Which distribution are YOU using?

As a long time Linux user, I'm curious which distributions the NBR community members are using. Ubuntu seems to dominate the posts, like most forums, I'm wondering how many buck that trend.

If you use more than one, try to vote for your default. If you use more than one or it's not in the list, please post.

 

I was using Fiesty Fawn, but could not get my scanner to work using xsane. I tried a number of fixes to no avail. Back to good old XP.

 

I use Sabayon and Arch primarily. Would prolly vote Sabayon if available.

 

i sometimes use linux mint
but i dont get arnd to using it much though but truly do enjoy using the live cd
but just cant get myself to switch completely but i surely will......eventually

 

I like Sabayon/RR64. 64 bit only .
Also, Gentoo and maybe, maybe KUbuntu.

 

wow more sabayon users than i thought ... Sabayon!

 

I tried Sabayon but found it rather......difficult to configure.

Now using Arch - its package management system is the best. It's fast and very easy to configure.

 

It's pretty much Ubuntu for me. I've been meaning to test out some other stuff (and am currently using PCLinuxOS as well), but I just haven't had the time as of late.

 

Being a beginner, Ubuntu all the way for me. But I'd like to try out other distros if I can.

 

Sabayon is developed on top of Gentoo. It's basically tweaked (or maybe just adapted to be used as a live version) or improved for AMD64 (at least that's what they say. I think it doesn't compile everything like Gentoo does and it's though easier to install.

 

johan@nc4400:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Debian
Description: Debian GNU/Linux 4.0r0 (etch)
Release: 4.0r0
Codename: etch

 

....Puppy....

 

I use ubuntu primarily. I have ran Fedora Core 2 in the past, but being new to linux, I found ubuntu to work much better for me.

 

It's an easy to install Gentoo. Once you have it running, it's the same as a Gentoo install. I just can't go without a computer for a couple of days to take the time and install Gentoo properly.

 

Definitely, but Gentoo has it's advantages too.

 

Of course, it would definitely be faster than an equivalent Sabayon install, because everything would be compiled.

My plan is to use Sabayon to get a working install. Then go through piece by piece and re-compile everything.

 

Yeah, Sabayon's popularity is surprising me, too. I've been meaning to try it out, I just haven't gotten the time with work the way it is. I'd also like to try making the switch from Arch over to Gentoo for my primary. I'm getting sick of not being able to install things like Abiword or Inkscape if I don't want to pull Gnome, too, or edit a PKGBUILD.

Lysander, I really wonder how much compiling all your own programs helps in speed. I haven't tried Gentoo yet (just a few years ago when I was new, got stuck on the kernel install), but Arch follows most of the same design philosophies, just with a binary package manager. Yet it's extremely fast all around.

 

Yeah, I've heard the speed differences aren't that great between them. Arch screams for me, but I want to see for myself if Gentoo can be faster. In all likelihood, I'll just go back to Arch, but I want to be able to say I atleast tried.

 

kubuntu user here

 

Kubuntu 64 and 32 I love my lappytop...

 

I am using Linux Mint. Someone has pointed it out on this forum and I loved it!
It is a kind of better Ubuntu. Just downloaded and installed the latest beta with
2.6.20 kernel.

 

Hello,

This is my first post to the forums, so hello to everybody.

Sabayon has a lot to be said for it...as close to "it just works" as I've tried (on AMD 64 anyway)...Of course PC Linux has shot up the Distrowatch charts recently, after the new release.

 

I also use these two. PCLinuxOS is my personal favorite because it's so simple to use (I'm a dummy); perhaps it should be added as a choice in the poll.

 

Debian 'unstable', via network install.

I just bought a new ThinkPad Z61t about three weeks ago, so I just did all this work and it's still fresh in my mind. A Debian network install ('netinst') is basically a bootable CD image with a bare minimum of packages to get a system running just enough to talk to the network to grab everything else. Downloading an ISO and installing from that would be "easier", but I have such an eclectic mix of packages that most of what's on the ISO doesn't get used. Since I'm going to download 500 megs of stuff anyway, it may as well be exactly the stuff I want.

Debian's "native" installer isn't as pretty as Ubuntu's (which itself is built on Debian), but I've been using basic Debian for so long that it's easy and familiar to me.

Don't let the "unstable" moniker fool you -- Debian's "unstable" repository is very usable and reliable in day-to-day use, and I've almost never had a problem pulling stuff from it and keeping packages up to date. It's the "experimental' repository where things get tricky...

