I have spent the past month evaluating every distro I could find. From HD Installes to Live CD/DVD’s and each one of them had a quirk that drove me nuts. I have 2 machines that are mine to ruin; (I have a 3rd comp but every time I wipe the drive my wife flips out because I deleted all of her stuff AGAIN!!) one is an HP Pavilion ze4560 1.8AMD/512RAM laptop and the other is an old PII 600mhz/396RAM mini-tower clone.
Just for clarity I didn’t bother trying to get the WiFi card running on most of these distros.
Fedora 4 and 5
HD-Install
(Laptop & Server)
First I’d like to point out that I have been a RedHat fan since 1998 when I tried Linux for the first time. But my opinion of them has gonw down since the introduction of Fedora. Anyway my biggest problem with Fedora is with the video drivers. In general the fonts looked like crap so I tried to configure the ATI Video card. Nothing. No Clear-Type fonts for me. Next was the inability to access my NTFS drive. I tried all of the hacks I could find to get Fedora to see the drive but got noting. Nothing. This isn’t really a problem on my laptop but on the server I have a 120GB drive with 70+ Gigs of mp3’s and it’s formatted to NTFS. On the bright I was able to install every app I could find: KDevelop, Krusader, NVU, Bluefish just to name a few. RPM, from the rants I have read is junk. Well it’s does what I need it to do so I guess one man’s junk is another mans treasure.
OpenSuSE 10
HD-Install
(Laptop & Server)
I got OpenSuSE running on both my laptop and file server. I was sharing files (mp3’s) burnning cd’d and every thing was happy. The fonts looked good, I could read/write to my NTFS drive and installing app via Yast was a breeze. But then my 2y.o. hit the reset button on the server. When I logged back into the server I could no longer see my NTFS drives or the network! WTF!! On windows you can pull the plug on it repeatedly and no crap like that ever happens. See, Windows was designed crash so the developers designed around it. This has been my pet-peeve with linux for a while.
ZenWalk 2.4
HD-Install
(Laptop)
I’m am not a n00b when it comes to Linux but I am a little rusty. Let me just make this clear. I installed RedHat 5.2 back in 1998 when I was a n00b with very few problems. But with ZenWalk I could figure out the text-installer at all. It’s as if the developers said to them selves let’s weed out the n00bs from the rest of the pack and use a text-based installer from 1994 that’s only we know how to navigate. If the purpos of ZenWalk is to weed out the n00bs then it’s doing it’s job. But if it’s trying to break into the main-stream market then the installer needs some work. This really disappoints me because it’s a single CD distro based on Slackware which means it isn’t bloated with apps (Knoppix/Kanotix) and it’s on a rock solid foundation.
Slackware/Debian/StarCom/Goblinx/RedHat 9.0
(Laptop)
This general senario happened on all of these distros. I placed the install cd in my laptop. It got to the screen where it says hit enter to continue. I hit enter. The next screen says choose a language or hit enter to continue. I hit enter. Nothing. I hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete to reboot the box. Nothing.
CentOS
HD-Install
(Laptop & Server)
This worked great but I couldn’t install crap. No RPM’s to be found and when ever I tried to install from source I got a list of missing librarys that I just didn’t have the will to go and find. I really want to use this distro because it is RedHat Enterprise Linux with out the cool RedHat logos. Oh Well. Next.
White Box Linux 4
I am sure this is a perfectly distro but I just couldn’t be bothered.
MEPIS 3.4-3
LiveCD to HD-Install
(Laptop & Server)
This one has so far worked the best. The selling points was typing the command ~mount /mnt/hda1 and it mounted my NTFS drive without tweaking jack (take that Fedora) and it comes bundled with smb4k which is a nice GUI for browsing my network and accessing network folders. The HD-Install was smooth. The fonts look good except for google.com in FireFox the fonts are a bit small. It’s even pretty snappy. But just one gripe. I CAN”T GET KRUSADER INSTALLED!!! Not from slck. Not from a debian package. Nada. Some damn KDE Lib is missing or messed up. I really like Krusader so this is a sticking point. Maybe 6.0 will be better.
