Which is your Favourite Linux?

gore said:
Hahaha, I can't imagine Windows 98 as a Server, I mean, really, WTF would they be thinking? Windows 98 can barely stay up long enough to play a game.... Windows Servers need Viagra and a Wiener Pump to stay up at all.
Click to expand...

Now that is a bit harsh ;) Windows can be like an erection, true. It can stay up some time when you do not screw around with it and it needs loving care to stay up just a bit longer.

And what that company was thinking was that administration was so much easier without all these safety features against messing up the projects. What they are thinking now I do not know, but it would not surprise me to learn about them joining the belly-up brigade. You know, when you mention the B* word and look into a sea of dumb faces. Then you just know.

Returning to the topic of this thread, my favorite Linux is currently debian. It used to be Ubuntu, but they went a pretty insane direction IMHO which I refused to follow. So I picked the distro with a good deal of similarity and less nanny ambitions. I know I can not sort out the working of the system like I can with FreeBSD, so the Linux with the least friction is nice.

*: B word, noun: Backup.
verb: to backup, performing the steps necessary to create a backup
 
Heh, I enjoy poking fun at Windows now and then. Windows 7 isn't bad or anything, it just isn't great. They're still not ripping off the right AREA of Unix.

My Personal choice for Linux is very simple; SUSE, Slackware, Debian, and sometimes Mandriva. Depends a lot on what they did to any given version. I don't have a current installation of Mandriva on anything, and Debian isn't installed on anything currently because all my machine are in use right now, but Slackware has been running my FTP Server since.... Well, when Slackware 12.0 came out, I installed a new HD in the machine, and installed Slackware 12.0 Fresh, and it's been up and running ever since. It's fully patched too.

OpenSUSE is running on my Laptop with PC-BSD making it's appearance now and then and FreeBSD too. I like Slackware, and always have. It reminds me of BSD basically. And if you order something from the Slackware store, try this:

Order a bunch of stuff from the FreeBSDMall, then, choose next day for shipping.

Go to The Slackware store, and order stuff. Choose Second Day Air for Shipping.

In about 12 to 15 hours, look outside. You'll see a huge box. It's both orders.

I asked about this, and one of the people from FreeBSD mall Confirmed for me that they do in fact run the Slackware store's orders. I kind of had a feeling about that already considering that both my 10.0 and 10.2 Slackware 4 CD-ROM sets looked like the 6.0 CD ROM sets from FreeBSD, AND of course, the Slackware book has a BSDi logo on the back of it.

When I did that, my order was over a grand. I basically had a lot of money given to me finally from my college, and, instead of blowing it, I went to the FreeBSD Mall, and the Slackware Store. I ordered EVERY book, software, and more, from the FreeBSD Mall. My order was about 800 dollars. Then I go just about one of everything from Slackware. Then, because of the excitement, couldn't wait, and overnighted it.

I'm sitting here right now in my brand new FreeBSD tee shirt I got for Christmas. My Mom agreed to let me pick some stuff and She'd order it for me for Christmas; I got the Classic oldschool FreeBSD tee shirt (The Power to Serve one) and, the Black Pull Over Hoody, some stickers, the CD Case, two issues of BSD Magazine, and a few other things.

If anyone here has ever thought about ordering from the FreeBSD Mall, but wasn't sure, I can vouch for them; I've not ONCE had a problem, and Believe me, I've sunk some pretty large sums of money into orders. I've got basically every FreeBSD book you can get except "The best of" one they have now. And I have the PowerPak, and I have both version of "The Complete FreeBSD" and... I've got the FreeBSD Mouse Pad, Boxers, and more. I've had excellent service, and my orders are always on time, and I can't say enough good about them.

If you ever need ANYTHING that has to do with FreeBSD, check the FreeBSD Mall out; They have excellent stuff, excellent staff (I spoke to a girl who worked there who called simply to ask about my order and if I was Happy with it and so on, and she was pretty shocked at how much money I spent heh) and to me; Being called PURELY to make sure I was Happy with my Order, was great. Oh and the stickers, are AWESOME. The Tee shirts.... I LITERALLY wore my first FreeBSD tee shirt so much, that in 4 or 5 years, it had holes in it. I wore it like every chance I had. It was always being washed. I wore it so much that I had to wash it 4 times a week. I wore it all the time. I LOVED that shirt. And now, I finally have another one :) And yea I put it right on lol.

