Help finding a Distro

[Apopas]

The install is very straightforward, part of KISS principle, the installer guides you step by step and it's hard to screw anything up, unlike Gentoo stage 3 install.

Well, gentoo has the best guides out there and even if sourcebased, the installation is pretty straight. Only a newbie could have a problem I guess, but yet gentoo aims to experienced users.

[hax0r]

Archlinux is a pain in the ASCII to install and set up. It reminds me of Slackware releases from 1994.

Once you get Archlinux installed and configured manually, it lacks a couple of features I really use a lot in other distros. Ability to log into KDE as root for example. Right click on desktop to get a menu including console or terminal windows for example, etc.


I do have to admit that with Archlinux, I obtained one of the best benchmarks for Apache-build there is. For everyday use it just is too time consuming to make the spoils worth the battle.

Your mileage will vary. It's just a matter of how much.

Archlinux installs vanilla KDE, so no right click options, but they can be installed. As for root issues, don't forget to install sudo and setup visudo, also HAL and DBUS need ck-launch-session in .xinitrc, e.g. "exec ck-launch-session startkde". All of this is in the wiki pages AFAIK. The install is very straightforward, part of KISS principle, the installer guides you step by step and it's hard to screw anything up, unlike Gentoo stage 3 install.

[Jaguar07]

Archlinux - PITA

Archlinux is a pain in the ASCII to install and set up. It reminds me of Slackware releases from 1994.

Once you get Archlinux installed and configured manually, it lacks a couple of features I really use a lot in other distros. Ability to log into KDE as root for example. Right click on desktop to get a menu including console or terminal windows for example, etc.


I do have to admit that with Archlinux, I obtained one of the best benchmarks for Apache-build there is. For everyday use it just is too time consuming to make the spoils worth the battle.

Your mileage will vary. It's just a matter of how much.

[Apopas]

Mandriva is excellent KDE4 and Gnome based distro as well, with intuitive package manager, easy setup and powerful system tools.

[BhaKi]

Slackware or openSuSE

Need help finding a Distro... but I have some tricky requirements.

Need something that wont take a whole lot of trouble to set up and use (my GF uses this PC too). But I need something that is bleeding edge in terms of Development software (Eclipse, GCC, etc...). And (that's the tricky part) ATI Catalist MUST work (ATI HD4850) because I do play some games.

Between KDE and Gnome I prefer KDE but I use gnome too, so no problem here. As a package manager I'm very used to Debian APT. But as gnome vs KDE I can learn to use another package manager.

Any suggestions?

PS: Been using Ubuntu lately

Slackware and openSuSE are the best KDE-based distros out there. Slackware is faster, bloat-free and more secure. But its package management is less intuitive compared to openSuSE and you need fair amount of experience with Linux (any UNIX-like OS) to be comfortable with Slackware. openSuSE has an excellent GUI control center for everything from package management to server administration.

[Apopas]

Rolling releases are nice for some people, but it creates much more support effort than normal ones. When you closed some bugs new ones are found.

The "more effort" thing is a common mistake. Yes, gentoo needs a lot of trouble to install but after that you relax for eternity. I use daily the same installation of gentoo for the last 5 years as long as my two young sisters. I update my system each weekend (during the night while sleeping) and half an hour in the morning for possible recompile of third party depedencies. The effort to install a "normal" distro every six months or so and fixing bugs or waiting for updates and patches while after 2-3 months you are not anymore in the bleeding edge part, needs much more effort. With gentoo (I have not personal experience with other rolling distro) you work a lot at the begining but that's all and if you use the stable packages you will very rarely encounter bugs.

[hax0r]

Trust me, this is the holy grail of GNU/Linux :

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide

2009.08-1 archboot "Schmollie" ISO hybrid image and torrent

What you get is the rolling release distro and by far the most efficient, useful, speedy package manager out there. Also you should get the full blown GNOME DE with footprint of <100MB on i686 or ~130MB on x86_64.

[AdrenalineJunky]

niether arch or gentoo are particularly easy to set up.

i'd recomend chakra - ready to go arch linux with KDE-Mod and graphical installer.

http://chakra-project.org/

you can install patched catalyst drivers that work with the newest kernels from one of several third party repositories (like arch-stuff) or from the AUR

[chithanh]

Arch Linux with their rolling releases would have been a good choice if they had not purged the proprietary fglrx/Catalyst driver from their official repositories. Now it is just a second-class citizen.

Gentoo also has rolling releases, but it is not trivial (although straightforward) to install. And Gentoo makes it easy to mix stable and bleeding-edge packages.

From the comments I gather, it appears that AMD developers only care about three distros, namely RHEL, SLED and Ubuntu (which you already use). So if 3D is a priority, you may want to stick to one of those distros.

[SoftVision]

Try Arch Linux

Arch Linux has a rolling release system and fits your bleeding edge requirements. Read more about them on their website and wiki. You'll get the latest GCC and Eclipse as and when they release. With a little work you should be able to get your graphics set up as well.