What distro are ya using and why?

AcftMecH

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after flip flopping distros (suse 9.2, Fedora, MDK 10.1, Mandriva 10.2, Kubuntu and Ubuntu) for the past 2 months, I think I am finally settling on Kubuntu. Although getting very proficient at seeting up a linux box!

It is a distro that I have been drawn too. I get rid of it, but it always makes its way back. It seems every didtro has something about it I like....and dislike. And if you have used Kubuntu, it does still have some maturing to do, but all in all, it is going well.

Kubuntu

Likes:

-- apt-get (with and without synaptic - universe and multiverse)... awesome!
-- Menus - edit very easy and programs create shortcuts on nearly everything unlike some other distros.
-- KDE 3.4 - very XP like in a sense of the bubbly animated look. me personally, I dont like all of the animation...just my opinion, but atleast you can turn it off. all in all, KDE 3.4 is awesome.

Dislikes:
-- Still needs to mature - has some bugs (streaming audio, network sharing - kcontrol admin) - more updates would be nice.
-- SUDO -- WTF? I dont see the purpose of this..
 
Right now i am using Ubuntu,

Likes:
- Gnome 2.10 :D
- apt
- the flexibility ( general for most distributions however )

Dislikes:
- like you say above, it is still required to mature. Needs some silly bugs worked out.
- still not as speedy as it should be, probably down to the bugs (memory leaks etc)
- sudo also, i dont like the sudo system so i setup the root account on first boot.

Code:
# sudo passwd root
# Your User Password
# Root Password
# Confirm

from then on, you just su, enter root password and your rooted :)
 
I don't use Linux on my own machines (although I admin two Debian servers), but if I had to pick, it would be:

- Ubuntu for its ease of setup. This is exactly the direction Linux needs to go in if it has to stand a chance in the desktop OS space.
- Slackware for teaching me just about everything I know about the system itself. :)
 
I use Gentoo on my server for several reasons.
- I wanted to try something new and less newbie-oriented after Mandrake and RedHat/Fedora.
- It compiles everything so everything is optimized for your machine and software setup.
- The software repository is huge. I imagine much like Debian's (which I never got to work for some reason).
- No releases. All packages are updated in a rolling manner. There's no need to upgrade to a new version of the system at any time.

The only downside is that the compilations mean that installing software takes a lot of time. But then again, you generally only install things once. ;)
 
SuSE 9.1 and im waiting to get 9.3 from my friend as asoon as he finds it
i chose suse because it was what the school had, and then found out that it has lots of options and features aand stuff
 
I use Slackware on my "server". It was the only distro I could get to play nice with my p150 w/ like 32MB of RAM I think it is. :)
 
I don't use Linux personally. FreeBSD 5.x series for me all the way.

Currently on my dual screen desktop i run Gnome 2.5 (iirc). I love FreeBSD as everything is really neat, and laid out in different parts of the system in such a way that it makes sense to go looking for it in a certain location. Also, the ports tree makes installing software easy and fast. Also it's fast.

For servers I use FreeBSD again :p. I have one Debian server tucked away somewhere, but it's a pain in the behind to administrate and keep up to date.

As for sudo, it is there for a reason. It is designed to stop users from using the system as root to much, and possibly cause things to go haywire. It's installed on most servers also as a way for scripts to execute certain software, and do do administrative tasks, while at the same time being run as a user other than root.
 
Almost the same as X stated above :) The only time I have trouble with FreeBSD is when hardware dies (and Henyman killed the ram in one server).

We have over 200 machines running some version of Centos, Fedore Core or Suse linux and we're forever reinstalling the OS and setting up temporary machines to stream reciverable data off as ext3/reiser corrupt the data they store all too often.

We're also rebooting linux servers a hell of a lot more then windows servers for some crash or other.

Coreix ourselves use FreeBSD for our mission critical "it just cannot be down" stuff, OpenBSD for our load balanced stuff and Centos for stuff we just dont care about but find usefull all the same.

Personally I use Windows for everyday desktop use and FreeBSD for my servers. THey just keep going. When hardware fails all they need is a reboot and they carry on till the hardware chokes again.
 
X-Istence said:
As for sudo, it is there for a reason. It is designed to stop users from using the system as root to much, and possibly cause things to go haywire. It's installed on most servers also as a way for scripts to execute certain software, and do do administrative tasks, while at the same time being run as a user other than root.
Isn't sudo also good for logging root usage by a 3rd party?
 
