Which Linux Distro FAQ

[nweaver]

Maybe we can get a sticky for this?

Popular Distro list

Debian based
Debian (stable, unstable, testing)
Ubuntu (Desktop focused distro, uses Gnome)
Kubuntu (Same as Ubuntu, only uses KDE)
SimplyMepis(LiveCD, KDE)

Red Hat Based
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (Commercial)
Fedora Core (Community focused, non commercial version of RHEL)
CentOS (RHEL with stripped out "red hat" commercial goo)

Other (let me know if I put one here that's wrong)
Gentoo (source based, long install, not the friendliest of distros for noobs, but great site for solving all sorts of linux problems)
SimplyMepis (Need help with this one, never used myself)
Suse (Commercial and free versions available. RPM based, owned by Novell)
Linspire (Very noobish, has some security concerns, paid support)
PCLinuxOS (RPM based, but use apt/synaptic. Very friendly out of box, 3 different CD's, one for generic video, one for ATI video, one for Nvidia video)
Knoppix-the original Linux LiveCD. Several different versions available now, including "STD-Securty Tools Distribution"
Mandriva-New name for Mandrake Linux, one of the old standard distro's. RPM based.
Slackware-The purist distro?
Arch Linux- Arch linux is a very nice distro that can be used to build very custom systems in the spirit of gentoo and debian. It uses pacman which is a very nice package manager (although it seems to have speed issues when I tried it). Its very customizable and has a good userbase for answering questions. To me its like a step in between debian and gentoo in terms of ease of setup and use.

Linux for older PC's-
While any linux distro will work on older hardware, some are better suited. Older hardware can be very effective as a simple kiosk type web machine, firewall, nat router, etc. There are several distro geared toward specific tasks, some are just distro's that can install with a minimal package set.

Firewalls-
Smoothwall-Easy to install/admin. I haven't ever used myself, but coworkers have, with good results.
Monowall- not linux, but UNIX based. Can be run from floppy/CF?/CD as well as installed to the HD

NAS-(Network Attached Storage-
This would be an older box (P1, P2, P3) that can host drives and sit in the corner, sharing drive space on the network. Linux is very adept at this, as it has great support for Software raid 0, 1, and 5 using odd sized disks (partitions are what matter). Samba, with SWAT or webmin for those who want a GUI, propriatary interface (some distros) or SSH and VI (old school)

General Purpose (linux distros that offer a minimal install, not geared toward a single task)
Gentoo-very sleek install, but packages take a while to compile on the older hardware

Debian-minimal install, no gui (or minimalistic GUI, such as IceVM, xfce4, etc) works great, and features the apt package management.

Damn Small Linux- Can be run from a floppy?(iirc) and loaded into memory.

Vectorlinux- Vector Linux is designed to be a lightweight, bloat-free, slackware-based Linux distribution that includes well-picked multimedia, web, and productivity software.




<<if we can get a quick, single paragraph of each one of these, with info on package management, install, etc that would be great, I'll put those here>>
Gentoo-The Ricer's Distro
Gentoo is a "source based" distro, where pretty much everything is compiled from source. this takes longer then some other distros to install/install software. It has package management via portage (emerge) which has many many applications/utilities included by default.
Gotcha: compiling apps takes more time then other distros based on binarys.

Ubuntu-"Linux for the human being" (Desktop on a disk)
Good out of box support for a lot of hardware, and dumps you into a GUI. Debian based, and features the apt tools, as well as Synaptic (GUI apt frontend) that makes finding/installing applications easy. Updating system is easy, and even checks for updates/reminds you. Dedicated to having a release every 6 month. They offer both an install CD and a LiveCD
Gotcha: no root password, you use sudo to run all commands. Must enable other repositories to add support for DVD's and MP3's

Mepis-The "I can't belive its Linux!" distro
Mepis has gained a reputation on its ease of use, excellent driver support, and LiveCD capabilities, and the list goes on. While they have different versions of their distribution, the common thread seems to be simplicity. Having a small, but growing, community, they intend on offering Commercial products, subscriptions, and paid support. Mepis is based around debian unstable so you're able to use debian's apt repository although Mepis has their own repository. Mepis fits on one 700MB CD.
Gotch: Mepis has gained flak <is this spelled right?> from the GPL advocates due to a few applications not being GPL'd. Warran (founder of Mepis) paid for a commercial Qt license so his tools made for Mepis are based around the Qt toolkit and the source code for them are not available.



Major Gotcha's

H/W: 3d support-requires closed source drivers for ATI/NVIDIA cards, that can be difficult to install. Nvidia is easier, ATI is harder. Both work fine out of box for 2D
Wireless: Intel, ralink good, broadcom, TI based bad. Atheros is middle ground
Fedora Core: Disk Check at the beginning of install is (was?) faulty, telling you the disks were bad, when they were really ok. FC4 has SElinux (security enhanced) that can cause network issues.


reply with information, and I'll put it here so we can have a single post with a concise, accurate picture of the major linux distros for the people thinking of the switch. If NOC (or someone else) is feeling up to it, we could make this *nix and add some BSD stuff.

 

[sourceninja]

I would point out that on the 3d drivers it can be harder or easier depending on the distro. Ubuntu and gentoo's nvidia drivers are super easy to install. But definatly sticky this.

 

[timswim78]

Good idea. Thanks for starting this.

People often ask about which distro's will run well on older hardware, so you may want to add info about distro's such as VectorLinux.

Alos, people often ask which distro's will run on a Mac (PowerPC), which are the easiest to learn, which are the most stable, which have the best user base, which have the best documentation, and etc.

 

[kobymu]

Originally posted by: timswim78
Alos, people often ask which distro's will run on a Mac (PowerPC), which are the easiest to learn, which are the most stable, which have the best user base, which have the best documentation, and etc.

or more precisely, which are the easiest to learn linux with, which is a exactly a question i wanted to post (a search in previous thread just made me more confused), so that will help a lot (but i guess the other question are important too ).

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: kobymu

Originally posted by: timswim78
Alos, people often ask which distro's will run on a Mac (PowerPC), which are the easiest to learn, which are the most stable, which have the best user base, which have the best documentation, and etc.

or more precisely, which are the easiest to learn linux with, which is a exactly a question i wanted to post (a search in previous thread just made me more confused), so that will help a lot (but i guess the other question are important too ).

that depends on WHAT you want to learn (no differnent from windows, can't learn domains with XP pro) and also HOW you want to learn to use it. I wanted to learn CLI (was told this was the way to go, and had GUI tools screw up my box early on) and so I was always installing RH9 with no GUI started by default.

 

[kobymu]

Originally posted by: nweaver
that depends on WHAT you want to learn (no differnent from windows, can't learn domains with XP pro) and also HOW you want to learn to use it. I wanted to learn CLI (was told this was the way to go, and had GUI tools screw up my box early on) and so I was always installing RH9 with no GUI started by default.

in my case (by priority):
1) networking (with emphasis on security)
2) for a programming / regular application use workstation (3d content creation, all most exclusively with OpenGL)
3) network servicing (mostly http/web, some db, but other stuff too)

/edit

...and also HOW you want to learn to use it.

anyway that let's me utilize the platform (o/s) advantages for the task at hand. ?when you ask how, what did you have in mind (or to put it in other words, what are my options, other then try & error)?

 

[TonyRic]

PSSSST you forgot PCLinuxOS. It is the friendliest desktop distro I have used. RPM Based, but uses apt and synaptic to handle rpm dependancy hell. All plugins are installed and they just work. Install libdvdcss2 from the repository and DVDs just work. No fuss, no muss.

