Im quite a new linux user, ive always been the kind of person who likes to jump in the deep end of the pool, so im wondering which distro i should use. ive got debian woody here and slackware 9.1. im not sure what i should use to get me used to linux. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks

there is only one way to do this, no one here will be able to make up your mind for you. try them both out, make sure you stick with them long enough that you know exactly what you do and don't like about each distro, whether you can live with what you don't like, and exactly what it is the distro has to offer compared to your needs/wants. After years of switching distro's at the drop of a hat, I realized ( for me at least) it's alot better to stick with one distro learning the in's and out's of it, then you can pretty much do anything you want with it.

^^What he said. However, I am using Debian on my main system, and after about 2 years with Mandrake (now mandriva) I can say that I really like Debian, a lot! I'm planing on rebuilding my computer with in the next few months, and plan on sticking with Debian. apt-get damn near sealed the deal for me, that and the ability to easily mix stability with bleeding edge is nice. Debian also has tons and tons of online support, check out their web page debian.org, it has tons of documentation, also LQ.org has a fairly active/intellegent Debian croud.

Just my two cents!

Try them both, and pick the one you like best.

I'm a slacker myself. . . Slackware has rocked my world for the past three years.
Debian is cool too. . .

slackware is simimalr to freebsd i believe, not tried freebsd yet.
freebsd derives from bsd which is unix
so if you want to know unix, without the unix coding (linux is made from scratch)
the slackware is your best bet

try distrowatch.com for me Fedora Rulz and rpm system is quite easy to maintain

1. Make a list of all your computing needs.
2. Try both.
3. Figure out which one is easier/better at what you need.


Another gold rule is: Try the distro of the guru next door.

For the record: apt-get sealed the deal for me too. The thing is addictive.

sure try both an decide for you, anyway both are great distro... you are not talking a lot of risk ;-) but for debian you can try sarge from today :-) It is much easier to install than woody because it has a new installer...
Good luck!

what's the installer like then?

i can install and configure slack 9.1 & 10.1 pretty easily, its even for a beginner quite easy i think to install, but 1st time i installed i scrapped it all because it boots to the prompt, and i didnt understand the command 'startx' lmfao.

Hahaha! That exact problem set me back several years from switching to linux for at least 3 years. As a newbie to linux a command prompt without graphics is absolutely terrifying, especially since I didn't have internet as I was unable to setup a proper dual boot.

Would it kill the distro makers to print out a line that says "type startx for a gui" the first time you login ? That simple step may have saved me years of M$ frustrations.

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They're both really respectable well tested distros used by thousands. As that other guy said earlier, if you know anyone personally who's been using one of them for a while then go with whatever he uses. A friend with knowledge of the distro can save you countless hours searching in vain online for solutions

Slack and Debian are hard to choose between. They are both top of the line distros. It's really hard to pit them against each other. The difference between them.. to me, a non-uber-geek (lol), Debian is easier to handle due solely to one thing. It's package management. Debian has without a doubt, the best native package manager you could want in a binary distro (I hear it handles source just as well, but I'm too chicken to try that black magic). The con to that is that it uses a SystemV style init system. Slackware, on the other hand, feels a bit sleeker.. seems to run more agile (though I'm sure I could tweak that out with more time). The package management is a bit befuddling to me, though I was able to wade through install and such with the very good thread in the Slackware forum here I still wasn't 100% sure what I was doing at times. Slackware though, uses a BSD style init system, which is easier to get your head around than the SystemV stuff. Hard really, to choose between the two, they're both so nice . I stay with Debian for my day-to-day drudgeries, and play with Slack.. hoping to learn a bit every time.

debian comes first to me, i've found slackware a little bit faster on old computers. debian is easier to maintain than slackware but more difficult to install than slackware for most people.
None of these distros are really "hardcore" after all, but you usually learn more from them than rpm distros for example.

I may be late in throwing out an opinion on this, but Slackware, Debain and FreeBSD are my favorite operating systems for my PC. I am not much in the way of a professional network admin or anything, like tinkering with scripts, webdev, and code now and then. Othwise things like Gimp and Inkscape keep me busy.
I didn't switch completely over to *nix until I ran Slackware for about year and a half. From there I went to Debian for a more easily configured system (IMHO...milage may vary) that fit with more of a "at home pc os" feel. So far so good. They are both great. I still love Slackware to death for everything it has let me learn. It's made Debian much more friendly then I remember when I first tried it out. So now Im sitting with Debian-testing and a freebsd file server that I share with my wife. Everything has been great since then.

what's the difference between woody and that other Debian? talking about packaging system rpm rulez guyz