Phoenix Network Forums

i'm quite a n00b in linux and my first linux is fedora core4. Is it good?
What linux distribution you use and why?

In my life I used 5-6 distro of Linux and 2 of BSD.
Linux: Slackware, Fedora C3, Suse, Slax, Ubuntu;
BSD: NetBSD, FreeBSD.

Now I'm using WindowsXP coze of my family which used it for work ... and some programs can't be run with Linux OS even with Wine.

I use openbsd on my servers because of its security:

OpenBSD believes in strong security. Our aspiration is to be NUMBER ONE in the industry for security (if we are not already there). Our open software development model permits us to take a more uncompromising view towards increased security than Sun, SGI, IBM, HP, or other vendors are able to. We can make changes the vendors would not make. Also, since OpenBSD is exported with cryptography, we are able to take cryptographic approaches towards fixing security problems. http://openbsd.org/security.html

I also use the kernel mod Stephanie: http://www.innu.org/~brian/Stephanie/

For my desktop, i use gentoo because of its optimization and performance.

a special flavor of Linux that can be automatically optimized and customized for just about any application or need. Extreme performance, configurability and a top-notch user and developer community are all hallmarks of the Gentoo experience.

My laptop uses ubuntu linux, because of its laptop portability (i couldn't get X working on my small laptop screen for the longest time). I have it duel booted with windows XP so i can do school work that requires Microsoft word.

I use Windows XP on my machine, and the university computers I use are Sun Blade 2000's with Solaris 9 and uber dual P4 Xeon PC's with Windows XP.

krod wrote:I have it duel booted with windows XP so i can do school work that requires Microsoft word.

Can't you just use OpenOffice for that?

stupergenius wrote:

krod wrote:I have it duel booted with windows XP so i can do school work that requires Microsoft word.

Can't you just use OpenOffice for that?

I've personally found that in various circumstances it doesn't render the pages properly in one direction (I think it was stuff saved in OO didn't appear correctly in MSW) but this wasn't a constant thing either
Then again, I personally prefer MS Word over openoffice, I am yet to try openoffice2 but I wasn't a fan of the original.

I personally use Debian or Ubuntu around the house.

stupergenius wrote:I use Windows XP on my machine, and the university computers I use are Sun Blade 2000's with Solaris 9 and uber dual P4 Xeon PC's with Windows XP.

krod wrote:I have it duel booted with windows XP so i can do school work that requires Microsoft word.

Can't you just use OpenOffice for that?

My teachers only accept microsoft word documents (i have to copy it on to a cd with special software to make sure i didn't copy someone else's work.)

My first linux is slackware, now i use Fedora Core 4.

Now I use Windows XP, but also have SuSe 9.3 and on cd`s Slackware 10.1 and Red Hat Linux

In my life i've seen real booted Linux like Unbuntu, Knopix and SuSe and more linux version from shells user :-) But i'm learning to use it like a pro ^^ I know that is linux rocks heh ^^ But still i'm just a Win slave...

I'm another Gentoo user. I like its extreme flexibility, and the easy command-line-based package management Portage. It's based on FreeBSD's ports, but has lots of unique features. I also like the idea of USE flags and some other things.

However, Gentoo doesn't necessarily make your system faster, but unfortunately quite a few people think so. It's best not to use aggressive compiler optimizations. The thing that influences system performance most is USE, not CFLAGS.

krod wrote:My teachers only accept microsoft word documents (i have to copy it on to a cd with special software to make sure i didn't copy someone else's work.)

OpenOffice can as well save documents in Microsoft's DOC format.

Never tried gentoo. Currently I am on win, but linux is more elegant system. That is my opinion. I didn`t know that OpenOffice can save .doc documents, thank`s mm

Ive used: Madrake since 7 to 10, Red Hat since 7 to 9, slackware since 6 to 10.2, gentoo, lfs.

tried FreeBSD 5.2, 5.3, NetBSD 2.0, OpenBSD 3.8, Solaris 10

What i falt in love with - that is slackware. Nothing annoying. Only the thins what u really need. Initialization is built even better than in *BSD, where all scripts are in the same place where another conf files, and of course better than RH oriented systems. Slacka is the most CANONIC linux. It is a true linux. W/o any additional things what distributors made. Only what Linus said ))).

from other Unices - FreeBSD. No paranoics, no mega-super-much platforms and CPUs. Gemutlich und bequem. )))

Fedora's good in that it comes with a complete package of applications. Also, anything that's written for Linux has probably been distributed via a .rpm, so you won't have compatibility issues. There are some distro-specific quirks in it that I don't like, and which you'll have to learn replacements for if you use another distro in the future.

My "first Linux" was Caldera OpenLinux, the one that SCO wishes had never existed. I tried RedHat (I think it was 7.3) after that, but it didn't run very well on the PC I had at the time if I wanted to do anything that wasn't from a CLI, so I moved on to Slackware. I used Slack as my primary *nix until fairly recently; it now shares that spot with Ubuntu. I keep Hal91 and Knoppix disks around for stuff like system recovery.

I've tried many flavors of BSD (basically all the major ones except Open). FreeBSD is alright, though I'm hoping that Dragonfly will take off.

As far as commercial Unixes go, I've only used Solaris, and I'll probably pick it back up if ZFS is what it has been made out to be.

If I ever need to use linux, I usually just run a virtual machine copy of WHAX. Though I would like to get a shell, which is what brought me to this site.

I started out with slackware (ick that was a nightmare ) I've since grown to love Debian, I personal think its fairly easy for a newcomer/novice to get into and use. Now don't get me wrong im not saying im a guru myself, but i've been around the block a little while. One advantage that i like about Debian is all of the precompiled packages that are available. For most applications you would want to use its fairly easy to get them up and running, it may even be as little as issuing one command (ie. apt-get install <package>) Its fairly easy to setup and use, I mainly like it because I hate having to compile things for just a very simple setup such as a workstation box. Hope I have helped.

Steve