moving up to the big leagues...

Ok, so I've been using Ubuntu for a while now, and have been thinking about moving to arch or slackware. What should I move to? Should I just keep ubuntu?

 

oh snap moving up! i would say gentoo all the way

personally ive only tried ubuntu (and all its variants), fedora, and gentoo so i haven't been around that much, but basically from my experience (also with some other peoples' setups like mandriva and slack) i would go with either ubuntu (no work) or gentoo (better not be lazy, do everything yourself)

get some input from people who have used arch or slack, i know there are some here. also maybe openSUSE? anyways try them out, my vote goes to gentoo.

 

If you're deciding between Arch and Slackware as your main system, I would choose Arch. They are similar in responsiveness and ease of configuration due to their philosophy of never hiding anything from the user, but Arch makes things easier by having an awesome package manager (pacman). Also, Arch is bleeding-edge and always rolls the latest (stable) kernel.

If you go with Slackware on the other hand, expect to do EVERYTHING yourself, including dependency resolutions. (In that regard, Slackware could be considered more "hardcore" than Gentoo.) There are some great advantages for going with Slackware, but unless you have a very clear idea of how you want your system to be and what applications you want, and are capable of hunting down dependencies, I'd go with Arch.

Either way, I highly recommend to everyone who is at this stage to read both the Arch Beginner's Guide and the Slackbook, or at least keep them in mind for reference.

I use Arch personally, and have nothing but praise for it. I started out with Ubuntu, but was somehow unsatisfied and started distro hopping. I tried Slackware for a few days, but failed miserably. Next thing I tried was Arch and so far have not turned back.

I might give Slackware another shot... now that I've learned more from Arch, I might do a better job this time round.

*EDIT*
I forgot to add that one of the major advantages of Arch is that it is a rolling release distro, which means that no matter what version of Arch you start out with, you only need do a full system upgrade and you will be kicked up to the latest version. That way, you don't have to worry about version the way you would do with Slackware or Ubuntu (or Windows), those things are taken care of smoothly and transparently.

 

Curious about this. Would something complicated like an upgrade from KDE 3.x to KDE 4.x also be taken care of smoothly? I.e. the next time I boot my machine I get into KDE 4, without any problems? Could you shed any light on this?

 

Probably not.... I was talking mainly about the Arch core system itself. KDE is a separate application and smoothness of transition would depend more on actions taken by the KDE development team, than the Arch package maintainers.

However, it is very easy in Arch to completely uninstall even a major X package like KDE, much easier than it would be with, say, Kubuntu. Arch is a text-based distro, so the GUI environment is held completely separate and can be modified very easily.

 

well i've decided to go with arch, so i will be printing the guide soon. I will read it, study it, and then on a weekend, I will go for it!...woo!

 

Wooh!
Make sure to have another internet connected computer lol...

 

Nooo, go for Gentoo. Installing precompiled packages is no fun

 

I am in the same boat as you. I am either going for debian SID or Gentoo stage 2 install. I agree with srunni!

 

Why stage 2?

 

haha stage 2! more hardcore

i was seriously thinking about doing stage 1 (or stage 1/3, theres a howto on that) just cuz it would be a challenge and youd really have to know (/learn) about your computer...

but as its the school season now i dont have much time so ill be doing another stage 3

 

Good question. I am not sure yet. I read an article where a noob to Gentoo said that he started with Stage 2 and it made it a lot easier for him. The Guide says that it describes a stage 3. Maybe I should start with stage 1

Don't know, will have to see when I get into this project. I would like to ask you for any advice, but I don't want to change the topic of this thread too much.

 

I'm also at the same boat.

Have been looking for distros, i feel like going for Gentoo once. It is really no fun to keep installing precompiled packages after some time... The single thing that makes me go a step back is that it might take a good while if i keep compiling everything...

Though, i expect to learn alot more about Linux systems while setting up a more hardcore distro, thats what moves me to it.

