Best Linux Distribution

[slave]

Just out of curiousity, what would you people consider to be the overall best Linux distribution in terms of stability, speed, and ease of use?  Also, why are there so f*(@ing many Linux distributions but only one FreeBSD distribution?  Why has Linux fragmented so much?

[choasforages]

good question actually, i would prefer redhat 7.3 as the most stable, as for ease of use, if you use the the kde desktop, it almost reminds you of windows, as for speed, its pretty quick. as for the split in linux and not with freebsd, freebsd is actually a version of bsd and there are about four different version's of bsd right now that i now of, NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, BSD/I, BSD is not as fragmented as linux becuase with BSD it is more often a very tigh group of devolopers working on it and with linux, it is a more larger devoloper base working on it. and there are easy resource to make your own distrobution of linux then there are of how to make your own version of BSD.

[slave]

I would consider Debian to be the most robust, but the hardest to set up.  Is that right?

[Master of Reality]

Here is A topic a while back about people favorite Linux distribution and here is another thread about it. I prfer Red Hat and Slackware.
Red Hat is because of the easy commands easy installing RPMs.
Slackware because of its excellant package manager.

I found Slackware easier to setup than Debian and Red Hat is definatley easier.

[ June 12, 2002: Message edited by: Master of Reality / Bob ]

[Heru]

I'd say that Mandrake is easiest to use, and is similar to Red Hat.  As for stability, I'd say that Debian is stablest.  Speed?  It depends on lots of things, but in my experience Slackware seems to be the fastest.

I personally use Mandrake, becuase it is stable, is very much like Red Hat, and seems quite fast on my computer(faster than Windows was, actually).  I have used Slackware on this machine, and it was faster, but I didn't like it much.

[Master of Reality]

eventually I will put LFS, Slackware and FreeBSD on my main computer, but I am really lazy and it will be a while.

[Chooco]

i use Mandrake, it's easiest to use. i've never tried Debian but people say it's pretty good....my friend uses RedHat 7.1 and i don't like his as much as mine......when installing Linux just make sure you don't install a ton of crap you don't need.....choosing to install the HTTP server package totaly screws everything up, it puts files where they should not be and you have no clue how to find them as well as them not working such as perl in my case. if you want it done right you do it yourself and ask for help when stuck instead of wanting the install process to do it

[voidmain]

Chooco, did you see my reply to your supposed Perl/Apache problem in the Linux forum?  Before you go giving bad advice you should learn a little more about the system. There is nothing wrong with where the files are installed and if you want to find out where the files are installed just do an "rpm -qil packagename" and it will tell you where every file is that is associated with the package (or use one of the graphical package tools like kpackage to list where the files go). If you want to uninstall a package just "rpm -e packagename" and it will clean everything up for you (or again, use one of the graphical package managers).

[Calum]

"What's the best distro?" are you srious? that's not a real topic! also, there's four different versions of BSD, there's FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD, they are all based on 4.5BSD. Linux is not fragmented either, all the GNU stuff is compatible with all unix systems, so long as you get the source code (which you do).

Sorry, but i'm closing this thread. What's the best distro indeed. That's just asking for an argument and basically for people to post shit. Sorry if it seems dictatorial but i cannot imagine a "What's the best distro" thread that is not a waste of time. Maybe start a new topic, but rephrase the question in a way that won't cause people to waste their time.