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Fellow Linux Geeks/Nuts/Addicts/Users, I think The Linux Weekly News is the best, un(distro)biased, and most informative news site on the 'net today. Therefore, I think that this is the most appropriate place to post such an issue. If it were to be posted to Slashdot there would be too much crap to wade through to find the answers (not to mention the flames, flame-baits, and trolls -- its like going fishing at a fish hatchery: you catch everything). The basic question is "What distro do you use?" But I am curious about more than just that; I'm curious about the path that people have taken to arrive at that distribution. Let's start with our esteemed editor: Mr. Corbet. Since he started writing the device driver articles I know my estimation of his abilities has increased considerably. They are really the only articles on LWN that require all of my synapses to fire properly in order for me to understand them. I consider myself a fairly good programmer, I've been building my own kernels since the beginning, I'm not afraid to patch the kernel, and I've spent many hours browsing through the source code. I think its a safe guess that he doesn't use an out of the box configuration from any distro. I'm curious what distribution he uses. I know that a custom kernel can be used with just about any distro out there but a lot is lost by not using the kernel that the distro has provided you with. The kernel is just the most obvious example at hand. It was Mozilla that got me started on this project. I'd like to have a version that I built from source code but that goal has proven elusive. I use Mandrake 8.2 at the moment and spent an evening in dependency hell before I decided to just use the nightly builds. I'm building up an old machine with Debian that I intend to take from Woody to Sid to testing soon. The reason is to be able to build Mozilla and a number of other programs so I can play with the source code. I think it would be very informative to have a questionnaire to try and chart the distros people started using, their intermediate distros and why they switched, and finally the distro that they are currently using and how happy they are with it. I would be willing to work on this project, in conjunction with LWN, if there is actually a desire to see it done. It would be nice if enough time went into the questionnaire to make it truly useful for people -- newbie through kernel hacker -- and could be allowed to run indefinitely on LWN so that data can continuously be collected and it would have relevant data from now on. For instance, if someone asked me what distribution they should use to 'try' GNU/Linux on I would recommend a CD based Live version or if I could remember the name of the Linux version that lives as a file in a Windoze partition and can be executed from Windoze. On the other hand if a small business asked me how to use Linux to run the Internet stuff I would probably suggest RedHat with a support contract. A desktop user I would probably point to Mandrake; and a programmer with at least some Linux experience I would probably point to Debian. There are reviews galore for every kind of distro that you can imagine. What we need is an aggregate of information that can be used by everyone who doesn't spend their time reviewing distributions. The pros and cons of each distro should be voted on and ranked. The recent article about source based distros is an excellent article, especially the part about the dis/advantages of going to source. That data should be integrated into the questionnaire by those that are actually using it. I've included the distros that I've used and the reasons that I no longer use them below as a starter: Year Distribution Reason for changing ---------------------------------------------- 1993 Slackware First Distro 1996 Redhat Slackware fell behind 2000 Mandrake Newer Packages 2003 Debian Hoping apt-get removes the dependency hell ???? Gentoo This will remove the dependency hell I would also want to put a number of questions that say between 1-10 how would you rate: Upgrade-ability of packages Upgrade-ability between minor upgrades Upgrade-ability between major upgrades Desktop hardware compatibility Laptop hardware compatibility Server hardware compatibility Rating as a desktop distribution Rating as a server distribution Rating as a newbie distribution Rating as a programmer distribution And some multiple choice questions: Why did you switch to/from a particular distribution Upgrade-ability Packages newness of packages stability What kind of users would you recommend this distro for Newbies Programmers Administrators