Favorite distro for your desktop

haha, i dont know why im never satisfied with one distro even if i really like it something out of the blue pops up and makes me want to try it.

right now pulseaudio is a priority as its much better than alsa and supports my sound card, ubuntu 8.04 has this but I dont want ubuntu for some reason.

 

These are my favourite distros:

1.Arch Linux
2.Ubuntu
3.Debian

And now I'm installing slackware

 

Arch rules, once you get the installation done (sometimes time consuming but you learn a lot about how linux works)


Are you using a gui for pacman or running from terminal? I tried to find a gui but didnt know which one to use, currently using yaourt in terminal for pacman

 

There are a lot gui tools for pacman. One of them is gtk-pacman

 

I prefer Arch. It's like Gentoo, only not as hard.

 

I am sooooo tempted to try Arch. Everything I've read about it sounds like I designed it for myself, I think when I have more time I'll do it. One thing that kind of hangs me up with it is pacman, I don't really understand how to use it, but I'm sure I could figure it out.

 

Rob strikes again:

Just tried to install Slackware for the second time. It not only didn't work, I hosed Suse and Ubuntu as well. At the moment, there is no working OS on the machine. DBan is currently running in "Quick" mode. Good thing all the various distros I've tried are saved to disks. There's quite an assortment to choose from including XP and Vista - neither of which will find its way into the machine!

Since Slackware is refusing to cooperate, I guess I'll probably have to try and install it first next time. Maybe sometime during the next few weeks I'll be able to get it up and running. LOL Third time's supposed to be the charm.

I'd be very upset tonight if I weren't just screwing around anyway. None of this is important at all; I'm just trying to get used to Linux and probably should get to know one distro well, before trying to install several systems all at once. I'm a total failure at triple-booting.

 

True

Thats just it, you build the system up according to your needs

Pacman is its package manager, there are gui's for it as well which make using it easy as synaptic.

Otherwise using it from command line is also very simple, just a simple "Pacman -S packagenamehere" to install package and "Pacman -Syu" to make sure your distro is up to date, love the rolling release.

Besides their wiki is amazing, the beginners installation guide is very well put together and easy to follow.

If you have further questions don hesitate to ask.

Here is a review to keep you interested

http://www.dvd-guides.com/content/view/212/104/

 

Thanks for the info!

+rep

 

Go ahead and try arch.Youll love it.If you like having the latest and greatest software then go for it.If your a new linux user, make sure u print out and read all of the arch's beginners guide which can be found at :
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide

Here is a great interview on arch

http://www.hardware.no/artikler/aaron_griffin_english/49507/2

 

must...try...arch...

I'll install it at work and see how it runs

 

viking, which version of Arch are you recommending? I assume the latest, but have been known to guess wrong. LOL

 

latest, entitled don't panic (2007.08-2),get the core iso.

also since arch is a rolling release, the latest version is a snapshot of whats in the repos, so you can install any version and keep it up to date with "pacman -Syu".

but grab he latest iso its more convenient.

 

Thanks. Am not having much luck with Slackware. Maybe it's too late and/or I'm too tired for this tonight, but Slackware just doesn't want to install. Had a problem like this in the past with Fedora, but tonight, after another failure with Slackware, tried Fedora. It installed just fine, but I didn't really like what I saw; am going back to Suse/Ubuntu and whatever the hell distro will allow me to install it as a third OS - Arch, Slackware, Fedora, or maybe I'll just have to give Vista a shot.

 

No I haven't tried Arch yet but I'm excited by the new live cd. Gnome + Slackware seems like something I've been looking for.

I've only used Zenwalk, Wolvix and Slax which I like.

 

After trying more distros, I love Dreamlinux, I just do.

 

I am in the process of downloading and installing Linux Mint, will post results later.

 

I have gained a strong affinity for Zenwalk 5.0. I've basically got Xfce set up pretty much like gnome, but with one big 'kicker' with systray et al at the bottom of the screen.....wireless util is the fastest and easiest I've ever used. It's worth looking at. I'm installing my XP Virtual Machine right now....using VirtualBox and USB is turned on...easier to do than with the 'buntu's. Zenwalk has a great wiki for that kind of thing. Repo's are smaller than Ubuntu, but everything that's worth having is in there, in the latest versions too! Worth looking at for those that are still trying to settle in on a distro....it's bleeding edge, easy to use, and the underlying Slackware is stable stable stable....off my soapbox now until I change distro's again LOL

 

Does Zenwalk include a package management system, and if so, which one?

 

Gentoo released a statement regarding their latest beta which included this:

"A migration to RPM was carefully considered again for this release, but in the end we decided to wait for the few remaining RPM-using distributions to migrate to the superior packaging format of ebuilds."