 

That's old information, there aren't any more Gentoo produced stage 2 tarballs. Gentoo recommends doing stage 3 installs, and that's what documented in the normal Gentoo install (GUI or command line). There are stage 1 tarballs that one can install, and stage 1 documentation that exists, but only because some people insist on installing Gentoo that way. My advice is that doing a stage 3 install is a great way to learn Gentoo and Linux without having to resort to a stage 1 install.

Good Luck..

 

Arch/Slackware.

 

Yes, the gentoo install manual seems to be based on a stage 3 install. If that is what gentoo recommends then I guess I will try a stage 3. Thanks for your advice. Why did Stage 1 and 2 drop out of favor? Do they not recommend it any more? Am I going to miss out not knowing how to do a stage 1 or 2 install?

I have yet to get a chance to read the manual, but I want to do that first before I attempt an install. This should be a fun little project.

 

From Gentoo's FAQ on stage1 and stage2 installs;

So the release team still goes through the stage1 through stage2 system building process (bootstrapping), to produce the stage3 tarballs for users installations, but there's really little benefit for users to do so. By building the system from scratch you wouldn't see much performance difference, and the process is handled by the /usr/portage/scripts/bootstrap.sh script, so there's little to learn by going through it. If you really wanted to, you could bootstrap your Gentoo configuration by performing a stage3 installation and then before you configure the kernel, run the bootstrap.sh script and then do an emerge -e system, but I wouldn't recommend it being worth the time.

Your time is MUCH better spent reading through the install handbook. If you can afford to do so, it's good to have it printed out, and if possible, have another computer with web access close by in case you need to look up something. It's a pain to look something up with the text based browsers, while you're doing the install.

Good Luck..

 

if youre going to install gentoo i would actually recommend doing it inside another, already installed, distro. i now always install gentoo inside ubuntu so i can still work and browse internets and everything while installing. after youre done you can overwrite ubuntu and its all good thats what ill be doing on this laptop when i get the time...

 

Thanks for the advice jas. I will take your advice and the Gentoo team recommends the same thing. So if I go Gentoo I will go Stage 3. I have another computer up and running with Kubuntu 8.04 x32 and an internet connection, so if I need to look anything up I will be fine. I also have the manual printed out. I am planning on doing the 64 bit version. Is that harder to go through than the 32 bit version? I am thinking no. I really want to do a 64 bit version since I have 64 bit Kubuntu already on my laptop and basically everything works, so i know it is possible. Plus I have 4GB of ram and a T9300 Core 2 Duo that I want to make use of.

Thanks again.

+ rep

 

Good for you. I installed 64 bit once, a long time ago, and it was a lot more problematical back then, then it is now. Nowadays, you shouldn't really experience any issues. I'll be honest with you, I just upgraded both of my Asus Laptops with new HDs, at the same time that I got a new EeePC, and I was sorely tempted to go 64 bit, as I was doing fresh installs of Gentoo on all three at about the same time. If I didn't have the process for installing 32 bit almost committed to memory by now, I probably would have installed 64 bit. (I really wanted the systems up as quickly as I could get them.) I'll probably install 64 bit on them one at a time, at some point in the future. Anyway you should have the perfect environment for doing your install, and if you get stuck you can ask on the Gentoo forums, or here.

Good Luck..

 

After just 1 year of Ubuntu experience, I jumped to Arch, and I have to say, it's pretty successful. There are some niggles that have to be sorted out on my T61p like the fact that when I try to turn on the wireless, my bluetooth lights up instead, and I have no wireless response.

It's pretty fast too. But if you're the kind of person that would rather have a system that just works out of the box, Ubuntu is a very solid choice. But the advantages of the rolling release, yaourt, and it's speed can't be denied.

 

( source)

 

Hello dude106,

I have tried various distro's since '97. i.e. http://distrowatch.com
Slack was my very first distro... It was a very good learning experience, but it was so long ago.
I have used Ubuntu also, but my interest was the number of packages that were available. If you enjoyed Ubuntu. I would suggest 'migrating' to Debian.

 

Debian Etch (the current stable version) is your choice if your main concern is stability, you get the best tested packages ever - but at the price of outdated packages, which might cause some issues with notebooks. Based on kernel 2.6.18, it will waste much energy as the kernel isn't tickless yet and therefore tends to keep the CPU active for a longer time than needed.