EDIT: 3 different iso's available. One for generic video cards and two specialized ones for NVIDIA and ATI cards. Remember, it just works. Also it installs from a LiveCD so try it, then install it. This distro is what Mandrake/Mandriva SHOULD have been.

 

[nweaver]

Does pclinuxos have the repo's for livdvdcss by default? or are they added. With the 3 iso thing, does that mean the binary driver is already installed (full 3d support) on install?

 

[TonyRic]

The libdvdcss2 libraries are in the default repos. Just apt-get install libdvdcss2 or select from synaptic to install. The BINARY video drivers are installed by default. Just chose your video resolution after you log in, restart X and you are all set. Yes 3D support is enabled by default.

 

[Doh!]

SimplyMepis is Debian-based, just like ubuntu. Comes w/ KDE as the default window. It's actually a liveCD like knoppix.

Maybe add Mandriva to the list since it has such a large user base. Also, I think slackware should be mentioned since there are few distros based on slackware (i.e., Suse, Vector linux).

edit: For Debian lovers, there's distro called GenieOS which is becoming to be a very fine distro. It used to be called puredebian but changed its name recently.

 

[SleepWalkerX]

SimplyMepis = debian based.

Infact, they claim to be 100% backwards compatible with debian packages. This is what I would put (and I would probably put Mepis instead of SimplyMepis because Mepis makes SimplyMepis, MepisLite, ProMepis, SimplyServer, TeamMepis, etc):

Mepis (livecd using Debian unstable, contains Commercial and Noncommercial versions)

You can redefine that if you want, heh. This makes me wish that these forums had a wiki plugin or something.

Oh and for the paragraph:

Mepis-The "I can't belive its Linux!" distro
Mepis has gained a reputation on its ease of use, excellent driver support, and LiveCD capabilities, and the list goes on. While they have different versions of their distribution, the common thread seems to be simplicity. Having a small, but growing, community, they intend on offering Commercial products, subscriptions, and paid support. Mepis is based around debian unstable so you're able to use debian's apt repository although Mepis has their own repository. Mepis fits on one 700MB CD.
Gotch: Mepis has gained flak <is this spelled right?> from the GPL advocates due to a few applications not being GPL'd. Warran (founder of Mepis) paid for a commercial Qt license so his tools made for Mepis are based around the Qt toolkit and the source code for them are not available.

 

[nweaver]

update bump

 

[timswim78]

Vector Linux is designed to be a lightweight, bloat-free, slackware-based Linux distribution that includes well-picked multimedia, web, and productivity software.

There are a few versions of Vector linux, and their hard requirements are minimal. The most basic version runs on an i386 processor with 16MB of RAM and 175MB of hard drive space. Their most advanced version requires only a 233Mhz Pentium, with 64MB of RAM and 1.6GB of hard disk space. A table comparing the different distributions can be found here: http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/dis.../docs/miscellaneous/version_table.html

 

[sourceninja]

http://archlinux.org/ - Arch linux is a very nice distro that can be used to build very custom systems in the spirit of gentoo and debian. It uses pacman which is a very nice package manager (although it seems to have speed issues when I tried it). Its very customizable and has a good userbase for answering questions. To me its like a step in between debian and gentoo in terms of ease of setup and use.

 

[nweaver]

bump

 

[halw]

Check out Xandros OCE.

Easy to install, easy to use.

Xandros Forums

Xandros.com

 

[nweaver]

does SimplyMepis have ndiswrapper installed and working out of box? Thought I saw that one time....

 

[smack Down]

How about which distro supports the TV tuner on an ATI AIW Radeon?

 

[nweaver]

Q8: Is v4l video capture supported for ALL IN WONDER cards?
A8: The ATI Proprietary Linux driver does not currently provide video capture functionality. Video capture support for most ALL IN WONDER cards should be available from the GATOS project.

 

[n0cmonkey]

EDIT: Writing this in word and copy/pasting it didn't work too well. BEWARE!
FINAL EDIT: Forgot OpenBSD's ports information, and other cleanups.
========================================
Obviously I know more about OpenBSD than the others.