What kind of uses would you recommend this distro for: workstation laptop server firewall backup I would list the results in terms of most popular distribution. They could be resorted based upon your level of expertise, the function that they will perform, and the hardware that they will be installed upon. Each distribution could then be expanded to show how they are rated on individual details as listed above. If LWN agreed to host this and help me out we could even put it into a database so that you could use it to compare and contrast the different distributions. It might even be possible to place a front end on it that would allow a user to say: "I'm an intermediate UNIX administrator/programmer, a beginning GNU/Linux user, an expert LAN administer and I need to deploy DNS, HTTPd, SMTP on a single server in a DMZ." The next user could say: "I'm a Linux expert that wants to deploy a firewall on an old P100 with a DMZ for servers and a NAT setup for the internal corporate users so they can share the DSL connection too (without spending a week building and configuring my own)." The first thing that I need to know, as I'm sure Jon and the other staff at LWN need to know, is what kind of interest is there in the community for such a database? Can I get some more feedback on the types of questions that should be listed and how I should format the results? This is just an idea and it won't be very useful without a lot of data in it so if there is just a passing interest I guess I'm stuck reading distro reviews and installing the most promising ones when I have the time. Best Regards to the Community, Tres -- Tres Melton <class5@pacbell.net> (Log in to post comments)
What distributions I use Posted Apr 16, 2003 19:39 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] As a general rule, we keep fairly quiet about the distributions we use around the LWN "office," since we don't really want to be seen as endorsing any distributor in particular. Besides, we tend to have a number of them around, it's part of the job. I've run quite a few distributions at one point or another.For what it's worth, my desktop is currently a Debian sid system; there's simply nothing better if you want to be able to install and try out all kinds of bleeding-edge software without running into dependency misery. Now if I could only get it to do a dist-upgrade without removing galeon... My sacrificial kernel and driver testing box was also the subject of my recent experiments with Gentoo. The "home server" system, and the box the kids use for sending email, is running Red Hat 7.3. Red Hat tends to be my choice if I simply want to get a box up, running, and handling some routine task without spending a lot of time messing with it. I always keep a reasonably current disk with LNX-BBC on it for when things go wrong. But, then, all this is subject to change tomorrow...
What distributions I use Posted Apr 17, 2003 11:51 UTC (Thu) by maniax (subscriber, #4509) [Link] Having the same problem in debian, i first do an apt-get install galeon, and then do the apt-get dist-upgrade. Worked fine 3 days ago.Btw, that helps in a lot of other situations, when dist-upgrade says it will remove some of your vital packages....
Thanks...I think... Posted Apr 17, 2003 14:02 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] I tried "apt-get install galeon" a few days ago, but was told that it was already current. This time it did it, and promptly upgraded me to 1.3. It's going to take me a while to think about whether I really like it or not. It suffers from the GNOME 2 "don't let them configure anything" disease, and makes much poorer use of screen space. Maybe it's time to go check out Phoenix (um... Firebird.... Flamedrake... CombustionElephant... whatever)
Distribution Tracking Posted Apr 17, 2003 2:21 UTC (Thu) by mbcook (subscriber, #5517) [Link] "So You Want To Start A Flame War." Chapter 1...OK, seriously. I've been using Linux (as a hobby) for years now and have tried most of the major distros at one time or another. Here is my basic report: Redhat - The "king" of distros in a way. It's not bad, but I haven't used it in a while. This was my first distro and while it works, this distro itches my major pet peeve: RPMs. RedHat is probably a very nice distro these days (it was quite good then) but I hate RPMs with a passion. They are just too much trouble for me. I know there have been attempts to improve this (and I've heard they are somewhat successful) it's just too late to sway me. Sorry RedHat. Mandrake - This would be my newbie distro, and there is a very good chance that I would use this if it didn't use RPMs. When I've used it it's a