If you want a system that is stable enough for everyday use, Debian Lenny is the best choice. It has kernel version 2.6.26 already and will get 2.6.27 as soon as it's final - and "testing" still means the software already left the "unstable" branch, so it should run fine.

The previously mentioned Arch or Gentoo take the opposite approach - their aim is to provide the newest packages which are reasonable to run, which is often referred to as "bleeding-edge". Sticking with their stable repositories, you're still getting a system with software that reaches at least a certain level of stability. For example, both of the two are considering the RCs of the 2.6.27 kernel as still being unstable.

 

Debian definitely has it's advantages. It has it's own way of doing things, which is to say automagic configuration works very well most of the time. That's also it's downside for some of us, if you don't follow the Debian way, things tend to break.

With Arch, a lot of things (increasingly so) function out of the box. Some things don't, but Arch doesn't try to meddle and leaves you to configure things as upstream developers intend.

Someone with years of experience with Debian knows Debian. The same goes for Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse, and so on. Someone with years of experience with Arch, Slackware, or Gentoo knows GNU/Linux.

 

I used to be one of those hardcore Linux fans who will spend hours compiling custom kernels to get it the way I want, but since the past few releases of Ubuntu, I've pretty much kept myself to that (and Red Hat to a certain extent). I believe that ease of setting up is definitely the way to go ahead and can't really see the benefit of torturing oneself trying to get a decent install. This is where the old school distros such as Gentoo has continually failed when compared to Ubuntu, Suse, Windows, etc.

With Ubuntu, you get most things working out of the box and if you want to streamline your installation, then remove whatever you don't need. Starting from scratch is just too painful, but if it's for the learning experience, maybe it could be useful if you're after a sysadmin role. Otherwise, there's really better things to do than installing painful distros. I just had to cringe everytime someone tries to force a Gentoo or vanilla Debian onto a freshman's laptop at my college's installfest. It almost always blows up and give the freshers a very poor impression of the platform when I could show them how beautiful Linux actually works when it's assembled properly through Ubuntu.

 

Well let me give you little of my recent experience so far...

I played with Gentoo for a bit and really liked it, but it was way to time consuming for me at the current time. I have a little bit of free time but not an enormous amount like I used to. Gentoo's install handbook is just excellent. It is very verbose and I really like the way it is layed out. I had problems with my Ethernet connection and the Gentoo forums were extremely helpful in helping me resolve my problem. The issue with the ethernet card was my fault not Gentoo's; I had not configured my router properly. But overall I found that Gentoo had a little bit more time requirement than I could handle right now. I am confident though that with the forums, a careful reading of the docs and a desire to learn it is doable.

So I decided to give Debian a spin, and all I can say is WOW! I love plain debian even more than Ubuntu/Kubuntu. It fit exactly what I was looking for. I installed etch and quickly upgraded to sid(unstable) and have it up on my laptop right now working great. In fact I have Sid x64 running on my machine with basically everything working. I am able to watch movies, listen to music and am not having any problems with Adobe's flash plugin. I wanted a distro where I could customize it a bit and choose the packages that I wanted to install rather than have a bunch of them installed by default. It took me a little reading to figure out some stuff, but I didn't have to do anything really crazy or hack anything. I was just unaware of stuff so I had to read. I was able to also run a streamlined gnome environment and install the pieces I wanted. The whole install is very fast and I love the apt-get non gui package management. I have a lot of experience with Unix in general from my past but I have forgotten so much from lack of usage. Debian is allowing me to remember again wile having a system up and running quickly. Thats the main thing I like about it. I like Debian so much that I will probably install etch on my desktop and replace Kubuntu that has been on it for the past 3+ years. I still like Ubuntu(and variants) very much and would still recommend it over any other distro for people who are using Linux for the first time. That way you are over the fear factor(i.e. not scared away from Linux)and when you get more experienced then you can move to something more techie oriented.


BTW - the 2.6.26 kernel I am using allows my little Wifi light on my T61p to blink on data transfers by default! No modifications required as was the case just recently