Adam wrote:
What distros do you use, and why did you choose them? What are their biggest advantages and disadvantages? Are there any distros you've tried but chosen not to use? What made them a "bad fit" for you? I'd be very grateful if any of you would share your experiences with various distros.
Thanks VERY much, Dave, Bob, Chris, Aram, Eric, Matthias, and Allen, for your very helpful recommendation and an interesting discussion. I was also surprised to see that other users here are considering changing distros. Maybe a future meeting could be another "distro shootout".
I've repartitioned my internal HD so I now have four additional 20 GB partitions for trying other distros in addition to my "production" system. I decided to start with distros similar to Mandriva. Right now I have the latest releases of Mandriva, Mageiea, PCLinuxOS, and openSUSE installed. I'm trying them "in parallel", so now all have all updates, and an ordinary user can start the GUI. This last required "chmod 4755 usr/bin/Xorg" on some of those distros. (An install of the "KDE Full Monty" version of PCLinuxOS took up 14 GB, so I replaced that with their "Phoenix" (XFCE4) edition, which takes up a more reasonable 2.4 GB.) My next step will be to see whether I can get my wireless card to work, as once I get my next system, this box will get moved into another room.
So far, I don't have any conclusions about any of the four distros I've installed. Based on recommendations, I also have the latest Debian, Arch, Slackware, and CrunchBang (couldn't resist the name) burned to disc and next in line to be tried out. I'll post any observations, conclusions, or decisions to this thread.
Adam _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) Vassar College Jul 11 - Mad Science Fair - Open Hardware Expo Aug 1 - Pimp My Network Sep 5 - OpenStack
