What is your favorite Linux distro and why?

[stilly]

I have not really used it before but I am grabbing Fedora right now to load it up and start learning.

Do they all have the terminal thingy? I would imagine yes but it seems a lot like the old DOS days...

[ocabj]

I prefer Centos, but I only use Linux for servers and only access them via SSH or console. All the people in my office that use Linux on their personal machines use Ubuntu.

[SoCoGO]

I'm a Gentoo user. Yes, they all have the terminal, but it's much more feature rich than DOS.

[the86d]

Slackware has been GREAT for learning the Linux cli, fastest beefy distro to install, simple, and works on everything I ever installed it on. *buntu has been a pain on like 80% of old boxes I was trying it out on, and wouldn't even detect hard drives on a few boards with nVidia IDE and SATA controllers. There is also the LiveCD/DVD if you ware just looking to tinker, but they tend to be real slow every time you wish to do anything (especially if the CD/DVD drive spins-down).

I am trying out different GUI distros now, as M$ is pissing me off more daily these days.

I just tried one that works pretty well a free tinker-toy w/512MB RAM and a single-core Centrino: Fuduntu.

I was anti-anything with Gnome for a while, as I am generally opposed to most stuff that comes out of Mexico. KDE functioned more like the Windows Interface I have used for years...

At the *IX CLI, you can do a bunch more than in Windows of yester-year. (I haven't had a desire to learn the scripting-shell[?] or whatever M$ are pushing these days, as they will just change it in a few versions), and batches stopped working correctly even in XP, and you had to put some of the batch in quotes as variables to work, if I recall correctly.

[stilly]

I saw slackware but did not grab it since I was already grabbing Fedora.
I will grab that next. I hope it supports old hardware.

I have several computers that have been sitting around gathering dust but I am looking for work so I intend to get a windows linux/samba4 server and I want a mac and at least one or two Linux boxes on my network. When I get employed I am going to take my g/f shopping and she is gonna get a brand new box with an AMD cpu (cause I am an AMD fanboi) and then I figure that I will find a way to tie in my webpage with a sql server of some sort and put up a HUGE database filled with reloading data that I have collected from the manufacturers and printed manuals as well as online sources and then I plan to play and play and hopefully gain a little bit of experience and share things. My garage box is going to be a linux based computer. Who knows, maybe even multiboot depending on what flavor I want.

I like varieties, I will have a multiboot for the garage and load up all the different ones onto a hd and see how they work.

[the86d]

Keep in mind that AFAIK many different distros OOTB will not read NTFS volumes (I know Knoppix Live DVD/CD can), so have a separate data partition (Maybe fat32), or drive that you can throw your data on. When playing with different OS's make sure you know which is which... I lost some of my best pr0n pulled from IRC because I removed the wrong volume... and file-carving wasn't as prominent/easy as today.

I have been an AMD fan forever. Linux drivers take quite a bit longer to get with the program on Intel's newer network cards (Gig-Ethernet is what I had the most issues with in Linux, aside from *buntu not seeing drives), but I only had this happen like 2 times in Slackware out of like: 40.

[stilly]

I prefer Centos, but I only use Linux for servers and only access them via SSH or console. All the people in my office that use Linux on their personal machines use Ubuntu.

What do you like about Centos?

I read about it and I saw some cons that stuck out.

Apparently it can fail bad and break (I dunno how but that was the comment from two different sites).

I think I wanna collect all the flavors and stick them onto a usb stick and then just choose what to put on.

[stonith3901]

What do you like about Centos?

I read about it and I saw some cons that stuck out.

Apparently it can fail bad and break (I dunno how but that was the comment from two different sites).

I think I wanna collect all the flavors and stick them onto a usb stick and then just choose what to put on.

I choose CentOS as well since its the open source version of redhat. I wouldnt say which distro is best. I use redhat day in and day out. I havent seen it horribly fail and break compared to other linux flavors. Lets say we run a lot of servers as well.

If you really want to lean linux and not dabble in it, i suggest you install gentoo stage 1. Where you compile your compiler, things get interesting, but one will learn linux from the ground zero. I dont like telling people to use use GUI, it just hinders them in the long run.

[ocabj]

What do you like about Centos?

I read about it and I saw some cons that stuck out.

Apparently it can fail bad and break (I dunno how but that was the comment from two different sites).

