whts other good linux os other than ubuntu family

alright, other than ubuntu family os, whts the next linux os most people use?? since microsoft is being stupid to release another os in next year. so im planning to move on to linux.

heres is a list of linux os im thinking about, but dont know which one best.
i had used them most as server but not as desktop. any suggestion? thanks

Fedora
Red Hat
Suse
Knoppix
Debian

 

I think RedRat costs money..... not sure though.

 

yes, it does because is a Enterprise

 

I think SUSE (now openSUSE) is pretty popular.

 

RedHat is a server variant of Linux; its not really for desktop use.

Some other distros to consider:
- Mandriva
- PCLinuxOS
- Sabayon
- Mint (Ubuntu based, but quite different)

 

CentOS is close to Redhat but changed around so it looks different. So if you want a enterprise class Linux distro then you want CentOS. Another good distro is Slackware, which is good for learning because it sticks close to its Unix roots. Then theres Arch and Gentoo which are good for experienced Linux users in that you can only install what you want.

Theres tons of others go to Distrowatch and you can pick what you want to install.

 

I'd still roll with ubuntu given the specs of your ASUS. It will ultimately be easier to set up and work with once 8.04 comes out in a couple weeks.

Fedora and Suse strike me as bloated in comparison. It doesn't hurt to download their live cds and test them out. They are easy to set up anyway.

Knoppix has great hardware detection but is intended to be a live cd, not an install.

Debian is awesome but hard to set up if you are new to Linux. Familiarize yourself with Ubuntu and in a year or so install Debian. Ubuntu derived itself from Debian in the early days.

In addition I would suggest that you take a look at:

1 Mepis (Based on Debian)

2 PCLinuxOS

3 Mint (based on ubuntu)

4 Dream Linux (based on Debian)

5 Sabayon (based on Gentoo)

6 Sidux (based on Debian, look out for these guys in a year or so)

The first three all are easy to install and have good communities behind them. Dream and Sabayon are the new kids on the block but they are taking off. Sidux will be a good distro to keep an eye on. All are fully featured modern distros that just so happen to be noob friendly.

http://distrowatch.com/

Download some cds and start testing what works with your hardware and what you prefer in terms of features.

 

OpenSUSE FTW !!

 

Arch Linux FTW! I use it, so it must be amazing xD.

 

Arch Linux is great but I reckon the OP will have some problems setting it up and using it as he's just moving on from windows.


OP, try these

Fedora
OpenSUSE
PcLinuxOS

I also have a Fedora 8 review up

Also check this site for details, reviews, screenshots and much more

 

Fedora is more for hardened geeks.

I think Ubuntu is probably about the best for a new convertee. Maybe something like Mint (haven't used that one myself though).

 

im not a newb to linux, i just want to know which is easiler to use it as personal os, less work that all like pop it in and read to go. that allow to work for basic stuff. if it can install some .exe games and programs that would be great. such as cs

im just being lazy lol

since im dealing with servers everyday. apach this apach that, commend this commend that. getting tired. so when i go home turn on my laptop, i dont want to deal with commend.

 

Then my list of distros to choose from still stand, with one amendment; Linux Mint.

 

From your question, you seem to be basing your quest on popularity. I think you can get a fairly good picture of what is popular by looking at the ranking in distrowatch:

http://distrowatch.com/

However, popularity, when it comes to Linux, is not exactly the best way to decide on a distro. As you can see there are a lot of choices, so it is quite possible to find a distro that fits *you* just right. Here are some questions I would want you to answer so as to be able to give you a better recommendation.

1. What do you want to do with it?
2. Are you a person that likes to fiddle with customizing the look and feel of your desktop, or do you tend to just go with the defaults provided?
3. Are you a geek that likes to play with the innards of the OS to juice out every bit of performance possible, or do you prefer that things just work automagically?
4. Are you willing to pay for support, or you don't mind doing a bit of Googling and forum searches to resolve your computer issues?
5. Do you mind being pointed to the command line, or do you prefer GUI interfaces?
6. Are you the kind of person that is troubled by shady business practices, or you don't care what they do as long as they give you what you want?

If you answer the questions honestly, I would be in a better position to recommend a good fit for you. Personally, this are my answers:

1) I use Linux on my desktop at home, on my laptop, and as an intranet server at work. I like being able to use the same distro for all this uses.

2) I customize a bit, but not extremely. However, I don't like being limited if I want to go further.

3) I like things that just work.

4) I don't need paid support. I hav never had a problem that was not resolved by online searching.

5) I am a point a click guy. I like well designed GUI interfaces. I use the command line only when there is no convenient alternative.

6) I am seriously disturb by shady business practices that put immediate gains ahead of future consequences. I avoid certain products solely because I dislike how their management behaves.

Because of all that, I now run PCLinuxOS.

 

Q1)What do you want to do with it?
A1)for real, not much properlly basic use. like download songs, check email, msn, BT, movies, games. and some docs work.