The unix history page includes information on the BSDs, and Linux I believe.

BSD (originally: Berkeley Software Distribution) refers to the particular version of the Unix operating system that was developed at and distributed from the University of California at Berkeley. "BSD" is customarily preceded by a number indicating the particular distribution level of the BSD system (for example, "4.3 BSD"). BSD UNIX has been popular and many commercial implementations of UNIX systems are based on or include some BSD code.

Source.

Supposedly BSD has also been referred to "Bill's Software Distribution" after Bill Joy for the work he did with BSD. Bill Joy later co-founded Sun Microsystems, and used BSD as the basis of SunOS. The BSD license (in particular the 3 clause version) is corporate friendly, in that they may use the source without the requirement of releasing their changes in source form. Many developers see this freedom as the ultimate in open source. Over the years Linux, Microsoft, Sun, and many other developers have borrowed BSD code. The BSD developers consider this a compliment, even when changes or improvements are not fed back to the original developer.

BSD has traditionally focused on single processor performance, but this is quickly changing. It was chosen as the base for developing TCP/IP, and its technologies have been imported into traditional System V operating systems. Various BSDs have held networking related records over the years.

The BSDs are generally considered less user-friendly, and are often thought of as server OSes. The various ports systems allow easy installation and management of software, either in source form or through precompiled binaries. Many of the software packages Linux users are used to seeing should be available for the BSDs, and there is even a Linux compatibility mode to run some Linux binaries (on x86 only, as far as I can tell). There are compatibility modes for other OSes, like SunOS, on their respective platforms.

nVidia has 3d drivers for FreeBSD/i386, but as far as I know nothing else. The open X11 drivers should work just fine on each BSD though (I know it works in Open). Wireless support is at least on par with Linux, as is wired network support. Sound drivers are generally a bit behind, but integrated sound generally works well.

BSD documentation is generally superb. I often use it when trying to figure out a problem in Linux or Solaris, as well as the BSD I?m using. BSD developers tend to take pride in their documentation, and it shows.

FreeBSD: FreeBSD is the "mainstream" BSD, being the one people choose to try out BSD for the first time. In years past their focus was on x86 and alpha architectures, but they have widened development to a number of others. They have focused on system and networking performance, often times competing with Linux in benchmarks. Recent developments have improved multiprocessor and threading support. FreeBSD ports currently contains almost 14,000 available ports.

FreeBSD is considered by many to be the most user-friendly BSD, and is probably the most widely used.

FreeBSD?s phkmalloc has been ported just about everywhere, and is still considered to be decent. FreeBSD has been known to help power a number of the biggest websites on the internet, and is only getting better. 6.0 is the latest release.

NetBSD: NetBSD focuses on portability. They currently support around 17 CPU architectures, and around 56 platforms including some PDAs. Performance on the i386 platform (and quite possibly others) has been steadily improving, and in some areas has competed with Linux in benchmarks.

NetBSD started and uses the pkgsrc ports system. pkgsrc was developed to be a multiplatform packaging system, and currently contains over 5,500 packages. It?s also the official ports system of NetBSD, DragonflyBSD, and some smaller Linux distributions. 3.0 is the current release.

OpenBSD: OpenBSD is considered one of the most secure operating systems available. And it?s Free. To quote the homepage: ?Our efforts emphasize portability, standardization, correctness, proactive security and integrated cryptography.? The OpenBSD developers are militant about the licenses that enter the source tree, as they don?t want to make OpenBSD any less Free. Constant code auditing, and a number of security technologies included (and many enabled) by default help keep OpenBSD secure. Despite the focus on security, OpenBSD is no slouch in the portability department claiming 16 platforms currently supported, with more on the way. My favorite is the Zaurus.

