Looking For A New Distribution


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For quite a few weeks now, I have been having problems with KDE4 and Kubuntu. I figured most of those problems would be gone when upgraded from 8.04 to 8.10, but they are not. While I am sure that most of these problems are due to KDE's immaturity as a platform, I am starting to get fed up with the problems. I am looking at other distributions, and wondering if I can get input from anybody on which ones they recommend.

I have previously used Gentoo and liked it, but the compile time made me switch to Ubuntu originally. I have considered going back to Gentoo, but again, simple fact that I need to compile everything from scratch turns me off. I took a look at Arch linux and liked what I read. And Slackware has come up as a good distribution as well. With KDE4 in mind, which distribution would be best for me? I want to keep using KDE4 and I am waiting till 4.2 to pass judgement on KDE, but I feel that Ubuntu is just not where I should be anymore.

All of your input is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Alex

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Slackware is well tested for package compatibility and tweaked for speed, but it lacks the package management system that allows for seamless upgrades. You can get a very fast and stable system with a slackware install, but keeping it up to date is going to be far more of hassle. In fact, Slackware 12.1 is currently only using the reliable and stable KDE 3.5.9 or your choice XFCE; KDE 4.1 on Slackware is only available through the -current fork.

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I think you'll find quite a few arch users on this board, and many jumped ship from debian based distros. If you are looking at those three distros to begin with, then that means you want to take more control of your machine. Either would suit you quite well, and here is my take on the three (biased of course):

Slackware: great if you don't want good package management.

Gentoo: great if you don't mind waiting for things to compile (imo would never use on a laptop)

Arch: combines the best of binary and source based distros, letting you very easily and quickly build your own packages or choose from packages in the repos.

Told you it was biased.

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If you liked gentoo you'll love arch. Currently the arch server is down for maintenance (hardware updates, switching from x86 to x86_64) though the server is expected to be back up in a few hours.

I started with arch, when I got a X2 +3800 I switched to gentoo mainly for x86_64 support which arch was lacking (member project at the time), once x86_64 support matured in arch (and was merged mainstream), I ended up switching back to arch, mainly due to the compile times. I've been using arch x86_64 for the last 2-3 years now!

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Arch is a great OS, really good if you want to fall in love with Linux - you just can't do that with Ubuntu. (Well, you start to like it, but Arch always has a place in your heart.)

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