Q2)Are you a person that likes to fiddle with customizing the look and feel of your desktop, or do you tend to just go with the defaults provided?
A2)go with the flow

Q3)Are you a geek that likes to play with the innards of the OS to juice out every bit of performance possible, or do you prefer that things just work automagically?
A3)NO

Q4)Are you willing to pay for support, or you don't mind doing a bit of Googling and forum searches to resolve your computer issues?
A4)wht is support?? google is my friend

Q5)Do you mind being pointed to the command line, or do you prefer GUI interfaces?
A5)both

Q6)Are you the kind of person that is troubled by shady business practices, or you don't care what they do as long as they give you what you want?
A6)hell ye, give me what i want dude

what i most worry about is the drivers support for my hardware, like figerprint, webcam, sd card reader, etc etc

 

1) Your answer to the first question means that you don't have special needs, so any distro will probably be fine.

2) You probably won't mind GNOME then. But a good implementation of KDE is just as well. In other words, any fairly well put together distro will do.

3) OK, this answer finally narrows it down a bit. If I am interpreting your answer right, you like things to just work with minimal fuss. To me, that narrows it down to PCLinuxOS, Linux Mint, Mandriva, or Ubuntu, in that order, depending on hardware compatibility.

4)

5) So, you probably want a good balance. Any of the distros I mentioned above will do.

6) Fine, so there may be other choices for you that I would feel dirty using. Fortunately, with the answers you gave above, I don't think they are right for you any way.

So, give those a try and let us know what you found.

 

i just went on to PCLinuxOS website, it just look like fedora

 

Well, it is Linux. Here is my slightly modified desktop (still using most of the defaults.)

http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd294/rm_shots/Snapshot.jpg

There are three things that make PCLinuxOS easier than Fedora.

1) "PCLinuxOS Control Center"
2) The ease with which you can have third party, closed source, drivers and codecs installed.
3) Package management in general. (Not that Fedora's package management is bad, but you will *have to* go to Google to find out how to install some things. In PCLinuxOS, you just click, apply, and you are done.)

 

ye, u are right. but the fun part of fedora is to search for commend and learn it.

 

True, very true. But, I thought you said that you prefer that things just work automagically.

 

ye i did say that, because sometime when u at work. u are aready dealing with commend and then go home u dont want to deal with it.

 

Well, there you go then. I recommend that you try the MiniMe version of PCLinuxOS since it is much more up to date than the 2007 version. It comes as a bare bones installation, with very little pre-installed. Do a full update before starting to install applications. And then install only what you need. Your system will be lightning fast and less cluttered that way.

 

PC Linux OS
Linux Mint
SimplyMEPIS
Fedora 8
Slax(this is a lightweight distro, it's like 200MBs)
Sam Linux

Just a few more I like & are easy to set up/use.
-Thomas

 

"Commend". You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

If you don't want Ubuntu, stay away from Debian. Ubuntu is based on Debian, it's just a nicer desktop-centric distro. After having RPM packages break themselves so many times, I won't go back. Gentoo is ok if you don't mind always running a pseudo-beta system, Slackware is great if you know what you're doing in Linux and want a lean, fast machine. If you're just looking for easy administration and great functionality, I'd highly recommend Ubuntu (or Kubuntu if you swing the KDE way like I do)

FYI, you almost certainly won't get the fingerprint reader working under Linux, and the webcam will be very hit or miss, more miss than hit.

 

There is a very widespread myth that says that the rpm package is somehow inferior to deb. The reality is that this is not the case. They each are fine ways to package software. With either package type you need a package management system to, well, manage them. Apt-get is indeed an excellent system, that used to be better than anything available for rpm, and that is how rpm got its bad rep. Since then, there have been several excellent package management systems developed for rpm, and apt-get itself is now available for managing rpms. Apt-get is what PCLinuxOS uses. But, even more important than the package management system is the care and quality employed by the package creators and maintainers. That is an area where deb has had an advantage as well. However, I have yet to see a better team for creating and managing packages than the PCLinuxOS team. The quality of their repository is top notch in my experience.

 

It's not really a myth. deb packages handle dependencies and degrade more gracefully than RPM packages. That's about all there is to it.

apt can be shoehorned into using RPM packages, but it doesn't work great, especially once you start getting into dependencies. And even with yum, which is designed for RPM, you're still short of the functionality and capability provided by dpkg and apt.

 

Minime 2008! But the OP will have to dig around for it on linuxtracker or find it in the PCLOS forums.

 

Yeah, I'm using Mint 4 (Ubuntu 7.1) on a desktop at work right now and it is pretty much install and go. I prefer Ubuntu just because I know where everything is and I can customize it a bit more easily.

I would still stress Ubuntu because of the fact that 8.04 is out in a few weeks. Given the OP's hardware, I think that 8.04 would simply run better than anything based on 7.1 (I've been testing the beta).