Schwab

 

I have try all listed. Ubuntu is my favorite on a notebook and desktop.

 

SimplyMEPIS 6.5 here... very nice distro. I really like the extra utilities created by this distro's team for simplifying the X and wifi stuff.

 

I've started to give Arch a whirl on my old desktop, but haven't gone any further than the base and kernel installs. It's not hooked up to a network, which is how I would prefer to continue, plus I haven't had the time to finish lately. Too much school.

 

I've been on sabayon for many months now. Its treated me very nicely. I've been thinking about switching to slackware though. Just to try something new.

 

ubunbtu here. I use also mandrake 10 (old mandriva), fedora core 3, and stick to ubuntu.
Easy to use and alot of suport! And ofcorse it has all the powerful controlling stuff that linux offer.

 

I use Kubuntu 7.04 at the present time. I voted for "Ubuntu" as that's the closest option.

- Trip

 

I'm a beginner. But I have tried several distributions for fun over the past few years. Never sticked with anything longer than a couple of weeks; I just install them, play around a bit then go back to good old Windows. So far Suse is my favorite. I started liking Suse from v8. Yesterday I installed openSuse 10.2 after getting fed up with Ubuntu. I dont understand all this Ubuntu hype. Its no where close to the user friendliness of Suse.

X Windows crashed on the first boot! I had to manually configure xorg.conf to boot in VESA mode and install nVidia drivers, so much for user friendliness. Even with the drivers, from time to time resolution drops to 1024x768 from native 1280x800 without any reason. Then my USB keyboard started acting up, I had to disconnect and reconnect every time I boot ubuntu otherwise when I type either of q,a or z they give out double characters like qw,as,zx. I have seen many people complaining about this but i didnt come across any permanent fix. After some tinkering aound I managed to get Beryl working, but there were small artifacts (gfx corruption issues in some of the menus). To top it all I couldnt get my mic input working. At that point I was so fedup and sick of Ubuntu. So I thought I'll give Suse a try. As always Suse came through. openSuse 10.2 is 10X better than Ubuntu.

 

I think a big part of the appeal is that the Ubuntu community is fueled more by altruism. Or, at least it appears that way until you examine it further, it's difficult to be sure either way. But Suse and Fedora are backed by Novell and Redhat which are very clearly into commercialization of Linux, while Canonical has a stronger arugment for Ubuntu with their business model leaving the OS more accessible by strictly selling support. Sure Redhat and Novell both offer community developmental editions, and offer the source for their enterprise editions (at least Redhat, not sure about Novell), but when you get right down to it they both sell licenses (subscriptions, really), not support.

But meh, I don't use any of them, so what do I care?

 

I disagree about the stability of unstable. I've used the unstable distribution of Debian for about 4 years and I'm now moving to Ubuntu. It is possible to use unstable on a day-to-day basis but unstable is tricky since upgrades in unstable can hose your system and require major effort to recover from. It has happened to me. Not often and each time it was fixable without doing a complete reinstall. Still, this is not something a newbie to Debian or Linux, or even someone with only moderate technical knowledge, would want to face. Heck, this is not something I'd want to face and I've used Linux since the early 90's. (Not because I can't fix it but because I have more important things to do than fixing unstable software.)

Ubuntu has a much more reasonable release protocol than Debian, hence my decision to switch.

 

I guess this just further proves I've five-Sigma off the curve. I never do a dist-upgrade (update every package to the absolute latest of everything), but run 'aptitude' and hand-pick the packages I want to update. If I'm not sure about a package, I also check the changelogs to see how urgent it is and what got changed. In this way, I'm at least dimly aware of what's on my machine and how old it is.

This is the approach I've used for the last seven years or so, and it's worked reasonably well for me.

Schwab

 

I concur with you. I've tried a whole whack of distros (Mandrake back in the day when it was separate from Connectiva, Mandriva after the merge, FC2, 3, and 4, Gentoo up to the install, Ubuntu/Kubuntu from the 5.0.4 version onwards, Linspire, Suse from 8.0 onwards and OpenSuse from version 10) and I have to say openSuse's been the best for me. I always seemed to run into one problem or another with the distros (Ubuntu included) except for some of the later versions of openSuse (10.2 has been really great). I really just dabble, learning a few things here and there. I don't really do anything productive with Linux.