Help me choose a gnu/linux distribution...
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| Author | Content |
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| aanderse Jun 15, 2009 3:23 PM EDT |
A brief history:
I'm in my mid 20's and believe strongly in free software. I support floss by answering forum posts, submitting small patches every once in a while, and convincing friends, family, and co-workers to try out gnu/linux. I do make comprimises though: my wireless card has no linux driver so I'm using ndiswrapper currently, I use the binary nvidia drivers, and I write dot net code in windows at work all day. I've been using gnu/linux for about 5 years now and refuse to run any non gnu based machines at home. I started gnu/linux with fedora 3, and then moved to ubuntu. I've run gentoo, foresight, mandriva, puppy, damn small linux, and a hand full of other gnu/linux distributions over the years, but have been pretty dedicated to debian as of late. I've also used gnome, kde, xfce, and fluxbox in the past, but I'm currently a KDE4 user. My problem: For various reasons (including, but not limited to the ubuntu flame fight for mono which has recently spilled over into debian ... more on mono later) I would like to find a new gnu/linux distribution. Criteria, etc...: I *love* debian! At least I did... debian is simple, powerful, and it most certainly just works. I have a very solid grasp of gnu/linux environments. I compile libraries I use regularily. I want the core parts of my desktop to "just work". My issues with gentoo linux were mostly around 1) how long it took me to install it (300 + page installation manual) 2) I want my core desktop to "just work" 3) I like to show off to non-gnu/linux users how awesome gnu/linux is (compiling software doesn't do that) There are certain things I absolutely love about gentoo, though, like the fact that I don't have any dependencies I don't want (that's a huge plus for me), I don't have to worry about unecessary bloat, etc.. I am tired of the mono debate in ubuntu/debian. I don't like dot net - from a *technical* standpoint (not a "religious standpoint" as many people have been saying). I'll reiterate that I code in dot net all day every day at work (this is what my employer has chosen, and while I can disagree with that choice it's my employers choice to make, not mine). I think higher level languages (in theory) are awesome, but I hate the idea of a runtime (java sickens me equally as much as dot net does). I think the new glib/gobject based language vala (if you don't know what vala is, you really should research it!) is far superior to mono, so for gnome to be using dot net when they could be using vala is very frustrating to me. Either way I'm not even a gnome user anymore. KDE4 has taken my breath away (from both a developers and users stand point). Since KDE4 is still so new, it is important for me to stay up to date with the most recent packages/patches/versions. I want a system that won't break every day, but I also want a system where I can stay up to date. I don't mind if a small part of my system breaks for a day or two at a time, as long as it won't interupt me too much (I use debian unstable/experimental and usually everything works fairly well there). What I do with my computer: I use jabber, irc, e-mail, web forums, even a little skype for communication. I surf the web. I watch dvds. I use my wireless network card which has no native linux driver (by the way, if you're a driver developer who likes to reverse engineer broadcom wireless cards for cash, lets talk!). I code all the time. I use proprietary nvidia drivers to run my KDE4 window manager effects, play some games every once in a while, and to run the 3d application I write myself. Final comments: At this point I'm tempted to either stay with debian or move to gentoo. I think gentoo satisfies the highest number of points I've made in the above post. Is there a distribution you know that might suit me well? Do you have any tips of making gentoo less time consuming to install? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for any comments and help. |
| jdixon Jun 15, 2009 3:31 PM EDT |
From what I've heard here, if you like Gentoo, check out Sabayon at http://www.sabayonlinux.org/ Alternatively you might like Slackware or Arch. |
| rijelkentaurus Jun 15, 2009 3:38 PM EDT |
What are your hardware specs? FWIW, I have found 64-bit Debian to be unbelievably fast, far faster than 64-bit Red Hat...if you have the hardware for it. You should be able to strip out Mono from the install (haven't tried to verify that, however). I agree that Sabayon would be a good choice to explore, particularly if you like Gentoo; Slack and Arch are great, too. |
| Bob_Robertson Jun 15, 2009 3:50 PM EDT |
> (I use debian unstable/experimental and usually everything works fairly well there). As did I, until Lenny went stable. I've stuck with Lenny, because my experience with KDE-4 is exactly opposite yours. I wonder, though, even if mono is "default" just don't install it. I take out NFS, which is installed by default, and dselect doesn't complain. Rij, has 64-bit had the problems worked out? Flash, GoogleEarth, those sorts of things? I tried it a while ago, but... oh well. Next time I upgrade i'll try it again. |