Kubuntu 6.x beta 7
HD-Install
(Laptop)
What I have to screw around with it to log in as root?! Actually I liked this distro I just didn’t like the fact that I could’t get Krusader to work or smb4k.
Ubuntu 5.10
HD-Install
(Laptop)
F*&%ing slow!! Gnome runs like sh*&. Next.
Xubuntu 5.1
(Laptop)
HD-Install
This one was awsomely fast but the file manager was crap. CRAP I tell you! The one in SLAMPP (emelFM2) is better.
SLAMPP 2.0 Lite
LiveCD
(Laptop & Server)
This one still is my favorite distros for light weight and speed but it is not for everyday use. It comes with XAMPP pre-installed and it’s default configuration is to be a light weight web server. Which makes it perfect for home server use. Just get SLAMPP running with Ampache (http://freshmeat.net/projects/ampache/) or jinzora (http://freshmeat.net/projects/jinzora/) and you’ve got youself a home audio system. The installer even worked like a charm. But xfce is not pretty and you can’t run Krusader.
Kanotix 2005-04
LiveCD
(Laptop & Server)
I use this when ever MEPIS p!$$es me off. It even has Point, Click WiFi is working. This is a solid Live Distro with good hardware support and load of apps. What? No Krusader!! I followed a menu item to klik and tried to install Krusader through klik but I got nothing. Just a bunch of errors. The only other issues was the installer. Eventhough I went through Parted and sent up a root drive and a swap drive it kept telling me it couldn’t see an linux formatted drives. Oh well.
*UPDATE: Instead of using QTParted to set up the partions I just went with the default and it installed fine. But now it can’t find the WiFi card at all!
Kanotix 2006-Easter-RC4
LiveCD
(Laptop)
Aside form the hidous Splash Screen and Desktop Wallpaper this relese seams a bit more refined. The fonts look better then menus have been cleaned up and the system seams faster. I did the HD-Install and everything went well. I shut down for the night (having to sleep is such a pain) but when I started up in the morning the eth0 was not working. I ran the nice little config app but it informed me that there was an error and it could not start my network card. BAAARRRRGGGG!!!
Knoppix 4.0.2 and 5.0
LiveCD
(Laptop)
I tried Knoppix for the first time 4 years ago and I was amazed that you could actually boot and ues a computer from a LiveCD. I tried each of the HD-Install types, Debian-Like, Knoppix and Multi-user; and each one had a quirk. The Debian and Multi-User vesrsions are the pretty much the same. They both installed every desktop manager know to man as well as every frickin’ app under the sun. The menus were so full that I had to to a search just to find Krusader!! The Knoppix version took way too long (2+ hours) and when I re-booted I got a GRUB error!! Also after doing the HD-Install it could no longer read my NTFS drive. It kept telling me the Windows was shut down improperly and the drive was locked? Well I don’t really need that NTFS drive anymore. Wack!
I am on the fence with Knoppix and Kanotix.
PCLinuxOS .92
LiveCD
(Laptop)
This was all good until it didn’t kick the laptop fan on. Not Cool:)
SLAX 5.1.x Server/Desktop
LiveCD
(Laptop & Server)
This is the best LiveCD ever. It doesn’t come with too many apps. It runs fast and all of the fonts look good even in FireFox. And there is a nice section to the SLAX.org site where you can download modules (app) and install them with a click. Sweet jesus they’ve got Krusader!! This is a fine LiveCD but the maintainer does not recommend using the HD-installer. A few modules and reboots after doing the HD-Install and the system craps while booting. This would be my distro if it didn’t flake out. And yes I tried using Slackware.
As you can see I have given several distros the once-over. It’s a way for me to test the water to the current state of Linux and I have to say I am impressed. One thing I find interesting is that the 2 distros that I have been reguared as ‘hard-core’ have the widest deployment of LiveCD’s. Like I said before I have been a fan of RedHat for a while but now that you can boot a LiveCD based on Debian and then install it I am finding that Debian-Based distro’s may be the future.
If you’ve made it this far thank you. This isn’t a defacto round up of Linux Distros, it’s just my opinion. And as I have told my sister when every she gives me advice on rasing my child, Opinions are like finges and sometimes you should keep them to your-self.