Westcountryman

I'm quite interested in trying:

• OpenSUSE
• Mandriva
• Gentoo
• Debian

Anyone got any experience with any of these? I'm quite tempted to buy Mandriva on a USB flash drive if I like it, meaning I can use it wherever I go.

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Akria

I have limited experience with Debian and OpenSUSE.

Debian is very similar in many ways to Ubuntu, but it's slightly more flexible and has a greater degree of stability.

OpenSUSE has some great features, but configuring it can be awkward, particularly hardware, and the install process could be improved. Performance is very good.

Debian is the one I'd recommend, but give OpenSUSE a try.

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tito

Debian is *not* much good for the desktop. Though it has a graphical installer now (Only last year you installed the whole thing with the command line) it is still pretty much a server-oriented thing.

The software in the stable branch is so old, think OpenOffice 1 and GAIM still existing!

I have it deployed on a 24 hour Apache/DNS/DansGuardian/Email/FTP server and it is running very stable... but that level of stability is usually called "old" on the desktop.

OpenSUSE is what I used to use, and have tried subsequent releases since I left (But not 11). It has a nice theme and a nice corporate feel to it, looks very professional. The problem is it handles like a lobotomised slug on crack. Everything is so slow and awkward, especially the package manager. On my system it used to take about 3 minutes for it to load, and even then installing an RPM was hell.

Mandriva = has been. Don't go there, it is yesterdays news.

Gentoo = A bit too nerdy even for me. The way everything is compiled from source code is annoying. I remember some guy on a podcast who needed to burn a CD in work, and had to explain to his boss why he couldn't do it for 3 hours while K3B and the KDE-libs are compiled!!

The only one I want to see at the moment is GOS. Which is intended for minimalistic installs and comes with Google and MySpace apps.

It looks quite pretty, at least it used to. The new version looks like a rip off of OS X Leopard.

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Akria

Oddly, I always found that OpenSUSE ran like a dream performance-wise. What was your hardware support like?
If you had to use generic drivers for some things then that could hit performance.

Gentoo, as I said in the social group forum, I had problems just booting. I'd adore the compiling everything from source if only I could get around that.

I'd have to disagree with the bit about Debian - you can't say it's ready for someone who wants the latest and greatest, but I'd say it is ready for the desktop, and has been for some time.

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tito

It isn't ready for someone who isn't comfortable doing absolutely everything with the command line, and using the GUI as an extra.

No generic drivers, I just find the appalling combination of AppArmor/RPM/YaST to be unbearable.

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Akria

I'd agree with the bit about Debian - I tend to assume that even ordinary users will want to use the command line a bit, though, because of the main reasons for moving to any Linux distribution is normally wanting to learn.

AppArmor didn't bother me, but YaST is appalling and I detest RPMs anyway, so I agree with you there.

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Earthling

I would like to give Fedora Core another shot someday, but last time I used it I wasn't impressed

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Unionist

Same here. I might have dismissed it a bit too quickly.

Since then I have been in the Debian/Ubuntu stable.

Welcome to the group, by the way.

Earthling

Thanks
At the moment Ubuntu is definitely the best distro I have ever used, and I would even go so far as to say it is the best operating system I have ever used! And I have used OS X, Windows 3.1/98/XP, Amiga Workbench, RiscOS & MS-DOS for years!

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Akria

Nice repertoire.

Oddly enough, I took exactly the same Windows route - first 3.1, then after several years 98, and then after a few more years I got XP. I also then had Vista, but I've since formatted that partition.

Come to think of it, I still have the recovery partition taking up 8 gigs of space... I might want to think about formatting that too when I reinstall this week.

Which distros have you used, by the way?

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