For whatever else it might be worth; The FreeBSD Pull Over Hoody, the Black one which costs 35 dollars.... Believe me, I'd tell you if I didn't like it, but I LOVE it. I had Hoodies I've spent hundreds on, and I've got Hoodies and Jackets that costed more than 200 dollars, and this one is just as nice. The material, and the way it's made... I'd pay double what it costs and STILL think it was a deal. BUY ONE OF THOSE THINGS! The Black Pull Over. VERY Comfortable, VERY nice, and my Aunt, who knows nothing of Computers, Unix, or BSD, even she wanted one. They're THAT nice.

Shameless plug, yes. But that's OK. You know why? I don't work for FreeBSD, I don't work for FreeBSD Mall, I'm just someone who loves FreeBSD, and likes to tell people when I've seen a company go the extra mile to make me Happy. So buy something!
 
Several years ago I was using Debian at work, but, we got a new IT manager and now we are a windows only shop; I run Vista Enterprise at work. :(
At home I run FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Slackware.
 
Vista? Wow man, that sucks. I like the Home Set up you have though; I personally have this current setup:

Main Desktop / Workstation; Windows 7 dual booting OpenSUSE 12.1
FTP Server; Slackware 12.0
Laptop; PC-BSD 9
Desktop; FreeBSD 9.0
Compaq Desktop; FreeBSD 9.0

I tend to be picky about OSs, and I also collect them, so I have a lot. I still have my copy of BeOS Pro 5 in the box actually. I'd install it on something but I don't have any more machines available, and the one or two machine it might work on, currently need new hardware to boot, so I can't run it right now. I LOVED BeOS. I don't know why, but it just looked neat and worked well for me.

For Linux I almost always use this list as a go-to guide for when I either have a new computer to install on, or, I get bored with an OS and want to try something else:

OpenSUSE / SUSE
Slackware
Debian
Mandriva

There are a few smaller distros I mess with from time to time, but that's my main list.

FreeBSD and PC-BSD are used a lot too, because I love them.
 
I recently switched our vmware 'workers' to RHEL 6 as it seems to be 'factory pre-tuned' and works best for our virtual environment, it also came with recommendations from our datacenter. Only problem is that update downstream and base package repositories are not free unless you use Fedora ones.
 
expl said:
I recently switched our vmware 'workers' to RHEL 6 as it seems to be 'factory pre-tuned' and works best for our virtual environment, it also came with recommendations from our datacenter. Only problem is that update downstream and base package repositories are not free unless you use Fedora ones.
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First of all, I LOVE your Signature! I've seen it before but it still makes me laugh :)

And as for Red Hat; WOW... I didn't know that. I haven't used Red Hat since about... Well, I had Red Hat 6.x back in the day when I got RedHat for Dummies, which I thought had some good funny stuff in it, and then I downloaded red Hat 8 and 9, and then they made Fedora, which I just don't like personally, but as for making you do that, I think that's kind of odd. Red Hat seems to be set on actually being Microsoft as one of their guys once said heh.

I just can't Believe they aren't free though that's pretty shady. I've had a Love hate relationship with Red Hat for a while though. I mean part of me liked SOME of what they were doing, and part of me would hear Horror stories of Red Hat shipping with stuff Broken out of the box which is just shameful.

My Wife actually DOES like Red Hat / Fedora though, so, I do usually see what they are up too. We both generally use Slackware, and for the "easier" to set up stuff, I've ALWAYS liked SUSE for that. YaST and YaST2, seems to be one of the very best tools ever made for it's purpose.

My opinion of it anyway.
 
Mandrake was the first Linux distro I used. Debian isn't bad but I don't care for Linux at all.
 
The first one I ever used was Caldera Open Linux, which came with "Teach yourself Linux in 24 hours" and it was actually a good one considering what happened to that company lol. The second one I got was Mandrake Linux 7.1, which I bought at Best Buy.

Around the same time, I also got something else there; BSD PowerPak, with FreeBSD 4.0 heh.
 
Weinter said:
OK OK I know ALL of us LOVE BSD
But I am sure you all played with Linux before conversion?
So which is your favourite?
Click to expand...

