There are 100’s of different Linux distributions and picking one can be difficult. So (:^tuxs.org) has devised the “Linux Distribution Chooser” to help you find a good distribution to try for the first time. Answer a few simple questions and the “Linux Distribution Chooser” will suggest a Linux distribution for you to try The Distribution Chooser has been now updated to version 0.2 following the
feedback from Distrowatch readers.
cant believe I just wasted 2 minutes on that…
…is that the user interface for that page is terrible.
slackware heh
I will stick with gentoo i think I love it even if my hardware is a few years old.
I wrote something like this recently except mine is far more effective at picking an appropriate distribution.
Check it out: http://chubby.dyndns.org/~dfrey/distro_chooser.php
Well done setuid_woot. Without fanning potential flames; I agree with you
Although :^tuxs.org has done a bit more work on it it is still pretty weak. A good idea and a needed one. But with so little variables and potential options; its more of a novelty than any thing else.
Keep going guys. You are on the right track
@setuid_w00t
hahaha
I got Debian on your page too. lol
I have a PC, that’s fast… and I don’t want no learning curve–and though I’m an old nerd I want it easy on me–so I’m just ‘confident using a computer’, and I want it on my hard drive. ‘Mandrake Linux.’
Isn’t that for your grandma? Someone who wants linux to *be* Windows?
So I go one skill level up (to ‘willing to gain knowledge’)… and it’s: Gentoo. Is there nothing in-between?
I was expecting it would say Slackware or Debian. Why are they stuck under ‘old computer’? They’re just as viable for a fast PC and fill in that huge (I’d guess majority) difficulty gap.
Hahaha. Nice one
I was pissed that the other one wouldn’t recommend Debian for me. Yours is much better.
There’s a perfectly good minute of my time I’ll never get back.
Geez, it’d be easier if people just went to Distrowatch directly and read their top 10 distros page instead (http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major“)
Yay, i god the distro i use on *both* pages
…
Woohoo!
The problem with all these “distro chosers” are the assumptions their creators code into them. Like, assuming that only people with “new and fast” machines would like to use Gentoo, whereas people with “older” machines (all other options the same) would prefer Debian.
*I* couldn’t care less for the performance tweaking options of Gentoo, for example, but chose it because of it’s Portage package system.
Any such “expert system” will fail.
If you use a PC, it is a few years old, you are confident using a computer and want to install Linux on your hard drive then try…..
And I got Debian, which I currently use
setuid_w00t, is your distro chooser having problems? When I go to the URL, I get a page just saying “Debian.” Maybe your script is so advanced that it doesn’t need to ask questions; it just reads your user agent and works from there. I doubt it, though.
The distro chooser might work ok for someone who is very new to Linux, someone who may have visited Distrowatch and therefore knows now that there are zillions of distributions but who doesn’t yet have a clue as to which distro(s) might suit him/her. The chjooser recommends only major distributions which is ok from a newbie point of view.
So don’t be so hard on them… Someone might even find some use for the distro chooser, at least after some more refining and tweaking…
However, I am not 100% sure if Gentoo is really the perfect choice for me…? 🙂 So, I mean: Do people who want to learn technical things always prefer to compile software from source too? (yeah, I know, Portage and Gentoo have many excellent features that binary distros lack…) I think that, of the major distributions, many technical users prefer Debian and Slackware too. Hmm… Though, maybe I should indeed give Gentoo a new try some of these days too…;-)
Believe it or not, this is better than version 0.1. Anyaway, it’s just a bit of fun, ffs.
Every initiative has to start somewhere.I can’t comprehend
why Gentoo is associated so exclusively with new hardware.