very nice distro. It seems cohesive, and everything. But when I try it (8.0 was my last try) I always get fed up with RPMs and dump it. SuSe - Never tried it. It's supposed to be nice, but you can't get free ISOs (which is how I get my distros because I don't have much money) so I've never tried it. I know there are supposed to be "trial" ISOs or something but I've never bothered. Slackware - I used this for a while and liked it. It's a nice distro and it's packaging system is nice too. I don't really remember why I didn't stick with it. I think it was just that it wasn't for me for some reasons. I think this was when I got an itch to try Debian and that's why I stopped using it. This isn't for total newbies IIRC. Debian - MY king of distros. I LOVE Debian. You'll hear that it's installer is hard to use or terrible (I think it's fantastic) or complaints because it's not a GUI (it is, it's just a text GUI). There is something to be said about being able to install a full Linux system with just 2 floppies and a 'net connection. This is the distro I run when I want something reliable that I don't have to mess with. This is what I run when I want something stable. This is what I run when I want a system that will "just work" and is easy to mess with. A newbie could cut their teeth on Debian with some help, but it doesn't have utilities to configure hardware like Mandrake does. I use this on almost ALL my boxes. RPM can't hold a candle to apt and dpkg, IMHO. You want stable? The "stable" flavor is the most rock solid thing you'll ever find. You want up to date but still stable? The "testing" flavor is as stable as other distros, and has packages that are quite up to date. This is what I ran on my desktop for a long time. You want the latest and greatest? The "unstable" or "sid" flavor is for you. The newest of everything, and usually pretty good, but every once in a while you'll upgrade things to find X/KDE/GnuCash/whatever won't work for a day or two. The biggest problem with Debian is all packages are compiled for i386 (on the i386 arch). By this I mean that things like libraries don't come optomized for your Pentium XXVIII (the the kernel does). A minor complaint. Xandros - Haven't tried it, but been wanting too. This is supposed to be a great desktop distro, but it's based on Debian meaning that 1) it doesn't use RPMs (that's good) and 2) it DOES run apt/dpkg (that's better). No ISOs though, but I might fork out to buy this one day. Gentoo - This is what I run on my desktop. I run this because it's fast, and it's GEEKY. There is a large ammount of geek pride here. The "package" system is based on BSD's "ports" and works great. Gentoo's biggest problem now (it's out of some of the growing pains it had a while ago) is that because it's a source distro it takes a LONG time to get everything compiled if you don't have a P4 3Ghz. On my box (dual PIII 600, could use a little more memory but it's not a problem) it takes a day or so to compile X/glibc/whatever. When it's something smaller, it's doesn't take long at all. There are exceptions (KDE, Mozilla, and java.) Java BTW, I don't like much. I could compile the rest of my system 3 or 4 times (that's EVERYTHING) it the time it takes to compile java ONCE. You think X/KDE builds slow? GOD. You'll probably hear that the installation is hard. It makes sense, and you really are running at the metal. It's pretty cool, but it's NOT FOR NEWBIES. It's not a walk in the park. It really REALLY helps you know your way around Linux. But because everything is compiled and optomized, it runs quite fast. I guess that's about it. So in conclusion I run Gentoo on my main Linux box for the speed and geekyness, and Debian on everhting else for the stablility, reliability, and such. I had a Debian box run as a file server for all my other computers (Windows (9x and 2k), Linux, and Mac (OS X)) and I literally forgot it existed for about 2 months because it just sat there (it was headless) working flawlessly. When it would reboot (from power outage) it would come right back up and work again. I know other distros can do this, but it just seems so easy with Debian. I didn't remember about this box untill my MP3s stopped working and I found out it was because I unplugged it while working on another PC and forgot to plug it back in. The bests: Upgrade-ability - Debian. Apt/dpkg rules. Easy as pie. Newbies - Mandrake I suppose. workstation - Debian. Redhat would be good, but I hate RPM :) PS: In case you haven't noticed, I love Debian, and hate RPMs (and so shy away from things that use them). Those two things kind of taint my answers (#2 more than #1; not neccessarily a bad thing).