| Steven_Rosenber Jun 15, 2009 4:08 PM EDT |
If you love Debian, use it. Just rip out the stuff you don't want. Or start with a minimal install and build it up from there. |
| bigg Jun 15, 2009 4:35 PM EDT |
Arch is a good choice. It sounds like you want to have some control over your system; Arch definitely does that, yet is binary. Sabayon's great but I don't like the "Noah's Ark" characteristic, where it includes two of every kind of software on the planet. Another reason is that it offers KDEmod. I'm not a KDE fan, but those who are really love their KDEmod. Chakra is an installable live CD for Arch using the KDEmod desktop. That kind of goes against the ARCH philosophy, which is to never make decisions for the user, but if you like KDE that should not be a problem. Arch's pacman package manager is another selling point if you like Debian. Arch is a rolling release, and the good thing is that it's only a rolling release, so any breakage is fixed in a matter of a few hours. (That said, I use Slackware. Go figure.) |
| hkwint Jun 15, 2009 7:02 PM EDT |
Well, what a coincidence aanderse, I'm also a Gentoo user, recently migrated to KDE4 as well, but also a bit fed up with compilation and the desktop not working out of the box.Quoting:Do you have any tips of making gentoo less time consuming to install? With respect to KDE4, yes, I do. You might already know about these, however. It's not going to shorten compilation time (unless you don't install whole KDE), but it means less typing on the keyboard for you. Most of it is from the KDE4 guide of Gentoo: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/desktop/kde/kde4-guide.xml I'd suggest not to use the kdeprefix-useflag. It's not supported by Gentoo's KDE-team, though they do offer it. Also, I appended all kde-base/* packages with the 'doc' USE-flag, because otherwise you won't have the help available! You should find all installed / going to be installed kde-base packages and add a 'doc' useflag for all of those. I did it with EIX (see below) and a vim-macro. From a recent IRC-meeting summary of the gentoo-KDE-team I understood this might change in the near future though. It's nice to know this before compiling. -Emerge a tool called 'autounmask'. KDE4 is labeled as 'unstable' by Gentoo (until at least the end of June I understand). I cannot understand how I lived without autounmask. To unmask whole KDE-4 '#autounmask kde-base/kde-meta-4.2.3' suffices. To have the whole KDE4-experience, also autounmask koffice-meta-2.0.0, amarok 2.1, krusader-2.0.0-r1 and digikam-0.10.0-r1. K3b and basket (and maybe others) are not yet available for KDE4; you'd have to use git (basket) or Alpha (K3b) from their respective websites. -EIX is also great by the way. Check it out if you haven't done so. -When dealing with useflags, a tool named 'ufed' is nice; though nowadays better tools may be available. You might want to look at 'portato'. When installing KDE4; it depends on the version of portage you're running. -With portage 2.1 (stable), what I'm running right now, there are the "old-style" meta packages. These are 'umbrella' packages; one empty shell containing lots of other packages. I emerged kde-base/kde-meta-4.2.3, which is almost the _whole_ KDE environment and takes lots of time. For example it includes kde-base/kdepim-meta. Instead, you could use kde-base/kdebase-meta-4.2.3 instead and only add the packages you are using. -With portage 2.2 (keyworded), what I also tried - but accidentally I reverted to 2.1 - you can use sets. This is the future of portage and large packages it seems. This gave me a whole lot of blockers. I only was able to circumvent all these blockers by removing everything KDE-3.5. You could find that with: eix -I --only-names "kde-base/*" ccache might also speed up compilation. __ The alternative is not to use Gentoo. I have been looking for an alternative too, but I was not satisfied with the alternatives. Fedora 10 & 11 didn't run, Ubuntu felt bloated and had some bugs, OpenSuse 10.2 had a very nasty bug which meant I couldn't update and a few more of those disappointing experiences. Sabayon looked promising, but it had a performance glitch which made it unusable for me after 5 minutes using it. Haven't checked the latest version though. Also, updating Sabayon seems to be a bit of a problem. One could install Sabayon to have an immediate out of the box experience though, and from that point always use portage to update. Also, Fabian is working on 'entropy', but I'm not sure how far he advanced with that project. It's meant to provide 'Gentoo without compiling'. We should ask AZ, or Fabio himself. What happens to work rather well these days however, is kvm. I had some nasty experiences with Debian Experimental (if I ever reached that) in my kvm because I couldn't get the screen resolution right. However, someone named Aurel (I guess he or she is named Aurel) offers pre-made Debian Lenny qcow images, working right out of the box in Gentoo. http://people.debian.org/~aurel32/qemu/i386/ It