Yes, another distro thread. Okay, as many of you are well aware, I''ve been a diehard Slackware fan for a long time. It was my first distro, and I really like it. However, I honestly don''t have all the time required to deal with it right now, mainly in the sense that its package system blows chunks. Basically, you''re forced to build almost everything by source. So what I want to know is this: what distros are good like slack, but have good package management? I''m looking into using Debian, but right now, I''m having problems getting the packages working. I think part of the problem is that I got kicked off of 1st class bandwidth (the uber-fast one) until Thursday, so I''m going to wait until after I get back from Thanksgiving to truly try it out. Other than Debian, what other cool distros exist, though? I also tried Gentoo, and to be honest, I don''t want to deal with the shitty installation. I''m trying to save a little time here, not take up more. Oh, and don''t tell me "BSD r00lz! it r0x0rz j00r b0x3rz! d0n''t use l00nix!", because quite frankly, I''m only going to use linux because, at this time anyway, the nVidia drivers for it are much more mature

Okay, one bit of commentary. I looked into Libranet, and it looks really cool. The only downside is that there are no official iso images of the latest version. Does anyone know of any unofficial ones?

Debian is nice, it''s what coaxed me away from Slackware.

I haven''t tried Libranet, and I don''t know where any ''unofficial'' ISO images could be found, or if that''d be allowed. Xandros is another desktopified Debian, but I''m not sure if they have images online either. Knoppix, the ''live-cd'' mix of debian stable through experimental, can be installed to HDD after you boot from the cd (you can find information on this at debianplanet.org). I''m not sure how great of a ''real'' distro Knoppix makes through (since I''ve simply never used it as one).

I haven''t tried Gentoo (yet), so I can''t really say much about it. Lunar Linux (a branch of Sorceror, if I''m not mistaken) is like Gentoo in that it''s a source based distribution, if you''d like to try it (I haven''t yet).

When it comes to ''desktop'' distro''s, I recently tried Mandrake 9.0 and Red Hat 8.0. Mandrake 9.0 is just so-so (a little buggy), but I really liked Red Hat 8.0 (especially after I installed apt-get in it ). I haven''t tried any other desktop ones for a while.

Actually, I tried RH 8.0. Overall, I was quite impressed, however, I did not like the fact that they made GNOME and KDE the same thing...

quote:

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Original post by CmndrM
...I did not like the fact that [RedHat] made GNOME and KDE the same thing...

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[petulant]
Not "the same thing." They made GNOME and KDE interoperable and consistent, a boon to newbies. Experienced users like you can install "standard" versions of any of the desktop environments you please.
[/petulant]

Thanks for listening.

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Just out of curiosity, how does one go about this? Is it somewhere in the custom install? Hmm...

installpkg is alright ...
tar -zxfv *.tar.gz then running the install.sh is not a real drama either ...
you get RPM with slack 8.1 ...

You don''t have to compile everything yourself, although that''s no drama either.

What exactly do you find the trouble ? Seems like you''re just looking for an excuse to try another distro.

Judas !

You''ll be back

I know compiling "isn''t trouble". However, it does take time, and when things act gayly and DON''T compile... Well, that''s just a pain in the ass. It''s a lot nicer to have something like apt-get where if you have a dependency problem, it automatically downloads and installs those dependencies, rather than telling you "You need 1302 packages to run this program. Sorry, you are SOL."

installpkg would be wonderful, too, if there actually existed some more slackpacks. Yes, I know of linuxpackages.net, but come on. Most of those are outdated anyway.

And don''t get me started on RPM... Let''s just say it sucks.

Anyway, on another note, I''m really leaning towards trying out Libranet, even though I apparently have to pay for it. It looks really promising, but if I can get Debian working correctly soon, then I won''t worry about it.

since when do you have to compile?

huh? that notion that slackware is a crazy-compile-everything ditsro is just FUD. fud that you apparently believed.

ever hear of downloading a package and installing it?

unless of course, you''re talking about ElSenorDoesDNS package from mars that nobody but the single author and you uses... There''s probably not a slackpack for that

Dude stick with Debian (The GNU people are insane ::in a good way:. I started out as a SuSE user, then Slackware, and eventually moved to Debian and I have never turned back.