Distribution Tracking Posted Apr 17, 2003 23:05 UTC (Thu) by brouhaha (subscriber, #1698) [Link] I'm always completely baffled when people say they hate RPMs. I've been using Red Hat on about a dozen x86 and Alpha systems since their 2.1 release [*], and I've never had any problems that were caused by the RPM packaging, or that would have been cured by using some other packaging system.Eric
Distribution Tracking Posted Apr 18, 2003 8:00 UTC (Fri) by revdiablo (guest, #5717) [Link] I do believe the major problems with RPM are not strictly due to the package format itself, but more a lack of cohesive policy for creating packages. People often use Debian's dpkg/apt as an example of how package management can be done right, but many fail to realize it's the excellent package repository that makes apt work so smoothly. And I think the reason the package repository is so excellent is mainly because of Debian package policy. If RedHat put effort into creating a nice repository of RPMs that are known to work relatively well together, and backed that repository up with solid policy to help people construct said RPMs, things would be much different.
Distribution Tracking Posted Apr 17, 2003 8:38 UTC (Thu) by Liefting (subscriber, #8466) [Link] Your questions look ok. Put up a website and post the link. Then I'll answer your survey.But include SLS as a possible distro choice as well. That was the first distribution (at least my first, back in '92), and not Slackware.
Distribution Tracking Posted Apr 17, 2003 9:38 UTC (Thu) by hensema (guest, #980) [Link] I have used three main distributions over the years and tried several others.
I've also run these distributions/osses:
Distribution Tracking Posted Apr 17, 2003 14:25 UTC (Thu) by pmd (subscriber, #3600) [Link] I doubt you would get many replies (< 500) to such a detailed survey because it would just take to much time for the average user to fill in.I simply can't remember timelines of when I switched distros. A much better idea would be for some popular site to do a _very_simple survey every 3 months where it simply asked you which distro and version you were using to read the survey. Only a couple of mouse clicks so would get lots of data and be able to spot trends. Of course any such surveys will always be skewed by fans ballot stuffing so maybe only run it for 'fun' rather than serious statistical use.
Distribution Tracking Posted Apr 17, 2003 17:57 UTC (Thu) by ken (subscriber, #625) [Link] Started of with yggdrasil tested RedHat 4.x and then got stuck with debian.The exact timeline is lost but I think yggdrasil came with a 1.2 kernel. I test the others from time to time under wmware but so far see no reason to run anything other than debian. I really like that it's possible to upgrade to new version without having to do a new install. Before I got a IBM "deathstar" I had an installation that could be tracked back to my first installation of debian (rex). If you have more than one computer to tend to I guess you want one of the binary distro, compiling from source gets old really fast.
Distribution Tracking Posted Apr 17, 2003 18:34 UTC (Thu) by a_hippie (subscriber, #34) [Link] Hi Tres,I like your idea to add distro-watch attributes to lwn.net. Btw, I use Libranet on my laptop because it has been tuned for I also enjoy keeping up with Knoppix's live CD and giving them Other distros:
Distribution Tracking Posted Apr 17, 2003 20:05 UTC (Thu) by dkite (guest, #4577) [Link] Fascinating letter and discussion.Redhat 5.2, 6.0 Debian potato -- sid gentoo. I'll disagree with one point. For a newbie, I would help install debian, show them apt-get, and forget it. Stable, works all the time. For years and years. The reason the debian installer has lacked attention is due to it never being used more than once. Knoppix is the way to get someone started, and can be used to install debian easily. As others, the rpm mess drove me away from redhat. In the interest in accuracy, rpm works, but at the time at least, lacked a repository of packages compared to the debian collection. Gentoo is my favorite now. Debian didn't have bleeding edge kde packages for a while, so I installed gentoo, and haven't looked back. It works, and I can maintain a stable and bleeding edge desktop system for me and the others in the household who just want it to work. From time to time it suffers from what I would call 'emergus interruptus', requiring some low level figuring out, so a newbie would either learn quickly or give up. What really surprised me is the number of first time linux users on #gentoo. It gives a certain satisfaction to walk someone through the kernel configuration. And they keep at it until it works. Kudos to them. Derek
Distribution Tracking Posted Apr 22, 2003 12:58 UTC (Tue) by alspnost (subscriber, #2763) [Link] 1995 : Slackware - it came free on a computer mag CD when I'd never heard of Linux, so I installed it briefly but didn't have a clue what to do with it beyond typing "ls" lots ;-)1999 : RH 6.0 - because it also came free on a mag when 6.1 came out. I installed it and then stuck with Red Hat for a few years, up to 7.3 which was the first distro I used as my primary system to replace Win2k. That worked well, and I generally liked Red Hat, but was unhappy about the KDE trashing in 8.0 and the crap multimedia. I was just about to make a switch to Mandrake 9.1, which looked great, but I decided in a mad moment to try.... 2003: Gentoo 1.4 (rc) : I never looked back. Bleeding edge yet surprisingly stable and solid, screamingly fast, beautiful package management and perpetual upgradeability, excellent documentation and helpful forums, and simply elegant engineering. Ahead of the curve, I hope it continues to succeed and win converts. Once everyone has 2-3GHz systems, compilation speeds won't be much of an issue any more.