was download and go! Hmm, almost though. You have to set up KVM; http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/KVM but that's not much more work than setting up VMWare. So maybe you could use Gentoo/Sabayon as a host and then Debian as a guest; or the other way around. If one of them breaks, you can still use the other. Normally, it also takes a few days / weeks before Gentoo offers the newest KDE-version in portage (4.2.4 or 4.3.0 Beta 2 as of this writing). And if KDE already has .deb packages, you could already use these. I have to note I suffer from some Akonadi problems however, and it seems on Gentoo I'm not the only one. Let me know if anything is unclear or if you want to know more. What also should be possible is to copy the contents of Gentoo's latest LiveCD - coming with the XFCE desktop - to your harddisk and boot from harddisk. You could update from there, but that will give you some hassles because the LiveCD's are quite old. Better use Stage3 with the weekly builds. http://www.gentoo.org/news/20081220-releng-first-weekly-stag... That means you have a CD that will install a full development environment without compilation, and from that pre-compiled environment you start compiling everything else. The 300+ page installation manual may seem impressive at first, but of those 300 pages you only need about 30 or so, and less if you done it before. Using 'mirrorselect' is a good idea by the way. For updating configuration files I recommend 'etc-proposals'; also saves you time. Look at Uncyclopedia, they provide most commands in one line. It's intended as humor, but the shortest Gentoo installation guide on the net; and really close to the truth. Here it is: "fdisk /dev/hda mkfs.xfs /dev/hda1 mkswap /dev/hda2 swapon /dev/hda2 mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/gentoo/ cd /mnt/gentoo/ links http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/mirrors.xml md5sum -c stage3-*.tar.bz2.DIGESTS tar xvjpf stage3-*.tar.bz2 links http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/mirrors.xml md5sum -c portage-latest.tar.bz2.md5sum tar xvjf /mnt/gentoo/portage-latest.tar.bz2 -C /mnt/gentoo/usr nano -w /mnt/gentoo/etc/make.conf mirrorselect -i -o >> /mnt/gentoo/etc/make.conf mount -t proc none /mnt/gentoo/proc mount -o bind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev chroot /mnt/gentoo/ env-update source /etc/profile emerge --sync cd /etc rm /etc/make.profile ln -s ../usr/portage/profiles/default-linux/x86/desktop make.profile cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Eastern /etc/localtime cd /usr/portage scripts/bootstrap.sh emerge -e system emerge vim emerge gentoo-sources cd /usr/src/linux make menuconfig make install modules_install vim /etc/fstab passwd emerge grub vixiecron syslogng dhcpcd cp /boot/grub/grub.conf.sample /boot/grub/grub.conf vim /boot/grub/grub.conf grep -v rootfs /proc/mounts > /etc/mtab grub-install --no-floppy /dev/hda init 6 emerge gnome mozilla-firefox openoffice emerge --sync emerge portage" |
| Steven_Rosenber Jun 15, 2009 7:27 PM EDT |
I just can't hang with hours of compiling. I feel like I'm reinventing the wheel every time. And I can't leave my laptop especially sitting for days compiling (and then getting the inevitable errors). I'll give up small amounts of theoretically gained speed for a precompiled binary 29 out of 30 days of the month. The 30th day I'm OK to compile stuff. Just not on the other 29. |
| hkwint Jun 15, 2009 7:44 PM EDT |
Well, I don't think 'speed' is a good reason to use Gentoo. Just like Python is not necessarily slower than C if you count developer time as well as runtime. I think the main reasons to use Gentoo are: -Ability to start from 'empty' and build from there, instead of starting with a desktop and removing from there, -Working development environment by default (all compiler stuff installed by default), -Ability to leave things out using USE-flags; though nowadays given the 400 flags I'm not sure that's a pro -Ability to switch every subsystem (Grub, dhcpcd, syslogng, gentoo-kernel) with another (Lilo, dhcclient, metalog, mm-kernel). -Ability to build 'mixed' system (XFCE, KDE3/4 apps, Gnome apps, Firefox, OOo), -Easy bughunting given verbose boot-time messages, not booting straight in GUI etc. -Understanding everything that's on your system and what it does; however nowadays with DBus, HAL etc. that's also less clear. Most of those things could be reached on other distro's as well, but Gentoo makes it rather easy. My computer doesn't spend more than 6h per week compiling, generally. OK, it was more when migrating to KDE4. But I didn't have to update my whole distro; I could happily use Firefox while updating most of the time. |
| rijelkentaurus Jun 15, 2009 11:43 PM EDT |
@Bob. only used the 64-bit briefly at work...don't recall any problems, but I didn't really use it for those things. It was replaced with a 30-day trial of 64-bit Red Hat, which I am demoing to try to get the powers that be to use Linux more. RH is nice and I like it a lot...but I swear, the Debian install booted in 20 seconds or less, Red Hat is not a fast boot at all. As soon as the trial is over, 64-bit Debian is going back on. I am going to try it on my laptop also, as soon as I up the RAM to 4gb over the current 2gb. It might like the laptop, might not, I have my fingers crossed. Highly impressed with it, however. I also want to try Arch, I have heard such good things about it. |
