Which Distro To Try

[Capn_Fish]

I felt like I understood the install process from the minimal CD, but I didn't understand building the kernel, so I think I missed an essential module or something dealing with networking/internet, as everything else I checked worked just fine.

[spaul]

FWIW I'm trying dreamlinux today.  It is a debian based distro using XFCE disguised with the best art I have seen and beryl.  Heavily influenced by mac

[grog]

I've been using gentoo on my desktop for a while now. It's great once you get it installed, but I admit it was a pain getting there. I even tried to install it on my laptop too, but in the end just couldn't get it working.

There's a lot of discussion going on on the gentoo forums right now about the poor quality of the live/install cd's. I get the impression it's not going to get fixed anytime soon.

I was finally able to install it via a net install using the minimal cd. As I said, it was a while ago so the details are kinda fuzzy now. Browse & post on the forums for help. I'm sure with enough persistence you'll get it running. I've found it worth it.

[desertrat]

There's a lot of discussion going on on the gentoo forums right now about the poor quality of the live/install cd's. I get the impression it's not going to get fixed anytime soon.

I tried the GUI installed once and it was more pain than the manual install.

I was finally able to install it via a net install using the minimal cd.

This is the best install method (IMHO).

Could somebody tell me how to install a preconfigured kernel using the minimal CD or point me to the solution? I really like the premise of Gentoo, but so far I haven't really gotten to try it.

Using genkernel is supposed to get you a kernel which is configured like the livecd. However I like to configure the kernel manually so that it's tailored to my hardware. It can be tricky and tedious configuring the kernel for the first time. Just go through every single option and read the help text to help you decide whether you need a particular option - if in doubt include it. After you've got a working kernel you can go back and remove the doubtful options one at a time until it stops working again - then backtrack.

[Capn_Fish]

I was kind of hoping to avoid that, but OK. Should I mark stuff as "included" or "module?"

[desertrat]

I was kind of hoping to avoid that, but OK. Should I mark stuff as "included" or "module?"

Mostly common sense, stuff that are needed to boot the machine needs to be included (ata/sata/scsi/filesystems/etc), I usually include motherboard hardware (sound/network). Stuff that I modulise are non-boot filesystems (ntfs/smbfs/etc) and usb peripherals.

[Capn_Fish]

All right. I'll go and try to reinstall Gentoo and do my best not to mess up the kernel again.  

[Capn_Fish]

Indeed, I forgot to add in my Ethernet driver last time, and now it works perfectly   . It takes a long time to build Xorg, Fluxbox, and the deps, though.

[Cresho]

using ubuntu

here is a pick

http://ubuntuforums.org/g/index.php?n=578



running these under it

beryl
conky
screenlets
kiba dock

hardware activated on startup

nvidia drivers
nvidia antiliasing and anisotrophic filter.

[img]http://ubuntuforums.org/g/images/279277/1_my_beach.jpg\" border=\"0\" class=\"linked-image\" /]

[Capn_Fish]

After deciding Gentoo wasn't the best choice (it failed to emerge something. I thought emerge was supposed to "just work?"), I'm looking at Slackware. It seems the docs are out of date and/or the install procedure is very complicated (compared to other distros).

Anybody know which is the case (or both)?

TIA

[T3_slider]

This page ( http://www.bitbenderforums.com/vb22/showth...p?postid=311808 ) explains every single step along with pictures on how to get Slackware running. Just make sure that instead of installing the bare.i kernel you install one of the 2.6 kernels (since you said earlier that you wanted a 2.6 kernel).

If you are going to try it, I'm about to install Slackware on one of my PCs in the next few days so if you have any questions I'll have the install process fresh in my memory (I hope).

The only thing you really need to worry about is what partition scheme you are going to use.

If you want pre-built packages for slackware, I think the best resource is http://www.linuxpackages.net/ although you can always compile apps from source.

[desertrat]

After deciding Gentoo wasn't the best choice (it failed to emerge something. I thought emerge was supposed to "just work?"),

If you stick to the stable ebuilds then mostly it "just works". However there will be occasional breakages, but these are usually quickly solved by a combination of the usual:

- google
- search the gentoo bug tracker
- search gentoo mailing list/forums
- post your problem on gentoo mailing list/forums

[Da_Blitz]

gentoo was good for me for encryption but i had a few niggling issues that i need fixed at that time and couldnt wait, debian support with crypto disks is good but not 100% up to scratch for my usage yet

still i use thier Documents all the time, when it comes to rtfm no one supplies a fm like they do

[kopsis]

Have you considered Arch Linux? It's sort of philosophically aligned with Gentoo and Slackware in that it starts as minimalist install and leaves it up to you to add only what you want (and assumes that you know what you're doing).

Unlike Gentoo, it's a binary distro (i686 optimized ... don't bother if you have antique hardware). The package manager (Pacman) is quite good and it's very easy to create your own packages (much easier than Debian). The pre-packaged stuff is pretty current (gcc 4.2.0, kernel 2.6.21, xorg 7.0, gnome 2.18, kde 3.5.7, xfce 4.4, etc.) and there is an active community maintaining even more bleeding edge versions.

I'm still partial to Ubuntu for boxes that I want to just work. But if you want to tinker, Arch is a great choice.

[Capn_Fish]

I'll put Arch Linux on my list.