Distribution Tracking Posted Apr 24, 2003 11:19 UTC (Thu) by job (guest, #670) [Link] It would be dangerous to draw conslusions from the question you ask. There are lots of fanboys around who, for unclear reasons, would be happy to proclaim their favourite distribution as the best choice. There is no best choice. I would draw a map for you with the distributions I have used over the years, but how could I? a) I use different distributions for different purposes and I always have. Plus b) I compile some applications from scratch, and c) many times I'm just too lazy to edit all the system rc-scripts the Right Way and just put stuff in inittab or rc.local instead. So as time goes by, the installation looks less and less like the original distribution. The web is filled with zines testing out one distribution after the other, when all they do is just install the stuff. They are testing installers and not distributions, which is ridicolous. How much time do you spend installing an average Linux box compared to the time using it? What is interesting is how the distribution behaves over time. How much good documentation is included? Are there good examples in the rc-files? How fast and easy can you get security patches applied? How about in a couple of years time, will it still be well supported? But if we all try not to draw large conclusions from this thread, I can at least sketch what I've used and explain some thoughts I've had about them:
Slackware is an old tried distribution that just works. There's a lot of experience put in those examples in the rc-files. I the Slackware base a lot for smaller installations such as firewalls etc. Slackware supports their distributions for quite some time, but after a handful of years you must be ready to reinstall or compile your own fixes. Debian is large and if you use the stable tree, stable. I have used it on both workstations and servers. Apt is a wonderful tool. It is perfect when you want to computer to do its job and not you. You can search for programs using apt, try them and then delete them with a minimum of work. But stable means old here and you can wait for months for bug fixes to get applied because they must be backported to the version in your installation first. I still use it on some servers because it is company-agnostic but I haven't got the patience to use it on a workstation I will work on. (Jurix was interesting for its time. I don't think it exists anymore. It looked somewhat like ROCK does today. Was faster than Slackware to adopt new stuff.) (Enoch was drobbins distro-attempt before Gentoo. Kind of flashy and colorful with somewhat glorified default configurations for the applications. Had a server still running it until last christmas. Was rather buggy.) Gentoo is fresh and gets a lot of attention and work these days. I use it on my primary workstation because they are quick with new versions of the software. Works very well, and the USE flags are a great concept. It's not difficult to install if you have basic Linux (shell) knowledge, in some ways it is easier because there is no package index stuff that becomes out of sync when installing from other boxes, much like Slackware. Beware of some of its more enthusiatic users who would swear by it. It is far from as mature as Debian. Some upgrades are hard (upgrading a library and all apps depending on it, for example) and sometimes may break times. I wouldn't use it on critical servers yet. However, the concept of not having frozen trees may well prove good when upgrading boxes after a couple of years. It all depends on how stable the Portage system proves to be. I'll wait and see. Red Hat is something you need to learn if you are to work with Linux. It's everywhere and has a large impact on where other Linux distributions are heading. Good for corporate servers and desktops because it is easiest to find people who know Red Hat. Personally, I've never liked the RPM system much. Installing programs tend to be much more work than with apt in Debian. GNOME-centric. SuSE is the other corporate desktop, this time KDE-centric. Both are good free software citizens and share their work with others. Use when people know it or wants to buy support contracts from them. I've had trouble with installations breaking, but that may be just bad luck on my side. ROCK