THIS might explain my problems of the past two weeks . . tried to install RedHat 7.2 on my system, a VIA MVP3 based motherboard with an AMD K6-2+ 450 chip. Each time I would get some different sort of problem! A few times even the installation exited abnormally. A dozen reinstalls, with different malfunction symptoms each time.

I'm sort of at a loss now. I know Mandrake 8.1 worked fine for me, though it "recognized yet didn't recognize" my ES1370 soundcard, and thus didn't work with it.

Also I compared with RH 6.2, which also barfed on me. BUT . . what the heck exists in Mandrake 8.1 and RedHat 7.x that makes my typcial installs around 600+ MB, whereas 6.2 installed in only 270MB.

(by the way, all my Linux experience is with downloaded ISO images)

In any case, I'd like a distro that works, and that will play nice with RPMs. I'm actually probably going to wait for Mandrake 8.2 which should be coming out soon. Ok, well, I suppose RPMs aren't totally necessary, but they'd be nice. But I don't know which distros other than RH and Mandrake use 'em.

BUT . . I don't at all plan to use GNOME or KDE . . I'd like something that doesn't take over 500MB of space when I go unchecking most of the optional packages. My GUI use will be with FVWM2, and sure, I'd like some neat GUI items for configuration of various things. I suppose I could learn the old-fashioned way, but I'd like to start a bit easy at least.... and then figure out why things work.

Ah well . . I don't know really where to go at this point. I suppose I can start with Mandrake 8.2 when it comes out and just start ripping out things that I don't need.

But any and all advice is of course appreciated.

Maybe a 1-or-2 line summary of each of the distros? Particularly starting with what kernel version it uses. I just went to the Slackware site, and it uses kernel 2.2.x . . any disadvantage to that over one with a 2.4.x kernel?

Ack . . too much info to find . . . head going to explode . . .

Try SuSE! Its better than mandrake in pretty much allways!

SuSE PROFESSIONAL 7.3 is the way to go!

omg i cant believe this post is still alive! this may turn out to be THE most popular post on these boards.

Then you should feel grateful cause you are probably the only one.

You gotta love this thread !!! Where else are you going to get so many views that you will never settle on a flavor of linux. To me I thought that they were pretty much the same. So, you have trouble installing Mandrake on this box run to the next box and it will go great. But this box won't install RedHat. So Debian uses /etc/init.d/ and RedHat uses /etc/rc.d/init.d/ . They are still the same files. They still open up the same way. And you still write them the same way. (Unless someone want's to argue the point. hehe) .

I personally started out on Mandrake 5 (woah ! as the flood of nostalgia fills his brain) . Then started working in the field and work uses RedHat, exclusively. Although, i've been on Debian, OpenBSD, and IRIX. Maybe a couple of others. Don't have to much of a problem moving around in any of them.

Say what you will, in the end it doesn't really matter.

Actually, you can count me in as well becuase i haven't had a crash in a while. I think if you have a quality made setup you shouldn't have prob's. An overheating cpu can is a cause or also incorrectly installed drivers can be another cause, been there done that. I used to have a computer that BSOD'ed every 10 minutes or so running Windows 98 i long time ago using a PCchips mobo...go figure!

I don't know what your talking about but a windows is alot easyer to fix then Linux

most of the time I cant find the info I need to fix a Linux system and have to just reload it

:smash:

i use slackware although im having friggin problems gettin it to connect through pppoe... and getting my XP to mount other then that i like it!!

If I had to use one of the 2 main choices in this thread it would be RedHat which has an upcoming release that I feel any Mandrake user will have to take a look at, I tried the beta but it isn't mainstream ready yet...hence beta.

What is your problem cerberus about mounting ntfs, have you compiled ntfs support into the kernel and tried:

I've done my fair share of technical support and there are many people who think they are running Office 97 as their OS...

Yeah, Windows is easier to fix, scandisk, defrag or reformat, install.. finished. It was actually an opinion stated as I find it easier to fix Linux boxes than Windows due to the freedom and control with Linux...

Was the first thing to make me smile today

its so true too.

I don't mean to flame, but why does anyone use RedHat on a desktop? I've used several versions from 6.0 up to 7.2, and it just doesn't compare to any of the other major distros.

It's buggy on AMD, it uses a crappy compiler which doesn't compile half the source available for Linux systems, and its package management is appalling.

edit - turns out someone has been spreading FUD. After using RedHat 7.3, someone pointed out to me that the reason some things compile on gcc 2.95 and not 2.96 is because 2.96 is much stricter with correct code syntax. See here. I still think RedHat could do with spending some time on package management, but up2date is better than I thought it was.

Mandrake does the whole newbie thing, SuSE does the whole business/productivity thing, Slackware/Gentoo/LFS etc do the geek thing, Debian does the Libertarian and also plain lazy thing.

Where does RedHat fit in on the desktop?

edit - probably for people who just want a stable system, don't mind editing code, and aren't completely ideologically attached to the FSF.

Just my 2 pence Sterling.

edit - and now I'm loving Valhalla (no scary socialist Debian users)

Maybe that is why more businesses use it as its used as Server and not just desktop. But me personally, I stopped trying after 7.1, never liked any Redhat since 6.2 which was the best version IMHO they have put out to date.

I think you all waste your time with those too distros . .

anyway its your pc . . and your time . .

SLACKWARE rulez..