Some current work revolves around a new threading implementation to replace the userland pthreads. The implementation they are going with is based on plan 9?s threading model and revolves around rfork(). It?s appropriately named rthreads. The i386 and amd64 platforms currently support multiple processors. Work is being done on the PowerPC platforms to take advantage of SMP systems.

The OpenBSD package system was based on FreeBSD's, but has undergone many changes. It's written in perl, can handle binary updates to installed packages, and can install packages from source. I believe there are over 5,000 packages available, with roughly 500 new ports being added every release. Thanks to the hard work of package maintainers and the ports system author, OpenBSD's ports are easy and work quite well.
OpenBSD is the home of a number of applications that other OSes are adopting. OpenSSH was started by a number of OpenBSD developers, and is currently used by: Sun, HP, Cisco, IBM, and is included in every major operating system. Except Microsoft?s Windows. OpenNTPd is an application to help maintain the correct time on a server or workstation. It is smaller and easier to configure than xntpd, although it may not be as precise. It is currently used by both OpenBSD and DragonflyBSD. Packet Filter (PF) is a firewall that is being adopted by the other BSDs, and is one of the best firewalls on the market. It has even been ported to Windows. Along with PF, OpenBSD has developed their Common Address Redundancy Protocol (CARP), to enable seamless failover of firewalls or VPN end points (in case a developer decides to takes an axe to the network cables. OpenBGPd, OpenOSPFd, and hostapd are a number of other network related applications developed by OpenBSD developers. Some are being ported to other OSes. A replacement for GNU CVS, called OpenCVS obviously, is being worked on. OpenBSD 3.8 is the current version.

DragonFlyBSD: DragonflyBSD is a fork of the FreeBSD 4 branch. While FreeBSD went in one direction for FreeBSD 5, Matt Dillon decided to start DragonflyBSD and go another direction. DragonflyBSD has been working diligently on creating a better threading environment, for both uni-processor and multi-processor machines. The developers have also been working towards better clustering capabilities. Expect to see big things from this project in the future. They are currently focusing on x86 systems, but plan to branch out to at least amd64 (amd64 is supported in 32bit mode). DragonflyBSD 1.2 is the current version, but 1.4 should be released after the holidays.

Darwin: Darwin is a system developed by Apple, and is the core of Mac OS X. It uses an XNU kernel, which has a MACH3 base with FreeBSD?s kernel kind of embedded inside. I don?t know much about it, but it should be fairly capable, but probably slower than the other BSDs. Current release is 8.0.1.

Despite my bias towards OpenBSD, I like to read through a number of BSD related sites:
undeadly.org is the OpenBSD journal. Recently a couple of developers have been blogging on the site about recent developments.
Hubert?s NetBSD blog. There is generally some interesting tidbits on there.
DragonflyBSD journal is generally up to date on Dragonfly news, as well as other geeky tidbits.

 

[drag]

The only distro that I've ever used for a long period of time is Debian.

I like Debian Stable for servers, and if I used Linux for a workstation or needed to deploy a large number of desktop I would use Debian stable if it was up to me. For users that want newer desktop stuff then what came with Debian stable can use backports to isntall newer versions of KDE or Gnome if they want, but that is unsupported configurations.

Some people like Debian Testing, but I use Debian unstable at home. The upsides is that it's very up to date, the downsides is that you have to deal with huge updates every month or so. Also it's not a easy OS to use for people unfamilar with Linux.

The major advantage to Debian is the massive amount of FREE software (by DFSG criteria) that is tailored and supported specificly to work with Debian. (This is what forms the basis for Ubuntu's universe stuff)

Quite literially if you wanted to download the entire Debian Stable OS it would take 14 cds... in compressed form. This is just for the binaries, doesn't include the source code. Also this is just for one platform on one Debian version. (there are a 11 official ports and have their own version of Debian Stable, testing, and unstable for all of them)

To me this is quite a acheivement.

 

[halw]

Bump.