Best distro for me?


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Ok, deal is this. Like any good geek, I've messed with, modded, and known my way around windows for a long time now. And, I've grown sick of it. So I started the search for linux. After a few reccomendations I downloaded and burned the Mandrake 9.1 isos. Then proceded to install, run, and get aquainted with. I've messed around with it for a while now, its ok and all, but it almost seems like wiNux to me, or something along those lines. During install, there were no challenges, everything went and did its own thing, and it left me with a feeling of being cheated. Weird, I know, but I was hoping for a fight of some kind, so that when it booted successfully, I would have something to be proud of. Instead, I get a wizard that does stuff for me. Wizards are for Windows.

Ok, so on to main post. I want to find something better, more challenging, and as such, more rewarding. So far I've been thinking about Gentoo or Slackware. My main want is customization. I wanna be able to tweak the hell outta that thing. Any suggestions? Comments? Flames? ;)

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depends how much you like code. LFS is as tweakable as it get's but it's a painful installation process (i've been at it on-and-off for 3 weeks now).

Gentoo is a step higher. I installed 1.4rc5 on my friends machine the other day and it was fairly straight forward. The basic installer gets itself running with an internet connection and then you're sent off to partition, bootstrap, and emerge your system. From there you configure your command line the way you like it or you can go on to install X11 and the WM/DE of your choice.

Gentoo is great for people who want to tweak everything, but don't want to individually compile every single application by hand.

EDIT: I've installed gentoo 1.2 on my own machines, the 1.4 installer caught me off gaurd with it's default FB console and automatically loading network drivers and getting a DHCP address (things 1.0-1.2 didn't do)

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Slackware is nice and challenging...but then again any *Nix based OS you run with X/KDE will always feel like as you said wiNix - so run it from command only bash/root/shell stuff...

heh...enjoy...!!

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gentoo would be my recommendation, too... its just a really satisfying feeling compiling and building every part of your OS, starting with the compiler itself. takes a while, tho... took me a couple of nights of compiling to get to my desired workable state (bootstrap, build system, build x, build gnome...)

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I use Slackware, i succesfully compiled my own custom kernel, slackware owns :)

I know the basic linux stuff, i learn't alot when i tried to install Gentoo (i deleted all my partitions by accident), i failed but i came out know a little bit more, like how to make your swap partition active without setup doing it for you, formatting partitions etc.

If you want a challange, Gentoo Is the distro for you, you will learn a lot and you will feel proud when everything is compiled and ready for use :yes:

Failing that try Slackware, Its good for newbies who want to learn and experts who have mastered linux.

Good luck mate :yes:

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