is probably quite good on servers. I liked it's build system (with easy cross compilation) and default settings for a while and used it on a server and some playing around. Now I tend to prefer Gentoo for the same work, much because it attracts more users, ideas and work. OpenBSD is said to be secure. I guess it's a good choice on servers if you are content with the shipped applications. If you install much things yourself, you often fail to take advantage of some of the security stuff which tend to be in their ports tree. The new systrace system seems to be good. After a couple of years installations get very hard to upgrade when they stop supporting it, which is the main cause I've stopped using it. Beware of some users, who can be quite elitistic and not very helpful. (There are helpful users too, of course.) FreeBSD is much like Slackware, but with a BSD-style kernel. I used it on a server mainly to learn it, but Linux has been more important in the marketplace for me. Nothing wrong with it at all, very useful, but no great benefits compared to Slackware either. Some people swear it has performance benefits, but that tend to be a configuration thing both on Linux and FreeBSD, and for me they behaved quite similar. Now that was a large article. I'd better stop typing now. Reactions?
Distribution Tracking Posted Apr 24, 2003 13:55 UTC (Thu) by jabby (guest, #2648) [Link] I think that an interesting display of the results would be a sort of double-connected graph of all the distributions that appeared in the survey. Each arrow from one distro to another would be thicker (log scale) to indicate the number of people who made this move. The arrow would then also carry the various reasons cited by those people, ranked by popularity, perhaps with a weighted system so people could give multiple reasons, but weight one reason over another.I realize that this would require some sort of work to get the display right and usable. Or it could just be an exhaustive list of distributions in two lists. You select distro A and then distro B and it tells you the stats and the reasons for the switch. It would be more interesting if it were browseable, though. I'm thinking something like the EtherApe graph or that 3D website tree browser I saw a few years back. You could click on nodes (distros) and it would center on that node and tell you more about it, including top reasons for changing to it and away from it (from/to all connected nodes). You could also click an arrow and get the reasons for that transition, as I said above. Pipe dream, I know... Jason
Distribution Tracking Posted Apr 24, 2003 14:12 UTC (Thu) by AAP (guest, #721) [Link] I started with Slackware about 1994-95, but I didn't have enough HD space to do much more than fiddle. In 1999, I got a machine with enough HD to install enough packages to actually USE Linux. I tried RedHat, and I liked it, but wasn't quite satisfied. I then tried Debian 2.1 (Slink) and after 15+ tries I finally had something that worked. Apparently, I did it by luck, because when a sid upgrade blew my system away, I couldn't reinstall Slink. I had various problems with Mandrake ranging from a broken sendmail to an unbootable system. Suse installed great, and I'd recommend it to my mother or GF, but I didn't like the "look and feel". Then I happened to see a Slackware 7 box at Compusa and remembered recently reading that Slack wasn't as "outdated" as it used to be. I tried it, and now I'm using Slackware 9.0. If I get the time, I plan to try a LinuxFromScratch soon.
Distribution Tracking Posted Apr 24, 2003 15:43 UTC (Thu) by ris (editor, #5) [Link] Being a lazy person who isn't terribly fond of sysadmin tasks on my home computer, I have a subscription to KRUD (Kevin's RedHat Uber Distribution). Once a month I get a new set of CDs in my mailbox and I upgrade my system with all the security and bug fixes from the CDs. I have upgraded from 7.2 to 7.3 to 8.0 with no trouble at all. If there are some occasional security fixes that I don't want to wait for, I can run a krud2date and patch any possible holes right away, but for most things updating my box once a month is fine.I have only been running Linux since 1997, but I did play around with Caldera and SuSE and before getting KRUD.
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