which x64 Linux distro?

[Dark Atheist]

i have a spare pc here atm, say spare person who has asked me to mend it cant pay the bill so im holding it hostage :smoker:

And seeing as i have a few spare drives hanging about i thought i would use the pc to test some Linux distros. Now the only one i have never got working was gentoo, and i really would like to, i know they do a x64 version as do ubuntu (which i have tried and cant say im too found of) and debian, again last time i used that it had enough issues in itself.

Out of all the x64 distros out there would do people advise to use, time is not a factor, although going all the way through gentoos install only for it to kck out 9 hours later and it wants you to say yes or no to a licence is also not something i want to do, althoug messing about with freebsd i seem to understand it a bit more and know to install base and then build from there.

 

[vern]

I don't know why you'd want to use Gentoo. It's a dying distro. If you want to do it for ****s and giggles, go for it.

x64 Ubuntu & Debian are solid. Really nothing to complain about.

 

[Dark Atheist]

dying? how you work that out? ubuntu doesn't give you the freedom, and i dont like debian as the people who run that treat you as stupid and tell you what you will use and how you will use it

 

[vern]

Considering that the guy who used to run Gentoo had to step back in to save Gentoo ala Jobs and Apple ... except he isn't Jobs, and theres no iPod.

This is Linux ... you are free to do with it as you want. You can do anything you want with any distro. Distros are just the shiny stuff around it. If you want to compile your own packages on Ubuntu, do so. If you want to compile your own kernel, do so. If you would rather replace apt with another package manager, do so. Just for fun use Slackware and recompile the kernel and other packages for x64. Slackware is the easiest distro to play around with because it doesn't hide things in odd places. If you want "freedom" ... try out LFS.

I personally don't hang out with Debian devs, but if you like your Linux politics, have at it ... I personally like just using things sans politics.

 

[Dark Atheist]

im going back to slackware - gentoo just annoyed me with conf files being split up into far too many pieces, slackware may not be 64 bit but at least i know what its doing and where its doing it

 

[j79zlr]

Gentoo is not dying. That is just absurd. It is a royal pain to get up and running the first time, but I can't seem to keep anything else installed. I've been using Gentoo for about 6 years now and I can't see myself using a different flavor. Once you get used to the quirks it is not hard to maintain.

Ubuntu is awful. If you want to use Linux and have absolutely no idea what you are doing, have absolutely no desire to learn, and complain about editing a configuration file by hand, then Ubuntu is for you. If you want to get your hands dirty but not be completely masochistic about it, then Gentoo is for you. If I had to use a binary distro, it would be slackware. They have a 64-bit version but I haven't used it. It should be fine though. http://www.slamd64.com/

 

[Dark Atheist]

thats an unoffical port, and although im tempted i need a system that "just works" and slackware fits my needs and skill level atm

 

[LordOfLA]

www.linuxfromscratch.org

 

[Dark Atheist]

time consuming

 

[LordOfLA]

but fun

 

[Dark Atheist]

if you have the time

 

[vern]

That is the biggest problem with Linux ... it's users. Ubuntu is awful because it holds people's hands. It's awful because it makes many different things about Linux ... easier. I don't know what is so awful about that. People shouldn't have to get their hands dirty, they should just be able to use it. I guess if its popular, it isn't cool enough. I loved Slackware's simplicity. I used it for years a while back until I started loving apt. Gentoo caters to a niche and perhaps elitist crowd ... it's politics and development reflect that, and if I wanted to use portage, I'd just use FreeBSD. If I wanted to compile, I'd use Slackware. It may not be dying ... but it isn't going anywhere.

 

[Dark Atheist]

slackware isnt going anywhere? - try looking at the changelog - with slack things are slow, not every little thing is added as soon as it appears, its test, test and tested again, slackware maybe slow, but so far its one of the oldest linux distros about, that should say something.

I think most people dont like ubuntu becuase of its hand your hand attitude, think most people see it as a MS version of linux.

I was using FreeBSD 7.0 x64 but some things just did not work on there and not having drivers for x64 was a pain, its not often i log into X on the server but there are times.

Too each there own, i use what i like and when i like, that is what linux/bsd is about.

 

[LordOfLA]

I started with slackware in 1992

 

[j79zlr]

That is the biggest problem with Linux ... it's users. Ubuntu is awful because it holds people's hands. It's awful because it makes many different things about Linux ... easier. I don't know what is so awful about that. People shouldn't have to get their hands dirty, they should just be able to use it. I guess if its popular, it isn't cool enough. I loved Slackware's simplicity. I used it for years a while back until I started loving apt. Gentoo caters to a niche and perhaps elitist crowd ... it's politics and development reflect that, and if I wanted to use portage, I'd just use FreeBSD. If I wanted to compile, I'd use Slackware. It may not be dying ... but it isn't going anywhere.

