"leetest" linux distro

[flavoraid]

what do you hard out linux users use?

so far I see that gentoo and arch are the hardest to configure and give the user the most control..

Im going to configure gentoo on my socket A rig using a tutorial I found. Just curious what other people use.

[[XC] Teroedni]

Yup Gentoo seems to be one of the hardest.
You should also consider freebsd, althought not linux it is nearly the same(Eg its unix complicant and use x11 as wll, but its better on sequrity and speed i think

[BlueBiker]

Sure Gentoo will give you bragging rights, very fine control over exactly how your system is configured and optimized, and it'll teach you a lot about how Linux works. Definitely the macho distro.

I've had good success w/SuSE Linux**. Excellent support, broad range of ready to go packages, smooth GUI installer, wide hardware compatibility, regular security & bug fixes, both KDE and Gnome integration, and both desktop & server applications.

Gentoo if you have a looooong attention span and want to learn Linux. SuSE to get work done.

**Um, except their latest 10.1 version is a little flaky with their package updater. :-/

[Okda]

yup Gentoo si the best wehn talking about control ur whole system and learning linux


me also use it after using MAndy, Fedora/Redhat, Suse for the first year with linux

[Jazz_Data]

still took me about 4 days to compile my gentoo lol

[flavoraid]

yeah

I just want to learn :P

bragging rights are nice too..

[drz]

if i may interject on this, I've been using linux since 94, slackware was the hardcore distro, and remains so.

I do suggest though, if you want to be "hard-core" build your own distro, check out www.linuxfromscratch.org not only will you learn the ins-and-outs of linux, you'll learn about compiler optimization, patching, kernel building and various other things. The best part is, when you're done, your LFS build is faster than ANY distro you can get (yes, it's even faster then gentoo for you groupies) The answer to why, will come when you do the project. Enjoy.

[Ehwaz001]

Slackware is a very good distro to learn, next to Gentoo and LFS

[uOpt]

FreeBSD.

Gentoo is just silly in my opinion.

People who want an actually working Linux, as in the distribution doesn't change the integrated software needlessly and stays close to the original kernel, Debian.

[Zardokk]

Gentoo or Slackware. FreeBSD is Unix, not Linux. I've been out of the whole "open source, Micro$haft" scene for a while, but I'm pretty sure I still remember my stuff. The hardcore l337 h4x0rs use Gentoo or Slack. I personally like Slackware a lot better than Gentoo. You'll definately learn A LOT from Gentoo, though.

[perkam]

Did he just say leetest ?

....Man...i should take a photo...

Perkam

[MentholMoose]

Gentoo is just silly in my opinion.

People who want an actually working Linux, as in the distribution doesn't change the integrated software needlessly and stays close to the original kernel, Debian.

I've been using Gentoo for a few years and I have only ever used a vanilla kernel (i.e. straight from kernel.org) with no distribution specific patches whatsoever. Also, I don't recall ever being forced to "needlessly" upgrade anything.

I think people are too accustomed to the Microsoft concept of software versions. That is, if you don't upgrade to the latest "version", you are out of date. This isn't particularly applicable to linux distributions, and especially not Gentoo. Whenever a new "version" of Gentoo is released, there are always people groaning about how they "just" installed the previous version, which took "a week" to install, and how they will now reformat and use another distribution. These people don't understand Gentoo.

When a new version of Gentoo comes out, the upgrade process is simple: change one setting (a symbolic link) so the package manager considers your computer as being the new version. That's it. The next time you use the package manager to check for updates, there might be new packages that are specific to the new version, and you can choose whether or not choose to install them. There is no need to load a new installation CD and run some sort of upgrade installation.

However, even this isn't particularly necessary. You really only need to update for security issues; you can update for other reasons at your convenience. For example, when I use the package manager to check for new software available on a server of mine, I am notified that proftpd version 1.3.0 is available. I am using version 1.2.10, which works fine, so I haven't upgraded. The same can be said for many components of Gentoo.

I am completely confident that Gentoo is an "actually working Linux". I have used it on numerous machines, for various uses, such as file serving, web hosting, vmware, and desktop usage (I am posting this on my IBM T42p laptop running KDE on Gentoo). The thing I like the most about Gentoo is the package manager. It is easy to use and there are tons of official packages. I have used other distributions, including CentOS and Slackware, and I always disliked having to search for packages for software lacking an official package. With Gentoo, almost everything I need is available as an official package, which is very convenient.

[uOpt]

When I said "not forced to upgrade" I meant something else than what seemed to be understood.

No Linux distribution forces you to upgrade anything, they are pretty good at backporting important fixes.

What the Debian system does, and Debian derivates probably, too, is that you can mix releases. The "-t" switch to apt-get (to get packages) allows you to specify that for this particular package you want e.g. "testing", although the rest of your system is "release". If there are no dependencies that also require upgrading that you already have at your old version of Debian, it goes right through and you have the bleeding edge version of that particular package in an otherwise conservative system. I have never seen other distributions, including FreeBSD, do this.

(If there are conflicts that a library is needed both by your base system and the new package, but in different versions, it have various ways for you to specify what it should do. Also, installing a complete chroot for the new package is a single command in Debian.).

[MentholMoose]

I understand what you mean now (I think ). You can do something similar in Gentoo. Packages have associated "keywords" which tell the package manager if it is stable or not. For example, a package with a "x86" keyword is fully stable on the x86 architecture, whereas a the "~x86" keyword is for packages that are unstable or in testing status. You can set keywords at the system or package level by editing configuration files or by specifying accepted keywords when running the package manager.