| azerthoth Jun 16, 2009 6:46 AM EDT |
I have to admit that I do have a bias towards Sabayon ... well more than a bias. With that said, let me tell you what Sabayon is not, it's not Gentoo's easy button. Yes we maintain 100% Gentoo compatability, however as Gentoo uses portage for its package management we use entropy, which is a source based distribution method versus a binary method. This creates a small but very meaningful change, you can run into serious problems if you go tinkering with USE flags. Entropy packages, being binary, will not honor any changes you might have made to your USE flags. This can make mixing and matching between the two package managers very tricky. It can be done, but there are a few land mines when taking the mix and match approach. We recommend that users use one or the other exclusively, and that if you choose the portage only method, that you recompile your whole system to start. Entropy however can and does handle most needs very well. I tend to thing that we have done rather well with Sabayon, while as mentioned before we take a kitchen sink approach to releases it makes a really nice day to day use desktop, if a tad on the overkill side on packages available post install. Any questions and you can find me most evenings in #sabayon on irc.freenode.net. |
| aanderse Jun 16, 2009 10:04 AM EDT |
Thanks for all the tips! You've all given me something to think about. I downloaded Arch last night and I'm going to try it out in a virtual machine to get a feel for it, see how it compares to gentoo. About removing mono: as suggested by some I do always install debian (or ubuntu) from a base system (that is, only the command line) and manually install a graphical environment afterwards. This is a quick and painless process which leaves you with only the packages you want. So if mono isn't installed you might be wondering what my issue is? I really enjoy following the development process of the distribution I'm using. Planet debian has had some very distasteful posts lately regarding mono, personal attacks, calls for debian developers to step down. These attacks and flame wars aren't the only reason I'm looking for a change of gnu/linux distribution, but I'll be honest and say the attacks have soured my view of debian a bit. |
| rijelkentaurus Jun 16, 2009 10:14 AM EDT |
Bad forums, childish attacks, rude language and behavior...sounds like why I left PCLinuxOS. I can sympathize. |
| moopst Jun 16, 2009 6:09 PM EDT |
I can't believe no one's mentioned distrowatch http://distrowatch.com/ . It helped me decide on Slackware after Red Hat went to Fedora and they made it too cutting edge for me to feel it would be stable enough. I decided Slack was a good compromise of cutting edge and stable based on what I read on distrowatch. It has proven to be the case over the last few years. Patrick stuck with the 2.4 kernal for a way long time, I thought it was a year too long until they found a bug in 1 gig file handling in the 2.6 kernal. Also he kept with the 3.x KDE while everyone else went with KDE 4.0 which was obviously beta though it had a nice round number. Check out the major distributions, try some of them out for a while and settle on the one that makes you most comfortable. |
| tbuitenh Jul 02, 2009 10:13 AM EDT |
If you like gentoo but wish the installation/configuration were a bit easier (USE flags...), you should try SourceMage http://www.sourcemage.org/ . Its package management system is REALLY nice. That said, I recently tried to install it again and that was a disaster. I blame my ****y motherboard, on which every other linux kernel won't even boot, but it could also be the quality of the distro has gone down since the last time I used it. I'm also looking for a different distro - when I upgraded Ubuntu it became FUBAR, then I downloaded the latest Ubuntu install cd, which turned out to contain one of those non-booting kernels, so I had to go back to the previous Ubuntu, which doesn't work too well either... For instance digikam broke. It's summer now so I really need my digikam :( . I think I'll install slackware. My USB stick with slax works like a charm, so it seems sensible to do that. As for Mono, I dislike that too. There's the potential legal trouble, and the not too pretty architecture, but I think there's an elephant in the room. For many of us the reason to start using Linux was that we were fed up with Microsoft technology. It may not be entirely rational to not want a clone of Microsoft tech on my computer, but it is understandable. I don't like being reminded of the times when I had to deal with work lost to MS Office crashing on "file - save". Oh, this reminds me to switch the windowmanager theme on my fresh Ubuntu reinstall, I hate having an "X" in the upper right corner of every window :) . |
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