For me, either slackware or Debian.

I started out with slackware and it seems to be the most "bsd-ish" to me.

I spent about 5 years (1996-2001 ish) setting up and maintaining debian systems as ISP / small office servers though (was working for an ISP that set up/maintained mail/firewall/shared internet environments for business customers - we used Debian for it)
 
Have been using Ubuntu as a server OS recently and was pleased to find it offers freebsd-update-like upgrades between major versions, which AFAIK the likes of CentOS etc do not, which was nice :)

I also find apt-get pretty ok, prefereable to RPMs and yum for me.

cheers Andy.
 
APT is actually a LOT like the BSD way. The first time I used Ubuntu, I didn't like it. I played DooM, and after one game, started messing around, didn't like it, and formatted the machine lol. I just could NOT stand how the Root account worked out of the box.

Anyway, I still don' like Ubuntu, and I also don't like Gentoo, though I'm starting to see they are making an effort on a few things I cared about that made me turn away the first time.

To me, part of it was the fact that whenever I'd be on a general Unix / Linux / BSD Security Mailing List, it seemed as though Gentoo had at least two security patches a night. I didn't like that. And the whole Ebuild thing.... I got that going on Slackware one day, and it's OK, it's not that it's terrible, it just isn't for me.

A friend of mine swears by Gentoo, I swear AT Gentoo. Though I could very easily see me giving it another chance. The installation, which, again, this was something I thought to be stupid for all but the rarest of times... A Stage 3, OK, maybe not so bad, but didn't anyone ever really want a Stage 1?

Anyway, Gentoo is starting to do something, but I haven't given it another shot yet. Ubuntu, I use those CDs the same way I did my Windows NT installation CD; Coffee Cup Coaster.

Debian I DO like though. Ubuntu is a pretty, more updated, more shiny version of Debian, and I've liked Debian for a long time. It's simple, and I LOVE APT.
 
RedHat 5.2 was my first installation at home. Then I used Mandrake 6 for a while, but get back to redhat from 6 to 9, when I switched to suse. I tried gentoo, but did not like it, then I switched to Debian and Ubuntu. then I met FreeBSD....
 
Oh, OK. That was something that actually did cause me a little confusion when I first started using stuff other than Windows. I mean, at first, all I had was Windows 95. Back then I didn't know there was anything else, because I had just gotten my very first Computer, so I knew nothing about them.

Then, finally, I started to learn things. I didn't have any manuals, so I had to just screw around, and eventually, I learned there was different versions of Windows, which didn't take long to learn obviously, and eventually, I heard about this thing called "Linux" which I looked up, and saw it was like something called "Unix" and so on, and that was when I started learning about this stuff.

After a while, I knew a lot about OSs, and then, one day, I was reading about some Hacker who was in the news for writing something (I don't remember what the web site was, but I think it had to do with DeCSS) And they said this guy preferred FreeBSD, and so I looked up that, and I was blown away.

That's kinda how I got started; Just reading about Computer stuff, and reading about Operating Systems. After I got into the idea that you can use more than just what the Computer comes with, I started trying out everything.

I still have my copy of BeOS Pro 5, and I did like it, but I just wanted to try out as many different OSs as I could, to see what I liked more. I've tried so many OSs now I can't count, but I do remember reading about FreeBSD for the first time, thinking "I REALLY need to try this out! This one seems awesome!" And eventually, I did. And I've been using it ever since.
 
I liked MS - Windows for gaming nd still use it for the same reason :)
Back in 2001 tried Red Hat and reformatted the HDD during install. Asked a friend for help. He gave me a CD with FreeBSD and said "If you want something stable, use FreeBSD, if you want troubles use Linux". Started to learn FreeBSD. Tried all of the most famous Linux distros since then and never had a preferred distro. Used Ubuntu for a while until I realized that the console is gone from it. I mean you write
Code: 
#ifconfig eth1 down
and after 2-3 seconds the interface is up again. That was the very moment I erased it and never look back for a desktop different from FreeBSD. Tried Debian for a virtualization server and discovered that the kernel and the GNU tools are built with different versions of GCC which prevents VMWare from compiling. And if you install manually some pkg you are in trouble when have to update. This was the very moment I replaced Linux with FreeBSD and VMWare with VirtualBox.
 
