What distribution will *YOU* switch to?

devsk · Posted: Sun Nov 05, 2006 10:00 pm Post subject:

I think if I ever leave gentoo, I would go with nexenta. It uses solaris kernel and ubuntu userland. It boots in 20 seconds inside a VMWare VM, and is plenty fast. ZFS is something really to look forward to. I was really impressed with it when I booted it under VMWare some time back. Only problem is that its just starting and it will take a while to get mature though.

Zuu · n00b Joined: 22 Feb 2005 Posts: 25 Location: /home/sweden

Recently left for Debian, still got Gentoo left on my server. Reason: Gentoo forced to much things on me.

What I miss most, though it might be that I haven't adjusted yet, is that terminal output from apt-get etc is not color coded. It has actually worse readability than emerge with out colors. Then again, I've just started my adjusting to Debian (a week ago).

Also I really miss the good documenation of gentoo. With the wiki, this forum etc. Sure, Debians documentation/forum is not void, but not as nice as Gentoos.

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Karlhungus · Posted: Sun Nov 05, 2006 11:22 pm Post subject:

I've had a gentoo myth box that's been in "production" for around 2 years. I use it my gf uses it, when it goes down it's an awful pain in the ass. However, I'm obsessive, having lots of updates in my world sync bugs the hell out of me. This makes me frequently (unnecessarily) update, this causes problems. I'm my own worst enemy. If i was to switch it'd probably be to ubuntu - i've got xubuntu on a laptop and it's quite nice (it just works). For me it's the forums that make gentoo excellent.

massysett · Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 1:21 am Post subject:

Headrush · Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 1:22 am Post subject:

warrens · Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 2:00 am Post subject:

If I had to switch from Gentoo I would most likely go back to Slackware. However, as long as Gentoo works as well as it has for me I have no plans of leaving anytime soon. What I have found though is that I have less problems running a purely ~x86 than I have had with running x86 stable. Why that is I don't know, it is just the way it works for me. Gentoo is still the best Linux available;
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TJNII · l33t Joined: 09 Nov 2003 Posts: 636 Location: for(;;);

bertaboy · Guru Joined: 05 Nov 2004 Posts: 598

I would have said Slackware, since that was the first distro that I used extensively. But then Pat decided to drop Gnome, and I didn't like Dropline terribly, as it tainted the system more than I cared. That, and I had to manually compile mplayer, which was/is such a common app that it should've been part of their package database.

Now, I'd probably try out SuSE, Debian, or Ubuntu, but more likely Debian or SuSE. I've been leery of Fedora Core ever since it messed up my partition table so that Partition Magic and Drive Image couldn't read anything any more, and Yast and apt have good reputations.
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d_adams · Apprentice Joined: 20 Oct 2003 Posts: 223

I haven't tried any of the latest versions of other linux distros lately. The last one was Ubuntu about 1 1/2 years ago. I've been pretty happy with Gentoo in the long run and have even put it on a few other people's machines and now maintain them as well. Occasionally I run into a pretty big problem with the maintained machines, but I've been able to deal with all of them so far, due to the forums and documentation. Very good support available here makes Gentoo worthwile. I wish the search worked a little better on the forums, but I'm not complaining.

I have donated to Gentoo to support all the good work I've seen since I started using it. I have it installed on 3 of my 8 computers, and the ratio is slowly climbing. If I could just get the digital camera to work like it does in winxp, I'd switch my wife's pc back to Gentoo today.
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The Mad Mahdi · Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 1:30 pm Post subject:

Personally I'd stay away from "official" versions of SUSE, as the latest moves by Novell (in conjunction with Microsoft) are clearly devoted to driving a huge wedge between sections of the Linux user community. I'd also stay away from openSUSE for the moment, unless and until it becomes clear that openSUSE has been wrested safely far enough away from Novell that it isn't going to be tainted by any of the stuff MS and Novell have agreed on. I'm not the only one giving out this advice, either.

garlik42 · Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 2:38 pm Post subject:

While gentoo has had it's ups and downs, and it's "political" problems, it has everything I need in a distrobution. It has a great learning tool, which is my primary use for linux. I break my box, then I fix it. I have it running on 3 different architectures (xbox, x86 and emt-64) and have used it on alpha and sparc. This is the kind of thing I look for.

As far as removing packages, well, I didn't use xmms so it doesn't bother me. If it did, I would just maintain it myself I guess that's what I have done in the past, if something wasn't supported by portage (did this with mono for a while).

At any rate, the only other distro I use regularly, is ubuntu, because it's easy to install, and it's great for n00bs.

I don't think gentoo is a n00b friendly distro, it is one of the harder distro's to maintain, and that's my reason for using it. I have been using it since the very begining, and fixing broken baselayouts, blocks and other portage problems has been a great learning experience for me.

What I don't like, is how many of the old timers have left due to the "political" climate. This forum used to be a much friendlier place than it can be now.

Anyway, "I'd rather fight than switch" (to quote an old cigarette add ....)
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The Mad Mahdi · Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 3:00 pm Post subject:

Nevertheless, I think a lot of the "Gentoo is dead" stuff is overblown, don't you? If Linux survives the MS/Novell onslaught, then I think Gentoo will too.

And if not there's always Gentoo/BSD!

vipernicus · Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 3:09 pm Post subject:

The Mad Mahdi · Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 3:15 pm Post subject:

I think Gentoo is noob-friendly too, but I think a lot of that comes down to the top-notch quality of the documentation. I think you'd be hard-pressed to say which of the Gentoo and FreeBSD documentation is better.

Unlucky_Alf · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 02 Feb 2003 Posts: 92

I would probably leave because poor documentation of USE-flags. It's very frustrating compile something many times with diffrent flags and try to guess what makes thigs work the way you like.

I think Debian would be the way to go but I guess I'll stick with Gentoo. If I ever have a spare hd then I'll install Solaris as a third OS (my 1st so is Gentoo and 2nd is XP).

geniux · Veteran Joined: 19 Feb 2004 Posts: 1400 Location: /home

Nick C · Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 4:33 pm Post subject:

baaann · Guru Joined: 23 Jan 2006 Posts: 418 Location: uk

acid7711 · n00b Joined: 07 Dec 2005 Posts: 55 Location: Chicago

Although I'll never switch from Gentoo, if it were to suddenly stop existing, I'd switch to Arch. I used it for a while between Gentoo installs, and I loved it.

bluedevils · Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 6:15 pm Post subject:

If I was forced to leave gentoo, I would use kubuntu for desktop and probably slackware as my sandbox. I don't feel any one distro could replace gentoo for me. I would have chosen freebsd, but in the short time that I used it, I didn't figure out a way to fire and forget using ports. Gentoo I can emerge world and just let it run. Freebsd always stopped to ask me config questions for many of the ports.

dmpogo · Advocate Joined: 02 Sep 2004 Posts: 2032 Location: Canada

Junglist · n00b Joined: 28 Sep 2006 Posts: 4

kashani · Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 8:43 pm Post subject: