Member Avatar for Infarction

Just kinda wondering what distros people have run. I LOLed in the Choosing a Distro forum when people said Gentoo was the hardest distro, so I was wondering what everyone's background is.

I've had Gentoo on my laptop since April (exclusively since June) and it's the system I use most (also the first time I've really used Linux). I dual boot FC6 on my desktop, but only rarely actually use it. I've had FC 4, FC 5, Gentoo, Ubuntu 5.04 and Kubuntu 6.06 installed at various times on my desktop though.

So, how 'bout you guys? :)

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This thread makes it clear people try very different setups for very different reasons. The single best planning step is to pick the goal first (daily desktop, learning internals, lightweight/rescue system, or production server) and then pick how you will test changes so you don’t lose data. Posts by , , , and highlight different priorities; the tips below focus on safe testing, recoverability, and faster kernel/installer work-flows.

Always test new installs non-destructively. Use virtual machines or live media when possible, and keep an off-system copy of partition metadata before you touch disks. Example commands (run as root and replace the device name as needed):

# Backup MBR (legacy partition table)
dd if=/dev/sda of=./mbr.bin bs=512 count=1

# Dump a scriptable partition description
sfdisk -d /dev/sda > sda.partition-table

# Backup GPT structures (uses gdisk/sgdisk)
sgdisk --backup=table.bin /dev/sda

Kernel/build tips to avoid repetitive rebuilds: start from a working configuration, update incrementally, and use parallel builds. From inside the kernel source tree:

cp /boot/config-$(uname -r) .config
make oldconfig        # brings in defaults for new options
make menuconfig       # optional interactive tweak
make -j$(nproc)       # parallel build

After building, install modules and update the bootloader before rebooting. Keep copies of good configs (dotfiles and /etc) under version control, take VM snapshots before risky changes, and keep a short changelog of installs and tweaks. For low-resource machines use minimal installs and lightweight window managers; for servers prefer minimal images and automation so upgrades are repeatable. These practices reduce the “it worked yesterday” surprises others described and make distro-hopping a lot less stressful.

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Member Avatar for John A

My first Linux distro I ever used was Red Hat 8. It was pretty good, although kinda slow on my Pentium 2. Upgrading to Red Hat 9 didn't make things any better. :D

Since then, I've used numerous distros, including Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Slackware, Debian, Gentoo and Vector. My favorites are Debian and Slackware, with Gentoo following close behind (my biggest complaint is that Gentoo Minimal takes soooo long to install).

As for difficulty of Gentoo, it's not really hard if you use the LiveCD. However, I'm afraid to use it on my laptop because the last time I did, it erased my partition table. Now I only use the Minima CDl for installing Gentoo on MacBook, which although timely process, creates a perfectly-crafted distro that is a pleasure to use.

Member Avatar for DimaYasny

I started with Debian, then moven on to SLES and RHEL (CentOS) for work.
Now my desktop is Kubuntu and the working servers are Debian, Suse9 and CentOS4

Member Avatar for Infarction

Gentoo does take a bit longer to install, but I found that the documentation got me through the minimum install pretty easily. The only big complaint I have with it is the time it takes to compile everything, but I guess that's the cost of a source based distro. And I usually just compile everything while I sleep anyways, so the wait doesn't end up bothering me ('cept for new programs). Portage is so sweet that I don't think I'll be replacing Gentoo for a long time... :D

Member Avatar for John A

My biggest complaint about Gentoo is actually building the kernel. I suck at building kernels; I always have. It's not that I find them difficult, but I always seem to omit some important feature in the kernel when I'm configuring it.

I only realize it when I try to boot, and then I have to go back and fix the error, and then recompile it. I know it recommends in the Gentoo documentation about printing out hardware information with pciutils tools, but even with that I seem to make mistakes. (I think it's mainly to do with my MacBook's weird hardware.)

Now there's better configuration guides for compiling kernels on a MacBook, (and you can even download configuration files for it) so it's not so bad now.

And agreed, Portage is the sweetest thing about Gentoo...

Member Avatar for jbennet

my fave distro is PCLinux OS - Its noob friendly yet has promise for power users - its also a livecd, very cutting edge and includes most drivers and multimedia codecs. Try out the 2007 beta

I also like CentOS for servers and low end pcs (runs happily on 700mhz celeron with 128mb ram) for day to day things

Member Avatar for Member #46692

I have used (superfically) fedora, ubuntu and open suse 10.1.

Member Avatar for jbennet

i liked YAST but SuSE was slow and the updater was broken

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