I like Slackware, but...

[gc511]

I've been using Slackware for a few months over the summer, and I really
liked it. It was great to tweak my computer how I wanted it doing all the
nitty gritty stuff. However, the reason that I am back to using MS Windows
is because graduate school got really busy in a hurry, and I just did not
have the time to finish tweaking or setting certain things up. So it really
was not a matter of patience or reading the docs, but more in the fact that
I did not have the spare time that I used to.

I'm wondering if anyone could recommend a distribution that will allow me
to run linux reliably and efficiently, except with tweaking and hardware
setup in a more "user-friendly/gui" way? I realize this is a trade-off that
I will lose the control that I would have using Slackware, but it seems
like the only choice at the moment. Pardon the phrase, but I guess I'm
looking for something a little more "Windows-ish".

I am trying to stay away from Redhat because when I first used it (around
version 5 or 6), it gave me a lot of problems with rpm dependencies and the
compiler didn't work half the time. Debian I would like to give a shot, but
I don't have a reliable internet connection to download those updates.

Does anyone have any advice on what I can try? Is SuSE any better than
Redhat? It uses RPM as well, so I'm not sure how well that would work. I
read a lot of posts on google, but did not find an answer I was looking
for. Is the new Redhat any better? It seems like there are still RPM
problems with this distro according to what google forum posts I read.
Does the compiler work better at compiling software from source?

Thanks.

 

[Jonitus]

There are a couple really great distribution out there (IMHO) that would do what you want.

ALT Linux is based on Mandrake, and uses "apt" for the frontend of package management. Think Debian's package reliability and dependency resolution, with the user-friendliness of Mandrake.

ASP Linux is based off RedHat. You can easily install 'apt for rpm" to take care of your dependency issues, and still have a very user friendly system.

Both of these are Russian-built distributions (don't worry, the installer can be in English). They both install very easily. Best of memory, ASP Linux needs to have OpenOffice reinstalled, as it is the Russian version on the distribution CD's (easily downloaded and installed in English. I've used both, like both, found both to be very easy to use and maintain, but prefer ASP Linux over ALT.

Go to www.linux.org and navigate to 'distributions'. You'll find ASP listed with the 'RedHat based' distributions.

DO NOT go to distrowatch or linuxiso to get ASP, since they only have the old version (7.3 - Vostok)

Current version is 9.0 (Ural), which is based off RedHat 9.0.

 

[Grminalac]

Red Hat 9.0 works well for me although I have run into a few problems when installing RPMs. Unupdated packages released for RH8 and 7 have problems. I find that running the RPM command from terminal works a LOT better than graphical.
I was trying to install a mail relay and wound up in dependency hell. I alleviated the problem by biting the bullet and installing postfix.

 

[gc511]

Hi,

Thanks for the replies. Are ASP and ALT linux compilers good? Or I guess do programs compile well on them? I install a lot of programs from source, and I remember in Redhat I had a problem with the compiler more often than Slackware.

Does anyone have any opinions on Redhat 9's compiler? If I used redhat, I will probably compile from source from time to time.

 

[gc511]

Also, in addition, when Redhat is installed, does most hardware work autodetected? That is, if I have a CDRW, can I just starting using it once I finish installing? Or do I need to do a lot of manual tweaking and such? Does Redhat have something like the "Device Manager" that Windows has to do all the hardware? Or is it textfile based, such as in Slackware?

Thanks.

 

[xSauronx]

dont know about redhat
mandrake is easy to install and use (made for n00bs kinda) and set hardware up (should it not work initially)

ALt sounds interesting, always wanted apt in mandrake, may give that a shot sometime when i get around to setting up the second rig

 

[Vadatajs]

Redhat 9 had great hardware support for me. I could use my usb compact flash reader, and cdrw without any additional work. But I had some dependency problems, and problems compiling 3rd party software from source.

You might want to take a look at suse

 

[drag]

If you liked Slackware I suggest you look strongly at debian.

I, too, am a Slackware fan, but compiling everything from source manually realy gets tired... Especially once you get going for a year or two and you start to run into dependance conflicts from different programs using different versions of the same libraries.

Plus it makes it a pain to upgrade.

I tried Gentoo for a while, and that worked fine, but the whole community and scitzo nature of portage put me off.

Debian seems to be a great solution so far. It's got the absolutely wonderfull apt-get package managment.

Apt-get is a pain for a bit, until you get used to it. And it's completely invasive compared to rpm's. Every aspect of the OS goes thru it, but it makes things convenient...

For example kernel compilations. Lots of programs have dependances on the kernel. If you compile a new kernel and uninstall the new one, you can break packages. If you keep the old one it will work, but the installer thinks your using a different kernel then what you are realy using. Not exactly optimal and a bit of a pain in the butt to work around.

However Debian developed a way around this. For example I downloaded the sources for the newest 2.4 kernel (debian doesn't have this as a package yet) and installed the sources to make my alsa sound modules. I untar the kernel and cd into the new sources Then I run "make-kpkg --append-to-version=.drag1 --config=menuconfig
--added-modules=alsa-driver modules_image kernel_image". That opens up a menuconfig screen(if you don't specify a config, it runs oldconfig by default), I configure it, then it compiles the kernel and makes a package for the kernel and the new alsa modules for it. It even haves a --added-patches feature for when you want to add xfs support or get the latest -ac patches or whatever.

There are a lot of little things like this, another is menu-update. Which redoes everybody's menus in X to reflect changes in what programs you have installed/uninstalled and puts them in usefull catagories.

Debian roxs 🙂

 

[rjain]

You don't HAVE to download debian updates constantly. Use stable and you'll have something that's well-tested. If you can afford an occasional upgrade, go with testing.