Which distro offers the best experience?

None of those polls has an "Other" option

 

Today I downloaded and installed openSuse 11.2 and like previous times I was unable to connect via wireless to my router. I have a Broadcom BCM 4312 802.11b/g card in my laptop. At least in Ubuntu the driver is on the install disc.

I'll work through this problem tomorrow then give Suse another honest try. Hope I can spot what all this devotion is based upon.

Later...

 

I did the same here today, put openSUSE 11.2 on the laptop and wifi worked fine, but I had another issue with the display randomly dimming at boot, sometimes dim sometimes normal. Couldn't fix that, so gave up. Now I have openSUSE 11.2 on the desktop machine where it runs fine, no issues, and Ubuntu on the laptop, where it does fine also. Best of both worlds I guess..

 

yeah...powermanagement and wireless issues on Linux having those off and on on Mandriva. Wireless has been actually solved for me through Kernel update, but power management problem (dimming screen ) isn't even treated.

 

Not addressed? You bother to file a bug report?

 

quite a few already thanks (for the tip)

 

Yes, I'd also like to see "Other". I'm just itching to vote Arch as best installation experience

 

Mrk,

since Ocky pointed me to CentOS: I read your review and I realize that you put it on place 13 - partly because it's more difficult to setup. But apart from that - how what you rate it compared to openSUSE? I mean, in your review multimedia worked well, and you praised its stability and LT support.

 

Best experience or best out of box experience ? OofB = probably Mint
Note: I am a newbie and for CentOS all I did was read their Wiki to get going. Once set-up it's plain sailing (I didn't enable SeLinux because too complicated for me). If one wants lots of eye-candy, themes etc. then maybe no. All I did was install a 'nicer' icon theme.
In view of Mrk's latest great reviews, maybe soon time for a small update re: the podium positions ?

 

I did not place it 13th ... it's 13th on DistroWatch

I merely listed contenders, places 6-14 as an addition to the top five.

I value CentOS very highly. Personally, it's one of my favorites. Choice 1 for server, alongside SUSE, choice 3 for household use, for me, not the average desktop user.

Desktop wise, openSUSE, Mint at the top, CentOS - or rather - Scientific Linux, sharing the third place.

CentOS stability: perfect.
CentOS support: perfect.

What might be difficult? Well, proxy support, package manager is on par with zypper, searching for packages is more difficult via GUI. Pirut is a little poor when it comes to interface.

Suse seems friendlier when it comes to compilation, kernel sources, that kind of that. Better and easier multimedia support, graphics. CentOS offers better system utilities, if you don't like YaST, more conventional, classic-Linux usage model.

CentOS also has an older kernel, less support for modern stuff.

If you're looking into RedHat, try Scientific Linux, it's CentOS, plus all the modern stuff, wireless, bluetooth, Compiz, multimedia out of the box, and all that.

Mrk

 

Oops - my bad, sorry

Sounds very good. Thanks for your valuable advice, Mrk!

 

tlu,

Once you have the RPMForge repo. you can have a complete multimedia experience from playing xvid to hdmov.

See my sshot. .... https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=1618859&postcount=136

Compiz is also in the repos. Never use Pirut - always use Yum Extender.
Unfortunately I can't show ss. with Compiz etc. because on my old wife's old standby HP Compaq nx6110 the graphics capabilities are next to nothing.

I wonder whether Scientific Linux makes use of the same old (but stable) kernel.

EDIT: 'old' Good that she doesn't frequent this forum.

 

Debian and Ubuntu are my favorite. I like gnome/lxde + synaptic.

 

Yes, I think Mrk mentioned that, and I had also found it on http://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/Repositories . I haven't added it, though, as I haven't been successful in installing the VBox additions so far.

Yes, it does (2.6.18 ). Which means, of course, that you won't get, e.g., ext4 ... What strikes me a little bit: Firefox was installed with version 3.0.15. I've updated it to 3.0.16 (!). Is it really necessary to add an extra repo to get 3.5 at least?

 

Hi zapjb

A part of your signature says it all.

Take Care
TheQuest

 

Yuppers PCLOS is coming out with a 2010 .iso in a ~couple days. Hope it plays well with my hardware. I'll just have to run the LiveCD & find out. Then if all goes well I have reresearch how to dual boot with Vista64. After repairing the MBR I fubared the Grub menu just appeared & has been working. So I'll look at EasyBCD again & try not to screw it up this time.

 

I am sure you know this as in the past you have helped me with Vbox - it was my first time.
Anyway, have you installed gcc (yum install gcc -y) and also kernel-devel (yum install kernel-devel -y) ?

I am not sure about FF - still use the version you mention (of course it's fully patched). I mainly use Opera in CentOS.

Regards.

 

It seems that I've become a bit lazy lately ...

Thanks - I also had to add make. That did it!

I'm not sure if I want to live with such old versions even if fully patched. There have been a lot of changes in FF since then.

I think I will stick with openSUSE and try Mint in VBox.

 

Sure, however I do see now that there is a 3rd. Party Repo ... if you still want to test. Or go with Opera - just get latest from their d/load site.

http://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/Repositories (Under 3rd Party Repositories)

"Mike A. Harris EL Repository - Mike A. Harris maintains an EL5 repository which contains firefox 3.5 packages for EL5, as well as a small number of other updated packages. See http://mharris.ca/mharris-yumrepo.html for current repository information and instructions.

Mike strongly recommends using the supplied unversioned repos release rpm for auto-configuring this repository:
$ wget http://mharris.ca/pub/el/mharris-el-repo-release.noarch.rpm
$ sudo rpm -Uvh mharris-el-repo-release.noarch.rpm"

Regards