Ok, I have been using linux for some time now and cannot seem to find the right distro for me.
I was using Libranet 3.0 until recent news and I wanted to use a new version of Gnome. So I switch to Ubuntu and the problems begin... now I am thinking about making another switch to another distrobution to try to find the one I like.

I have used many over the years and have found the debian flavor to my liking.
If Gentoo was a little easier I might go with it.

So, is there a preferance among the loyal linux fans? A nice debian flavor of linux that does not put security where is should not be?
I don't like Suse, Fedora Core (bloat ware), Mandrake (bloat ware), or any of the other ones that are bloated.

Looking forward to "hear" the suggestions. :-)

-Jeff

According to me there are three specific things you can do.

1) Read the reviews section of LQ
http://www.linuxquestions.org/reviews/index.php

2) Read reviews at
http://distroreviews.com/index.php?view=major

3) Read reviews at
http://www.distrowatch.com/


May be then you would be able to make a choice.
I use Redhat Linux 9.0, and I plan to install Fedora Core 4 instead of using RH9 any further....

It would be best to use the distro which supports all the hardware that you have!

You'll certainly get plenty.

Kubuntu? Oh no... you want gnome... knoppix get good reviews and unparralelled hardware support? Then there's yoper, possibly the most highest performing in terms of speed - but KDE again.

However, if Ubuntu is giving you problems then you will probably have issues no matter what.

From what you've written, you want a small-ish distro which runs gnome and is based on debian? And not a lot of security by default. Pretty much rules out most of the biggies; SuSE, Mandrivia ... each have more security than ubuntu.

Ubuntu fits your specs (except for being ubuntu...)
- theres very little security (root-less and no firewall, only the normal file permissions which, frankly, you do not want to lose - the only way to get less security is to run everything as root, a-la Linspire)
- debian based: in fact it has the most impressive package range I've seen.
- uses gnome seamlessly

The only trouble I've had with it comes from the small size of the distro - I have to install additional packages to compile code and so on. OTOH: for most things I'd do, I don't need these.

Looking through your posts shows very few prblems you are having with ubuntu - mainly the printer thing (you solved this wonderfully BTW) and accessing from windows. You have solved more problems for others than you have had problems so I'm wondering what these fatal issues were?

(My remaining issue is ACPI...)

Perhaps you should try for something you can install to your exacting specifications, like slackware, or talk to the linux from scratch folk?

Well I started with Mandrake 9.1, upgraded to Mandrake 9.2, then downgraded to 9.1 again. After a !little! bit of frustration I switched to Gentoo. I haven't looked back.

Yes, Gentoo is a bit tough to install if you are new. The absolute easiest way to install Gentoo is from within another running distro. I did mine from Mandrake. You can open the install docs on the CD and copy and paste a lot of the commands. If you run into a question, just go to the forums and search. It is VERY rare that you will have a problem that has not already been dealt with by someone. I have even installed Gentoo over ssh where the rig was in another country. It worked too, just takes a little time and a prayer that my dial-up will hold up.

There are a lot of distros out there but after using Gentoo and getting pretty used to it, I wouldn't dream of switching to anything else. If you want to install something, just type in emerge <whatever> and go take a nap. It'll will be done when you get up, unless it is a small program, then you can just wait. Updates are pretty much a dream as well.

It is hard to pick one until you have used them all though. Maybe I just got lucky. I now have 4 rigs running Gentoo. I can do a basic server install in a few hours, fully up to date and ready to go. No GUI though. KDE takes a while to compile.

Gentoo can be a bit to easy sometimes. I have installed a lot of programs that just plain worked. Might be worth a good read.

You asked. Oh, KDE starts on my rig in about 7 seconds with all the eye candy turned on. It's so fast I think I see lightning come from it. That is another good thing about Gentoo. You can custom compile it to your specific rig. This likely wouldn't boot in another system unless they were very close.

Later

On bloatware: nobody is forcing you to install every single package in the distro. My FC4 system runs as nice as any of the smaller distros out there with only 1/3rd of the packages installed.

OTOH: I spent three hours online installing extra packages for ubuntu. Each time I try to do something new, it seems I missed a package.

Bloatware can be good for newbies, because you can get to do everything you want right away and you can try out different ways of doing things. All while you are new. When you are experienced enough to have a good idea of your preferences, just uninstall everything you don't use. And I do mean everything.

There's a gotcha in large distros though: they will often run many services by default ... it is a good idea to go through everything that's running and switch off the ones you don't use. For FC4, www.mjmwired.net has a bit about streamlining fedora in this and other ways. The descriptions of the daemons etc that are installed is useful even for non-RH distros. It's all linux after all.

check site like ditrowatch and read reviews use www.google.com/linux for reviews there are plenty of them, also try livecds first before you plan to install the distro.