I think I wanna collect all the flavors and stick them onto a usb stick and then just choose what to put on.

Well, I'm not sure what "fail bad and break" means. The OS isn't going to magically crash and become unusable.

As far as why I like Centos, it sticks to System V initialization which is what I'm used to. Plus, Centos is derived off of Redhat, whereas Ubuntu is derived off of Debian, and I used Redhat heavily back in the late 90s.

I have to use Ubuntu and when I started using Ubuntu, I saw a lot of differences that annoyed me (e.g. iptables isn't restartable via System V scripts natively).

Thus, I guess my familiarity with Redhat leads me to prefer Centos.

From a package management standpoint, I like Centos's yum over Ubuntu's apt-get.

When working with apt-get, I often just feel like downloading tarballs and compiling stuff by hand. For some reason apt-get makes Ubuntu's build environment feel muddy to me. I'm sure that's not the case and it's organized, but that's not my perception of it.

[ray02945]

If you are new to linux ubuntu, if you are reviving an old computer, puppy.

[mavericksun]

Centos is just an open sourced version of RH Enterprise with less support. One annoying thing about Debian items like Ubuntu and Mint is that you have to install new versions instead of rolling updates. Most people learn on specific systems and have preferences based on what they use. Sort of like some people like emacs while others like vi. I've personally never like RPMs so I avoid RH based OS. Ubuntu has spyware in it so I avoid that.

[Gutz]

Red Hat for my machines as well as servers. Any other user I have them use Ubuntu.

[67firebird462]

I like fedora (all of our servers run it) and ubuntu. All are so easy to use now it's not even funny.

[superbarnie]

I use backtrack occasionally.

[stilly]

I use backtrack occasionally.

Backtrack is for security testing right? But it is like a full blown distro that is only designed to test with hundreds or thousands of tools jammed in it?

I grabbed a 64bit gnome and kde version.

Centos is just an open sourced version of RH Enterprise with less support. One annoying thing about Debian items like Ubuntu and Mint is that you have to install new versions instead of rolling updates. Most people learn on specific systems and have preferences based on what they use. Sort of like some people like emacs while others like vi. I've personally never like RPMs so I avoid RH based OS. Ubuntu has spyware in it so I avoid that.

That sucks. I saw a website that listed 13 versions and the pros and cons and sometimes those items were mentioned. Yeah I would not really care to keep installing stuff. Your spyware comment though, does that have to do with ubuntu collecting info from shopping or something? I thought I read a similar comment as I was scanning through a page elsewhere and it said that many users saw that as spyware because of something it did to online purchases.

Well, I'm not sure what "fail bad and break" means. The OS isn't going to magically crash and become unusable.

As far as why I like Centos, it sticks to System V initialization which is what I'm used to. Plus, Centos is derived off of Redhat, whereas Ubuntu is derived off of Debian, and I used Redhat heavily back in the late 90s.

I have to use Ubuntu and when I started using Ubuntu, I saw a lot of differences that annoyed me (e.g. iptables isn't restartable via System V scripts natively).

Thus, I guess my familiarity with Redhat leads me to prefer Centos.

From a package management standpoint, I like Centos's yum over Ubuntu's apt-get.

When working with apt-get, I often just feel like downloading tarballs and compiling stuff by hand. For some reason apt-get makes Ubuntu's build environment feel muddy to me. I'm sure that's not the case and it's organized, but that's not my perception of it.

Apparently it corrupted config files or something trying to get an app to work. I am sure the fix was longer then reinstalling it minus the bad app.

What is an iptable? Is that like ipconfig /renew and thus meaning that you have to reboot in order to renew your ip address lease on a dhcp server or something?

I choose CentOS as well since its the open source version of redhat. I wouldnt say which distro is best. I use redhat day in and day out. I havent seen it horribly fail and break compared to other linux flavors. Lets say we run a lot of servers as well.

If you really want to lean linux and not dabble in it, i suggest you install gentoo stage 1. Where you compile your compiler, things get interesting, but one will learn linux from the ground zero. I dont like telling people to use use GUI, it just hinders them in the long run.

You guys are really loving on the CentOS. I will grab a version and check it out. I asked for favorite distro, best is an opinion and I know better than to ask that. Gentoo stage 1? Aint heard of that one yet. I guess I would pick up the cli a lot faster. Why do you have to compile stuff? I thought that was for programming.

Thanks for the answers so far.