I hated Red Hat personally for a long time. The first version I had was Red Hat 6.1 which came with Red Hat Linux for Dummies, which was the second book I bought on Linux (The first one was Teaching Yourself Linux in 24 hours, and it came with Caldera Open Linux 2.2, it was when I first got a computer and first got started) I always had a thing for Unix.

I mean yeah, I had to use Windows because I had dial-up, didn't own a REAL modem, and so on, and needed REAL Hardware, but eventually, I started figuring this stuff out, and really, when I bought that very first BSD PowerPak, I'd only owned a computer for a few months. So I sort of started out with FreeBSD and Linux around the same time.
 
zodias said:
I mean you write
Code: 
#ifconfig eth1 down
and after 2-3 seconds the interface is up again.
Click to expand...

You know what they say about assumptions...

The command you should have used is [cmd=]ifdown eth1[/cmd]

Blaming an OS because you don't RTFM and expect it to work like something else isn't the operating system's fault.
 
throAU said:
Blaming an OS because you don't RTFM and expect it to work like something else isn't the operating system's fault.
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Yes, you are right. Accept my apologies. I expected Ubuntu to behave like FreeBSD does. And also was very surprised that Ubuntu did not honor /etc/rc.local as FreeBSD and Debian GNU/Linux. Maybe Ubuntu is good after all, but not for me.
 
throAU said:
You know what they say about assumptions...

The command you should have used is [cmd=]ifdown eth1[/cmd]

Blaming an OS because you don't RTFM and expect it to work like something else isn't the operating system's fault.
Click to expand...

Ubuntu has a manual? Stone me, that's an improvement.
 
Everything taken from Unix has SOME form of Manual... "man man" ;)

Ubuntu is just African for "I'm too sissy to use Slackware" and got ripped off of Debian, and just shows that a billionaire really CAN take whatever they want and make it work.
 
gore said:
Ubuntu is just African for "I'm to sissy to use Slackware" and got ripped off of Debian, and just shows that a Billionaire really CAN take whatever they want and make it work.
Click to expand...

I run FreeBSD 9.0 on this work station, but, I also like and use Slackware and OpenBSD. I say live and let live. I am happy when people use some type of free OS that is not proprietary. It is all good.
 
@Gore. I'm so old I remember when all software came with one or many HUGE manuals and three ring binders to hold them. The manuals that came with SCO Xenix added up to six or seven hundred pages. All the answers were there, if you read them.

Then came a time when there was one 'perfect bound' manual, not as good, they didn't lie flat for one thing, but still adequate.

Then it was "Oh, there's a manual on the disk, it's in PDF format, just look in that." A poor substitute but better than nothing.

Then came the time of "Just look in the help files", useless.

Now it's <sound f/x - blowing wind> and "Work it out for yourselves, we're off to our private islands."

Handbook is one of many things that makes FreeBSD stand out from all the Linux 'distros'. If some entrepreneur got a proper manual written and created a distro to match we might well have a 'year of linux on the desktop'.

I'm not holding my breath.
 
Redhat was good for a while IMHO, I played with TurboLinux for a bit, I tried slackware and didn't care for it to much, Suse was alright. The look and feel of Suse made me really want to get into Linux full time. Then I found Ubuntu, I don't think it's the best but I have a soft spot in my heart for it because once I found Ubuntu I left Microsoft behind but kept XP on as a multiboot option (games, flash, specific programs). When Ubuntu started to hit the 10th release it started to get bulky and I wanted something better. I tried the BSD's way back in the day but I didn't know enough and it confused me and I got turned off by it, after all that playing with Linux I finally made the switch to FreeBSD and now I shake my head thinking "Why did I waste all of that time with Linux?!?!"
 
I always ran Linux on my home PCs / laptops. It started in 1996 with Slackware, then I tried more ore less every distribution I could fetch: RedHat/CentOS, Mandrake, Debian, OpenSuSE, Fedora, Arch, Ubuntu, etc.

Then three days ago I installed FreeBSD on my eeePC. Basically it was because of ZFS as I use it massively at work on my Solaris High-End servers. Well, I must say that I'm amazed. It just works, every task feels snappier than ever, the documentation is easy and well written. But it's everything you already know, I'm sure.

So, my favorite Linux is the one that's not installed on my machine.
 
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