[TriLUG] What's the Fairest Distro of All?

Matt Pusateri mpusateri at wickedtrails.com
Thu Mar 24 15:49:58 EST 2005


On Thu, March 24, 2005 3:02 pm, Randy Barlow said:
> Although one of the lesser "user friendly" types of distributions,
> Gentoo
> has a really nice package management system that gives you a really
> wide
> variety of software to choose from.  Gentoo can be pretty difficult to
> install since it doesn't have a traditional installer, so it may not
> be what
> you are looking for in terms of a "Win XP replacement" (you can always
> install KDE or Gnome on just about any distribution if a good desktop
> program is what you are looking for), but I really like it for how
> much you
> learn about Linux from the process.  I personally haven't seen any
> distribution with a package manager that gives you such a wide variety
> of
> software to choose from either.  But if you go Gentoo, be prepared to
> spend
> ~3 days to install it!
>
> Randy

Well I disagree slightly with your time frame.  I've done it in less
than 3 days.  But if you have a very slow box then a compile from
source distro is not your best choice.  I like Gentoo b/c it is a
close to FreeBSD is linux can get.  Most of the problems listed in the
orginal email do not happen in the *BSD's   I encourage anyone to try
*BSD's especially FreeBSD for your first time, since it is so well
documented.   Of course I will give linux the edge on newer drivers
for newer hardware and it's very close tie when it comes to getting
power management working on a laptop.

That being said there's VLOS at http://desktop.vidalinux.com/  I have
not tried it, but it uses anaconda to do a graphical install and
supposedly helps lesson the learning curve of installing Gentoo.


Matt Pusateri




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