In other words, don't make a final decision until you can try out (X/K)Ubuntu 8.04!

 

I'm just going to say that there was a reason I switched from Fedora Core 4 to Breezy Badger way back.

 

Thats weird cause i started linux using mandriva 2008 which uses rpm's
didnt find it difficult at all really just about the same as ubuntu
i just like the gnome interface better and ubuntu has more support than mandriva

 

When did redhat became server only? I still remember it being the first distro, with mandrake, that I tried when I hit a brick wall with suse and slackware text install... Life can be hard when you don't have internet and the only other os install disk around are dos 3.5" disks...

 

I totally agree with rm2 regarding PCLinuxOS. I tried several Linux desktop distributions and found PCLinuxOS to be the best for me.

It looks good, is easy to use and worked out of the box with two Lenovo Thinkpads and a homebuilt desktop with no drama.

RR

 

It's not server only. There is a server version and workstation variant. You do have to pay for support though. If you want the free version, look at CentOS.

 

I should have been more clear. As Lysander said, RedHat comes in a server and workstation version. Neither of them are suitable for desktop use.

 

Another vote for Mepis here.

 

Yes it is a myth. The proof of the pudding is precisely PCLinuxOS. I have *never* had a dependency problem with it. And, I have been upgrading my existing installation for over a year. The installation I did on early 2007 is completely current today. Try that with Ubuntu.

Finding general opinions that agree with a myth is the easiest thing in the world to do. What you are trying to do is like arguing that C is better than C++, or that Ruby is better than Python, etc. The truth is that there are no absolute answers for these type of things. What works best for you is what you will use. But stating categorically that your choice is the best choice under any circumstance is unreasonable.

 

Just because you say it's a myth doesn't make it so. I'm not finding opinions, I'm referencing facts. Oh, and for "Try[ing] that with Ubuntu"? I've had my Kubuntu desktop system running since 6.10 (that's late 2006) with just upgrades, and it's running 8.04 perfectly fine now with no dependency problems. And that's with a custom kernel since NVidia drivers don't run on Xen-enabled kernels and I needed to enable PAE to access all 5GB of RAM on my 32bit Xeon based system. Anecdotal evidence isn't worth the electrons it's shipped on.

As it stands, there are (at least) two types of RPM packages, which are only partially compatible. Hope whoever provided your software has the same version. Not to mention that .deb's allow interactive configuration, whereas there is no such capability in the RPM system. There is also much more oversight on the deb package process... RPM's are very, very free-form so there is no guarantee that they won't blast all over your system. If you stick to RPM's only from your distro and blessed repositories, you will likely have good luck. I wouldn't consider even thinking about an outside repository with anything RPM based. With .deb's, it's actually a pretty safe bet due to the controls placed on .deb's.

RPM's work, and are more popular. But that's not for any technical reason... just like Windows works, and is more popular. I'm not stating that it's the best choice under any circumstance, either... I wouldn't want to even try to deal with a dpkg package on a Redhat system. Just like I wouldn't want to deal with an RPM on a Debian system. But given the strengths and design of the two systems? Debian-style package and package management grinds anything RPM based into the dust.

 

There are some facts on that post that show differences in the two formats. But the conclusions of the author are his opinion. Evidently the responses to that post show that not everyone agrees with his opinion/conclusion.

Congratulations. That shows that you are an exceptionally capable user. I don't think most Ubuntu users would fair so well if they tried to do that.

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/upgrading

Well, you may think I am lying. Fine. You may think that many of us are just lying about how good PCLinuxOS really is.

http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php?topic=40568.0
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php?topic=37040.0
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php?board=45.0

Fine. You just keep on believing that it is impossible for an RPM distro to be better than Ubuntu. You are certainly entitled to your opinion.

Well, you may be right on that, to a point. I do know that PCLinuxOS users are encouraged to stick to the distro's repositories if at all possible. I have only had to go outside the repository a couple of times.

Once to install VMware:
http://register.vmware.com/content/download.html

And once to install drivers for my printer:
http://www.printer-drivers.com/drivers/191/191065.htm

Both times I used KPackage (found on the repositories) and the RPMs provided installed just fine with no issues whatsoever. So, my experience has not been bad at all. But, hey, I am probably just making this up, right?

Even if I was to concede that there are some advantages of deb over rpm, your concussion would be a flawed extrapolation. It is like saying that because QT is technically superior to GTK that it is impossible to create am application with GTK that is superior to any QT application.

 

You guys have taken this thread way off topic. I suggest we get back on track here in relation to the OP.

 

@blackbird....I used Fedora 8 Core for a couple of months, liked it but found it not to be windows network friendly....same issue? Other than that it's solid as a rock. curious.

 

Interesting....I've heard others say on other forums that using certain distros left them feeling 'dirty'. In a strange way I can relate to that. The cleanest 'feeling' distro I've tried and like was Zenwalk, can't explain it really