Mind your manners, now. We’re not saying that they do in general. There’s just a good chap who has come up with a list in two parts of varied Linux distributions that he deems use-worthy. He also gives a short description about them and a link to their project websites. Some are the obvious Ubuntu, Gentoo, and other major players, but others you may or may not have heard of and may find useful. Enjoy reading part one from May of this year and part two that was published just recently in October. What are some of the perhaps more obscure Linux distributions that you’ve found useful and noteworthy?
I’m tempted to add Parted Magic because it’s very handy. Mint because I can set up the children’s PC in about 15 minutes with everything they need and possibly Opensuse because it so quick and easy to set up ldap and nfs.
They forgot GoboLinux!
GoboLinux is the only distro with a sane file system layout and sane package manager. Unfortunately, it isn’t updated that often and doesn’t have many packages (although it’s better off than most obscure distos, and its pretty easy to package things yourself).
I would really love to see a distro like Ubuntu adopt GoboLinux’s ideas. That way we could have a sane and easy to use system.
I’m dying to try that since the file system is one of my primary grudges against Linux. Hope it becomes more popular in the future.
Do you actually use it?
I did use it for a few months about a year ago, but then I moved back to Ubuntu due to the greater package selection (and Ubuntu felt more ‘snappy’, for some reason).
While GoboLinux is not nearly as nice to use as Ubuntu, they have some great ideas, and I believe that it has the greatest quality to team size ratio of any distro. If they had as many people working on it as Ubuntu, it would easily be the best desktop Linux distro.
I second that, it is really only 3 to 4 guys doing most of the work in their spare time. With a solid team behind it this distro could really fly.
Emotionally it is the distro I would like to see succeed, because it is different in a good way, and there are just too many respins of debian and fedora.
1 Good is in my opinion better than 200 kinda ok but still sucks.
gobolinux is fine but it is just a proof of concept for a different file structure, it isnt really something you pick up and use daily for work
Mandriva didn’t make the list? That used to be one of the “big boys” of Linux, and one of the few available at standard retail locations.
Most user-friendly Linux used to be Lindows – renamed Linspire and later bought by Xandros. I have no idea if Xandros maintained the emphasis of user-friendliness geared towards transitioning Windows users.
Damn Small Linux is perhaps the one I use most often. Been a long time since I’ve played with any of the full-size distributions…
Knoppix Gamer, or something like that, was an old LiveCD distro. Memorable because at the time it was the only Linux distro that could correctly detect and enable 3D graphics.
Yeah, you’re right. Excluding Mandriva from such a list just show that the person who made it doesn’t have a clue.
If you are going to make such a list, at least do some research. Listing the distros used by your friends isn’t enough. Mandriva is still one of the major players, allthough it probably isn’t the most used in North America.
Edited 2009-10-08 01:40 UTC
Mandriva doesn’t make the list because it does suck.
Pardus is on the list because it’s a KDE distro that doesn’t suck.
What, are they still creating overlapping partitions?
Edited 2009-10-08 03:53 UTC
Mandriva doesn’t make the list because it does suck.
Pardus is on the list because it’s a KDE distro that doesn’t suck.
I suppose you mean Mandriva’s KDE desktop sucks. I tried it myself and even though it is very plain, like they had only replaced the default theme and wallpaper and done nothing else to the default configuration, it still didn’t really suck. I would have changed all the settings anyway. And I prefer GNOME as my DE.
The default theme in Mandriva is fugly IMHO, and there’s lots of things here and there that really need some more attention. Like f.ex. the applications installed by default. But I like the tools Mandriva packs, they’re good quality and stable.
Now that’s objective!
I should mention that I usually run Ubuntu, but the latest seems to not support frequency scaling on a Celeron Mobile processor. I’ll have to file a bug report.
Meanwhile, I have switched that laptop to Mandriva 2009.1, Gnome One edition. Scaling works beautifully, as does everything else. It had been a while since I had used Mandriva, and I must say I am impressed. It is very polished.
Arch
Sabayon
Edited 2009-10-07 22:15 UTC
I agree about Arch … depends on your skill level though
I think most technically inclined people can actually start out on arch with a bit of help…. and its easy to maintain for non tech family members that need a safe PC
If you want a chance at getting anything related to sound production on Linux to work, try this one. Interesting Afro-roots, free software, free the people, flavor.
Damn, I thought the OSNews staff is more uhm … mature … ?
When it comes to linux – it’s ALL about taste really. You can – however – point out some stuff by sorting it through the categories, like: simplicity [Arch, Slack, Gentoo, Debian, etc], “out-of-the-boxiness [A.K.A “false” user friendliness: *buntu, *Suse, Pardus, etc; etc
Plus: you need to remember, that great part of the distros we see nowadays is just a fork, or a graphical wrapper to the underlying linux base of one of the 5 [?] flavors: Slackware, RedHat, Debian, Custom and Source-based.
Author of the site mentioned in this article puts out his “favs”, so it’s nothing objective.
if “doesn’t suck” or “is notable” are your only search constraints, then you should just go to distrowatch. big list of distros there that fit the bill.
however, if you narrow your search down to distros that people actually use daily for more than a year straight, you’ll find yourself with a much shorter list of notable distros that don’t suck.
if you narrow it down even further to “distros that actually matter”, you end up with a very short list indeed: 4.
Edited 2009-10-08 15:50 UTC
Linux From Scratch.
You know you want to.
Linux Mint is Ubuntu done right, so I miss it in the list, is my everday distro.
Debian is both done right. Give it a try, you won’t regret it.
This one is also very well done: PC/OS linux
http://www.pc-os.org/
http://linux.softpedia.com/progScreenshots/PC-OS-Screenshot-36302.h…
Looks great, works great, and it’s also based on Ubuntu.
Arch linux and LFS
…yes it’s not a linux distro but lets not leave out OpenSolaris. The 2009.06 release was a fantastic desktop or laptop OS and the hardware support is much better. Time Slider for backup management. ZFS/BE for easy and safe upgrades. Rock solid. I am using the next dev branch right now and let me say the next release is another big improvement.
The reason its not a Linux that sucks is because its not Linux
Lets hope Oracle give it some attention as its shaping up to be quite interesting and not just as a server OS.
I use Ubuntu for my day-to-day work and Fedora from time to time, but I’m a little disappointed that Puppy Linux wasn’t listed. At about 100 MB, fast, and a low memory footprint, this is GREAT for old systems or just to have a live distro you can boot up, remove the CD, and use the system fully as if it was installed.
Confession: I’ve been *trying* (to like) Linux distros since 1998 (circa: SuSE 5.x / Conectiva 3) until the 2002. I gave up then (became a BeOS refugee).
Nonetheless, I’ve recently played with http://www.slitaz.org/ and found it’s <30Mb of download size to be really worthwhile (much nicer than PuppyLinux IMO).
Edited 2009-10-08 15:46 UTC
…are sheer frustration if you are playing Oracle RAC then I have to say from a server guys view, udev on Linux to make /dev/stuff stay in the same place twice is the most painful experience I’ve ever had in my life…
udev seems like a fantastic amount of tweakability, but the whole dev thing should just work properly by default.
Don’t worry. udev is in the process of getting thrown out in favor of the new DevFS. It’s supposed to shave a couple of seconds off boot time.
Edited 2009-10-08 18:13 UTC
Like CentOS, but with more packages, better hardware support, and an installable live CD… I’d say it counts as non-sucky.