Linux Distros...

[Foosinho]

OK, I know we've talked about this before but I can't find the old thread (and apparently the search is offline, since I can't find a link for that either!!).

I'm running a few machines with RH8, and I'm being forced to upgrade here at work to Fedora Core 3+, or SuSE. I think I may have a choice of one or two other distributions. Additionally, I'm thinking I *might* want to upgrade at home (also RH8), but everything is working well so maybe not.

Does anyone have any suggestions on SuSE or Fedora Core? Preferences?

[patrickdavila]

My first linux distro was RH5 and I eventually moved onto Debian and Slackware. I recently built a MythTV box and followed Jarod Wilson's How-To which is FC3 based. FC3 shows that RH has evolved fairly well. It's not my first choice for a linux distro but it runs well and the install was fairly easy. Plus, it's free $$. I've never personally used Suse but it has the reputation of being bloated and slow. Suse 9.3 has gotten some pretty negative reviews. How about giving Ubuntu/Kubuntu a try? It's Debian based (lots of packages) and has one of the easiest installs around (only 1 CD). I guess it all depends on what you're doing? For desktops, go with Ubuntu, Mepis, Meptiva (formerly Mandrake), FC3. For servers go with Slackware, Debian, Gentoo.

[peruytu]

Red Hat/Fedora was my first distro I used successfully. But after it became Fedora I kinda felt that something was missing, and not just the name change, couldn't pinpoint it but anyways, I felt I had to move to another distro. Since RH/Fedora i've used many other ones and the one I finally stayed with is Suse. Just because it's so simple to use. YaST is one of the best desktop managing software out there. It has matured over the years and is now used by professionals all over. Right now i'm using Suse 9.2 for my desktop, server and laptop... not a problem with any of those. Especially if you need to use it for work, i'd go with Suse... it's just very professional. And support, I hear, is great if you buy the professional servers.
But last week, for the first time, I installed Ubuntu... all I gotta say is WOW! I'm just starting to get the feel of Ubuntu but so far i'm liking it alot.
Other distros you might want to take a look at is Mandriva (formerly Mandrake), Mepis, Xandros, and Lindows... but these are basicaly aimed at newbies, yet they're all great distros.
For servers I would use Suse, Debian and or anything distro that has great security by default.
For more options you can go to distrowatch.com.

[Foosinho]

I might be willing to try some of these other distros at home (like Ubuntu), but I don't have that luxury at work. We have to meet extremely strict gov't computing requirments - thus the need to migrate from RH8 to a supported distro/version. If it were up to me, nothing would change - the RH8 machines I have at work are working perfectly, and are sitting behind at least 3 firewalls anyway. <shrug>

[JeffS]

Go to Fedora Core 3 (or 4, which is about to be released soon) at work. The install, the config tools, the Bluecurve them, and most of the kernel patches and shell scripts will be the same or similar. So the transition will be fairly smooth.

Fedora Core would be good at home as well. It's free, it's pretty easy, it's stable, and it's full featured, both as a desktop and as a server.

SuSE is solid, and very full featured. It comes in a $90 packaged version that includes printed manuals (which are supposed to be excellent), propietary drivers and plug-ins (you have to download and install those yourself with Fedora), and everything, including the kitchen sink, software wise. SuSE is also available for free download, only in later release, and without the proprietary stuff. SuSE is supposed to be easy, but is known to be a bit bloated and slow.

Ubuntu is great as a simple, Gnome and desktop oriented distro. It is also great with apt-get/Synaptic and it's repositories. It's free just like Fedora, but will require more downloading of stuff.

For easy, Windows-like desktop distros, go with Mepis, Xandros, Linspire, Lycoris, Mandrake, or PCLinuxOS.

For rock solid stable and fast distros with no frills or GUI hand-holding, and if you're not afraid of the command line or text config files, go with Slackware, Arch, or pure Debian.

Personally, I'm currently using Fedora Core 2, Mandrake 10 Official PowerPack, Ubuntu, and Mepis 2003.10, on various machines/partitions. I also occasionally pop in Knoppix. My current fav (which changes frequently, depending on my mood and current needs) is Fedora Core.

So, long story short, since you are already using Red Hat, stick with Fedora Core. You're already familiar with it, it's solid, and compares favorably to other distros.

[Foosinho]

OK - I've downloaded the Ubuntu Live cd, and I like it. It ran great on my desktop machine, but my wife is not ready for Linux on the desktop full-time.

I'd like to try it on my old laptop, but the default config was too taxing for the machine (PII 300 (or so), with 128MB RAM, handles XP Pro reasonably well). On the plus side, it *appeared* to recognize my Linksys WLAN card (never got Firefox to load - it was thrashing the CD drive for a LONG time).

Anybody got a suggestion for a distro/configuration to run on a low-power laptop? It's got to support wireless, and it's got to have Gnome or KDE so my wife can learn how to use the interface.