackware 9.1 last year, I gave Fedora Core 3 a shot on my laptop and I was pretty impressed about that. So for newbies, I recommend Fedora Core 3.

However, there is one problem that irritates me about Linux and this applies to all distributions. The default Mesa graphics library obviously needs to be dumped because of its poor performance, no matter what video card is used. Instead, the distributors have to start including the correct drivers for these video cards, or at least the NVidia and ATI ones.

Proficient

Cool4

Posted
Posted

I've tried Mandrake last year and i hated it! i thought I would never install Linux again, but this week i've installed Fedora Core 3 x86_64 and I was amazed! it works really fast, really easy, very very good! i really love it! :D

Fedora Core 3 All the Way ;)

Grand Master

markwolfe Veteran

Posted
  • Author
  • Veteran
Posted
Hey all -

I'm thinking about diving into Linux and would like to know of the best distro (free) to get started with.  Nothing to watered down though but something solid and useable plus a good foundation to learn from.  Any suggestions?

Thanks!

585610771[/snapback]

Most any of the ones on this poll above should be good. You might want to avoid *BSD or Gentoo for a first install. Things like Fedora, Ubuntu, SUSE or Mandrake are often recommended.

Or, you could try a LiveCD like Knoppix and see if you like it. It can be installed to your hard drive, if you wish.

Rising Star

Symal Taneous

Posted
Posted

Hey all. I've tried Suse, Lindows, Fedora and Mandrake. But since I'm a serious gamer, I'd like to know which distro is best, like which one has the best compatability with Wine?

Thanks

Grand Master

markwolfe Veteran

Posted
  • Author
  • Veteran
Posted
Hey all. I've tried Suse, Lindows, Fedora and Mandrake. But since I'm a serious gamer, I'd like to know which distro is best, like which one has the best compatability with Wine?

Thanks

585614668[/snapback]

For a serious gamer, I think that I would recommend dual-booting.

The fact is, games are currently 99% made for Windows. There are exceptions (Doom3 has a Linux script on their FTP site, and UT2004 comes with a Linux installer on the same CD set). However, for someone spending a significant amount of time gaming (and playing a variety of the latest games), it probably isn't worth using wine/cedega at this point.

Grand Master

markwolfe Veteran

Posted
  • Author
  • Veteran
Posted

Not at all. Linux can run on a 80368 (if you are about 30 or older, you may remember these things). Don't expect to run KDE or Gnome with any great speed (if at all!) on them.

Linux scales well to lower-end PCs. You just change (or don't install) your Window Manager to one that uses less resources. You can still run the same apps on the lowest-end WM that you can with a full-blown Gnome or KDE environment.

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