I used to use Gentoo/Slackware as my every day all purpose station until i bought a new motherboard and 2 SATA HD’s.Upto the 2004.2 Gentoo LIVE CD didn’t support it, that’s where i backed of so to speak.Even Slackware 10 doesn’t support it during the ISO install.Mandrake 10 ,10.1 runs sluggish ,Debian runs fine , and SuSE since version 9.1 although it has some problems with Grub in conjunction with reiserfs when installing kernel patches.The solution is to tell the BIOS explicitly to use the PATA, SATA1,
SATA2 order and configure grub accordingly. Then it works. Note that you must tell the BIOS *after* changing from legacy to enhanced mode, as that silently changes the boot order as well
FreeBSD 4.10 RELEASE runs very fast on my A7V600 motherboard with the 2 SATA HD’s (lol faster than
windows XP with the vendor driver)
What combination gives me fedora?
So far I have gotten debian and gentoo and mandrake. Depending on new or old machine.
“If you use a PC, it is a few years old, you want to get started without any learning curve and want to install Linux on your hard drive then try
Fedora Core Linux”
Thanks your a life saver. I thought I would have to get Xandros
i would be interested in seeing the flowchart behind that page … it would expose how many of the questions lead to mandrake!
Why did they leave out Debian as an alternative if you use a Mac?
I know for sure that I wouldn’t want to run Gentoo on an old G3…
http://www.tuxs.org/chooser/all.htm
All the questions and their answers!
If there weren’t so many damn distros to choose from. Some of them are kind of duplicating each other’s efforts it seeems. Certainly they could get it down to about a 5-6 if they really wanted to:
1. One ‘easy as pie’ distro for newbies (eg Xandros or Linspire)
2. One source-based distro (eg Gentoo)
3. One ‘Unix-y’ like distro (eg Slackware, Debian, etc)
4. One LiveCD distro (eg Knoppix)
5. One ‘generic’ Linux distro (Mandrake, Suse, Libranet, Fedora, etc)
Now, do we really need any more than this?
A computer that is “a few years old” can still crank and crunch numbers fast enough. My 1ghz Athlon-Tbird can still “stick & move”…also, gentoo is certainly no hog.
Both Slack & Gentoo are lean, speed-demons.
I suggest that the questionnaire recommend both distributions for machines “a few years old” and maybe add a follow-up question to help the user decide b/w the two…. *OR* specify a higher age on the CPU to differentiate the two.
Slack binaries are pre-compiled for 486 cpus… but they still run superb on newer machines.
W/ gentoo, even if the optimizations don’t translate to *that* much of a boost… it still feels cleaner to have the binaries compiled and optimized for an athlon-tbird…even if it is “a few years old”….
just my 2 cents…
it told me, i should choose slackware. the other link in here stated i should run debian. now, i ran redhat, fedora, suse, mandrake, yoper, munjoy, lba, knoppix and others on my old 750 mhz pc with 330 mb ram. no problem with any distro. but according to the test, mandrake would e.g. never(!) be an option for my pc. but i had it on my box and it ran like hell on it….
pretty weird.
It suggests Fedora for beginers and Mandrake for people used to Linux. Strange
I know for sure that I wouldn’t want to run Gentoo on an old G3…
Why? What would be the difference to Debian performance-wise? Gentoo might do it in a few milliseconds less if you optimized it for that particular machine.
AH! Now i get it.. If you don’t want to waste days compiling your X Server, do it at night, or use distcc.
Or edit /etc/make.conf and change PORTAGE_NICENESS to 10. This worked fine over here before my processor fan stopped working.
Check this out:
If you use a PC, it is a few years old, you want to get started without any learning curve and want to install Linux on your hard drive then try
Fedora Core Linux
What a pack of crappola. Fedora Core kills even my Thunderbird 1200 MHz, how would it run on a 486???
Interesting that benchmarks show that slackware (ie old not fast) is faster than nearly all distributions (except gentoo, new and fast). I never knew that mandrake or deadrat were fast, just new. there should be a new catagory: new, fast, and old
.. and i got the right answer in 1 time but it obviously needs polishing. For example, it didn’t ask me if i prefered to compile from source. It better had. Also, some live CD’s can be “nested” e.g. you’re able to test it out before installing on a harddrive. What about the distributions which work from Windows? What about more/other fine-grained differences between Slackware, Debian and Gentoo? Finally, there’s more than x86-32 and Mac.