So is ebuilds the next big thing for Linux, what makes it so great, and what exactly is it, a package management system or just an installer?

 

They use NetPkg.....an alternative in the repos is Gslapt which is a lot like Synaptic....the both work well....real good at automatically resolving and installing dependenices.

 

OK, thanks, that sounds pretty good, I've had great luck with Synaptic, so if it's that good I would be happy with it.

 

I started out checking out the liveCD because they added wireless/hardware support in 5.0. I got hooked and downloaded Zen5 standard ISO....the cool factor is there, and it's easy (relatively) and fast....gotta love slack I say

 

I'm trying it out later

 

Slackware just rules in it's own geeky way. I've only installed once, but didn't really get a chance to do much of anything with it. I've gotten a lot of use out of Slax though, which is a really great little project.

 

Speaking of Slack, I've just posted my Zenwalk desktop in progress in the linux showoff thread....

 

Checked and commented.

 

I installed Arch x64 instead there will be a screenshot in the desktop thread in a few min.

 

^^^ So today's update/upgrade of the Ubuntu 8.04 beta scrambled my install. I just installed Mint KDE on a whim and I am very impressed. First KDE desktop that I like. Now if I could just get the sound working on my Compal....

 

soundcard is the realtek hda thing yea? and your sound worked in ubuntu 8.04 I believe?

 

My NVIDIA HDA sound works in Arch.

 

Yes, my sound worked flawlessly in 8.04. I've gotten it to work in 7.10 although volume control is a little sketchy. 8.04 also ran media and desktop effects much better. In my opinion, 8.04 will solve many of the little nagging problems in 7.1. I am looking forward to it despite today's collapse.

 

8.04 uses pulseaudio sound system, which is the way forward. Alsa isn't as great any more and its the reason your sound doesn't work ootb and properly in 7.10.

For my laptop my sound didn't work in 7.10, it required some really messy stuff to get working and despite that it wouldn't work properly. By properly I mean the sound wasn't loud, speakers wouldn't mute if I plugged in headphones and no optical output light.

Come 8.04 and every aspect of the sound card works out of the box.

Sound also works in Arch, as during setup I installed pulseaudio instead of alsa.

 

Yeah, i heard there were several bugs in 7.1's version of alsa. Simply adding the backports fixed everything, including the headphone thing, except that system-wide volume is always 100%. Maybe if I use the asla mixer I can adjust that. But still, way better than zero sound.

8.04 is just better all around though. I have high expectations after running the beta for a few weeks.

 

The reason why the sound didn't work out of the box is probably because the sound chipset is the Intel ICH8, which was not supported until ALSA 1.0.15 (the current version is 1.0.16). The version of ALSA in 7.10 is 1.0.14, and thus it is not supported in Gutsy unless you use the Gutsy backports to update ALSA.

As for PulseAudio, I don't know much about that, so I can't really comment. From what I understand, sound streams from programs are routed through PulseAudio using ALSA, which then does its thing and returns the audio to ALSA to be outputted from the speakers.

 

That sounds right because I always thought that Pulse Audio still worked with ALSA.

In either case, 8.04 just worked better!

 

I'm a huge fan of LinuxMint, it's the only distro i have ever loved. I've heard great things about Arch though, i may try it eventually.

 

I agree, mint is awesome, I'm using the KDE version now.

 

I like Ubuntu and Mint and Opensuse, however I cant get my graphics to work and they lag from 50% cpu usage by xorg.

Some bad drivers with my 9250 pci from ATI

 

Yeah...about that. I've begun to hate Mint so i'm switching to Ubuntu.

 

Calvin? Wassup? You started hating Mint after all that love?
Could you specify what has turned you off?

 

The start up screen had a small resolution (which is a known bug), it never worked right with Blubuntu (I like blue themes), and i just stopped tickling my fancy. I got over the MintMenu and now i want to use ubuntu. =P

 

Calvin, you can get the Mint Menu in Ubuntu, if you like.

 

That's what I do......they didn't write those menus

 

The modded the hell out of them, but you can get the exact one in Ubuntu(mint's repos).

 

Sorry, I was referring to Mint KDE...they use TastyMenu, which I also use in Kubuntu...it's just a kicker applet written by a third party

 

Ya, Mint KDe was awesome, but it had a few bugs.
I think my GPU must have been overheating in itor something. I've had Mint 5(Gnome) booted up for about a day, no issues.
WTF?
My screen went haywhire, near the mouse and in the corner was just pixels gone crazy...

 

Maybe, but i might just stick with Ubuntu's menu.

 

Dammit, Calvin, you got me all fired up over Mint; it's installing right now on another machine. lol

 

=P It's quite nice, but i was having problems with it so i switched to Ubuntu. That doesn't mean you can't enjoy it. =D