i would've voted for gentoo if it'd been there when i voted also you dont *have* to compile everything there are loads of the standard apps compiled for different cpu types also quite a number of apps come as bin as well as source like open-office, cos otherwise it takes a ridiculous amount of time to compile firefox comes in bin form too and a few others
Still, I don't think it's a very good premise to build an OS on, at least not for general use. I have a hardened stage1 Gentoo webserver, but that's another matter altogether. it's a nice distro for that.
why not? you get a system that is compiled entirely for your system, not generic you can compile your programs with support/optmisations for certain other programs you only get what you want on it, you install mandrake or similar and you get a huge amoutn of crap its entirely customiseable i think its an awesome idea and im quite happy to spend a day or two setting up the system
Because having tried it for stability and speed compared to my compiled for i686 debian install, I didn't notice any real world difference in any area of use, except that it was marginally faster to boot up. I dont use "Mandrake or similar" I use Debian, so If I do want to compile something from source I can do so with apt-get (which in my experience is a better, faster to download system than emerge, but meh.) The base system installed in just 5m13s, and then I put on everything else I use, with no bloat! It's been the perfect OS for me recently, I think the 2 main things against it are: The Woody installer (I used the new Sarge installer, which is brilliant) The fact that a Knoppix install is so easy, but also horribly bloated. But each to their own.
I used it for a while, but lost it in a reformat and cba to go through the install again. Gentoo is very powerful, but the install is a bit of a pita.
gentoo on 2 main comps and clusterknoppix on the rest with gentoo you dont have to go back and do a complete reinstall you can always boot off the livecd and fix whatever needs fixing
I used Mandrake for a while but the hardware detection was crappy and I could never get modems to work properly. Suse works fine for me and it's easy to update. Whats all the hoo hah about freeBSD? What's so brilliant about it and why is it (apparently) better than Linux?
Well, I hate to show my newbieshness, but I use Mandrake 10 with Gnome. I'm having a bit of trouble setting Firefox as default browser and Thunderbird as default mail app, and only 2 of the 15 games will even start, so I'm not horribly impressed, but it sure does work more quickly and reliably than my XP box! Using it strictly for desktop. Working on a freeBSD server, but haven't finished modding the case yet
Iv got red het 9 lying arround and iv installed it on 2 boxes so far and erased the first HDD within a few weeks and the second within a day. first box was a celleron 450ish and it went kinda slow (never did get tux racer to work) and i didn't have the time too fool arround with 5 min boot times and no idea how to navigate the GUI. second box was a complete disaster. p2 333, 10 min boot time 30seconds to open a window. id like to fool with RH9 as soo as i get a proc update and some more memory for my celleron, then maybe il get somewhere. i do wana try gentoo but im on a 56k and downloading that well... so for now il stick with win98 until my "fastest" computer is a little faster
I'm using Gentoo- if only because Portage kicks the **** out of just about everything. I used to use debian but I kept breaking things with apt- but I have had no problems with Portage at all! Apparently the 2005.0 (or 2005.1, I can't remember) version of Gentoo is going to be fully bootable (like Knoppix or Gnoppix) and will include a graphical installer for those that want to use it. Hurrah! Sam
mandrake is easy to install and user friendly i dont have any expiriance with red hat so i aint gonna say anything about it but in a verry close future i am gonna test red hat
I've seen no mention of fedora - or does this just fall under the red hat banner. I'm running FC1 with little luck so far (It's just sitting there on another partition currently). Any idea if FC3 is any better or should I just trash it and istall a different linux OS? EDIT: Ooops maybe I should have started another thread. Sorry.
Well ive been planning to switch ever since i was 12, not five, and will switch as soon as i get a mobo that supports it (Gateway bios is evil)