Xie said:
Isn't sudo also good for logging root usage by a 3rd party?

Yes, it logs all the commands input into it, as long as sudo su is not allowed, you can see what people are running.

LordOfLA said:
/root/.bash_history or /root/.history is good for that

echo "" > /root/.history
echo "" > /root/.bash_history

Not much one can do against that.
 
I recently switched from Fedora Core 2 (KDE) to Ubuntu and I'm really liking it. Though setting up sound was a bitch (who would of thought I had to add myself to the "audio" group?).
Still not sure whether I prefer KDE or Gnome though.
 
I'm running Gentoo at the moment as well, pretty much for the same reasons as Zedric.

For those who like BSD based systems, Gentoo's portage system is based on BSD's ports tree. I haven't used the BSD ports system, so I can't compare the two, but I like Gentoo's portage system a lot. I should probably take a look at BSD sometime, I've used freesbie once or twice, but not done much with it.
 
Gentoo's portage system is nothing like FreeBSD's ports tree. It's one big mess, whereas the ports tree is organized, and neat.
 
I use Gentoo as my main desktop and I agree with X. Portage is a mess when compared to the FreeBSD ports tree, but its the best that linux has got right now. I would use FreeBSD as my desktop, but there is just not enough support for certain things, like flash, java, etc.
 
What about Portage is a mess? Except for the occational broken packets of course. They kinda suck...

Maybe I should give FreeBSD a whirl some time. :)
 
No dependency checking, meaning you can remove something that 100 packages you have installed depend on with no warning. Ebuilds break often, I sync maybe every 2 days and I would say atleast 20% of the time something breaks, this does not happen in FreeBSD very often, and is usually fixed with notice or a portrevision bump, Gentoo seems to like to break an ebuild, then you sync again an hour later and it is fixed. If something extreme needs to be done, e.g. a perl upgrade, the full instructions are listed in /usr/ports/UPDATING, this does not exist in Gentoo. The whole hard/soft masking is dumb IMHO, if it works, commit it, if it doesn't don't. Test it. The FreeBSD way of keeping the toolchains constant, e.g. GCC which is a big deal, helps the stability, if it works on FreeBSD 5.4, you only have to check it against the version of GCC on FreeBSD 5.4, not make sure it will compile with 6 different versions, but that is really all of Linux, not just Gentoo.

My problems with FreeBSD are trivial, but these trivial things work in Linux, so I use it. Flash 7 does not work at all on FreeBSD, this is not FreeBSD's fault, it is macromedia's. Flash 6 does work though. Java 1.5 is not stable on FreeBSD, 1.4.x is however, but is much slower IMHO, and the 1.5 port does not build a plugin for mozilla. I can't get FreeBSD to recognize my extra mouse buttons, I have run the gammit on this one, I have seen someone with my exact same mouse, have everything the same, but it just doesn't work on my machine, does on his. I also cannot get any output from my mobo sensors on FreeBSD, but it works perfectly with lm_sensors on linux.
 
FreeBSD all the way for my OpenSource Operating Systems. I doubt I will ever touch a Linux distro again by choice. I originally started out with Mandrake, then moved to RedHat. I had always been told that FreeBSD was very hard to use. One day X-Istence convinced me to give it a try. I have never looked back. As a server OS I personally dont think it can be beaten. As a desktop OS again it is extremely stable and quite easy to use. The only let down, and the only reason why I no longer have FreeBSD as my desktop OS (I run windows on it again) is that I havent found a single Nix Window manager that looks nice. Gnome, KDE, blackbox, fluxbox. I have tried just about all of them and they are all horrid. KDE is more featured than Gnome, it looks prettier as well, Gnome is imo ugly as sin. KDE while being an improvement isnt much of one. *box didnt really do it for me either, just couldnt get used to them. I think Nix Window managers need to come a lot further before they can be considered for mainstream desktop or laptop use. Windows and Mac OS X are fantastic Window managers, polished, attractive, featured. Until the open source window managers get more designers (I hate to say it, but its true) involved than just the code geeks they will always be behind imo.
 
I'm using Debian unstable for quite some times now.. was using Fedora Core 1-2-3 then switched.

Likes :

KDE 3.4
Apt-get
Stability even with the unstable (SID)

Dislikes :

Nothing really big here (some trouble with setting KDM and stuff)
 
I play with Mandrake 10.1 just because I want something new that I dont know very well and like to keep learning after a while I will go for another version and see what is what .
 

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