Linus's strength is the vastly more knowledgeable user base. Ubuntu works against that. They do not want their users building their own kernel or editing configuration files. Every distro provides a default kernel so if you don't want to build your own thats fine and they all provide similar gui driven configuration tools, but at the end of the day you can still edit these things manually. Ubuntu also does similarly dumb behavior like blasting away your bootloader windows style and installing updated kernels in standard updates. These should be big no no's.

Gentoo is not a FreeBSD clone. Portage undoubtedly was taken from ports but they are not the same. There are some strengths and weaknesses. I like the use flags since they are vastly more useful than setting options in pkgtools.conf but I like how FreeBSD doesn't keep multiple versions in its tree.

As far as compiling on slackware? You really shouldn't since it has a package management system which you should always use on any distro to keep your house in order. If you start compiling your own software you can run into dependency problems that the package manager can't resolve.

 

[Dark Atheist]

use slackbuilds to compile and install things in slackware like i do, most scripts tell you what deps are required, and if there is a really big dep that you dont have the compile will kick out.

Plus i tend to keep on eye on configure as its running

 

[X-Istence]

pkgtools.conf? Please, that only applies to portupgrade and friends (portupgrade, portinstall).

Nowadays the ports tree is more mature and has these awesome things called options. What happens is as long as BATCH=yes is not set, a dialogue box will pop up asking what options you would like to come programs with. It has not been added to some ports, but it is slowly getting there. make config, choose options and they stick around forever. make rmconfig to remove the config, and make config if you already have a config to change it, add options or remove them. Really handy, and does not require me hunting around anymore for what flags I need to add to a port.

 

[j79zlr]

I know about make config. My problem is that it is not as easy to set universal flags and they aren't standardized. I can place WITH_CUPS="yes" in make.conf but then I can't control if I want something built without it. I can remove BATCH="yes" but I don't want to babysit when its doing hours of compiling. With gentoo's make.conf you can set the normal use flags and then adjust them per package with package.use, its very simple. You can also change your use flags and then rebuild anything that those changes affect which is something that FreeBSD lacks.

 

[Dark Atheist]

im bored - im going to iso up the drive in the server pc and mess about with some distros

 

[X-Istence]

I know about make config. My problem is that it is not as easy to set universal flags and they aren't standardized. I can place WITH_CUPS="yes" in make.conf but then I can't control if I want something built without it. I can remove BATCH="yes" but I don't want to babysit when its doing hours of compiling. With gentoo's make.conf you can set the normal use flags and then adjust them per package with package.use, its very simple. You can also change your use flags and then rebuild anything that those changes affect which is something that FreeBSD lacks.

You can use if statements in make.conf. So you can set specific flags for specific ports. This one comes straight from Geffy since I could not find my notes on it:

.if ${.CURDIR:M*/databases/mysql5*}
BUILD_OPTIMIZED=YES
.endif

Might not look as clean, but you can set all the flags you want, unset flags you don't want using standard make calls and whatnot.

I agree on the recompiling everything that is affected, most software on FreeBSD these days changes it's package name to signify what options were selected. So it is only a matter of running a portupgrade with the proper flags.

Then again, how often do you change the flags on programs such that it affects that many programs that you are unable to complete the task by hand? These days I set make config (which can be run recursively, so before a big build, run it recursively and you are set!), and then I compile. After wards I don't worry about the flags used or the need to change them. I can honestly say the only time I have changed the flags were for the php5-extensions ports to remove certain modules since it is a meta port, but besides that never.

When I used Gentoo all the use flags did was get in the way. Even if I set certain flags (for example to have debug symbols available for the glibc and other libraries) it refused to follow directions since some of the portage stuff does not adhere to the debug flag. It was a thorough mess. Not only that, but I have seen my room mates who run Gentoo on their laptops hose their machines because of portage's problems. The same with Ubuntu though, so I am not sure if it is just a problem with Linux and it's package managers in general. I have never been a fan of RPM, APT, or Portage. Peoples systems get screwed up too easily by using a package management system that is implemented in a half ass manner. The worst is when packages are not default packages anymore, but rather contain patches x, y and z because the maintainer felt it was best for everyone to use them. That is my main beef with Gentoo's portage tree. qmail has hundreds of patches applied for no good reason what so ever.