Ubuntu is a good distro for you it is debian unstable with a very recent gnome version.
Thats very shortsighted and not true they are not bloat ware, you can choose to install the packages you want, I run a 750MHZ laptop with 256 RAM running SuSE 9.3 and it's lighting fast.

Those distro's are probably not your kind of taste, distro's are like food you like them or not. food is not dirty. it's a personal preference.
Your Welcome :-D

>> I don't like Suse, Fedora Core (bloat ware), Mandrake (bloat ware), or any of the other ones that are bloated.

Im not sure if those are quite 'bloatware', they are more bloated (functional for beginners?) than some, not nearly bloatware though.

Anyhow, I would strongly recommend slackware, but I am quite biased. I started out on Mandrake 7.0 (among others) and it was nice to get started on, but I quickly outgrew it. I went on to slack and never went back. I could not see any reason to go to another distro. Dont get me wrong I have tried others here and there over the years, mainly just for testing purposes, but they just dont stand up, IMO. Though I have never tried Debian, and its probably what I hear the best things about. I may have to throw it on VMware here sometime.

Oops.... Well I just read your post again and it appears you want Gnome (why?), well you wont be real happy out of the box with the latest version of slack then, no Gnome. The libs and lots of apps are there but not the desktop. Plenty of good lightweight managers and some other desktops are included though.

IMHO if you are a user which seeks a high degree of customization I would try a Debian. Not a Ubuntu, a plain Debian, upgrading it to SID if you feel like to have the latest stuff.

Gentoo is perhaps a bit time consuming to install, but as dalek says in his answer: You can use another distro to install Gentoo from, so you can be using the internet and doing stuff during the Gentoo installation.

Gentoo has a very broad documentation, so that even a total newbie would be able to install a basic Gentoo system following the guides and just copying and pasting commands from the webpage to the console.

Our Magnificent Handbook

There's also a chance that you could convince somebody on the Gentoo channels in irc.freenode.org to help you step by step or even through ssh. Gentoo fans are usually quite friendly folks

Gentoo has an advantage: Once it's installed maintenance and management is minimal. One of the leading ideas behind Gentoo's portage system was that a single developer would be able to manage the compilation and setup of an entire distro. It takes a bit of effort to set stuff up the first time, but chances are that you won't need to touch most of the configs in years (this is a literal statement).

And that's not all. Gentoo has one feature which makes it the most formidable of all OS in the universe... We have Larry The Cow!!!

I am not trying to offend anyone. Bloatware to me is installing the items that I don't need. Ok ok, sure you can uninstall them but why go through all that. Let me do it.

I ran Gentoo for a while and liked it. However the compiling from source took so long, I could not do it any more.

I went to debian, mainly for the famed apt-get, and am liking it. I also like having all the applications to install that I need. At the time, and stress at the time, Gentoo did not have everything. It took me about a week, on and off, to Gentoo working.

The remark about the security. Ok, correct. I don't like the sudo think in Ubuntu. However, for the individuals using Ubuntu, there are security areas in place for Cups and other places. I really love Ubuntu for several things but there is enough smaller problems to make a consideration to switch...

I like gnome for its simplitic approach. The language is simpler and it requires less fiddling with to get something going. I have not used KDE for some time though.

I have helped people over ssh before as I mentioned before. There are a few of us that will help when we can. I sort of have a issue with my lady at the moment and may have to leave at a moments notice or I would offer to help more. It is doable, just be carefull. They have root access.

This is very true. If you get through the install and have a good set of flags and a good set of USE options, you are good to go. I update mine each night and it has almost made me feel like a windoze user, it just works. Portage has made a lot of improvements lately too. That --newuse option can be very handy if you change what you are using the system for. revdep-rebuild is a good tool to make repairs too.

It is certainly something you might want to consider. I have just finished installing Gentoo for another rig. I put the hard drive in my main rig, which is a lot faster, and installed it there, complete with KDE. After I finished the install, I put the drive in the slower rig, booted the CD, installed the bootloader and booted Gentoo right up. Emerge nvidia drivers and config Xorg and it has ran ever since. This is what I like about Linux and especially Gentoo. You can't install Mandrake on one rig for another unless they are pretty much identical. I can copy my whole OS from one drive to another and never miss a beat. I have done that several times with my main rig.

You have a lot of options. Gentoo has that initial bump in the learning curve but once you get past that bump, it is a dream.

Hope that helps.

No distro installs stuff by itself, you always have the option to change the installation of packages at the distro's installation.

Linux aint windows, it takes some time to configure and finetune to fit your needs, thats with all distro's, but once it works it works. :-)
Compiling takes some time,
But the plus point is you have less dependency hell. :-)

You can enable su with one command ;-)

Good you like Gnome, Gnome is a nice Desktop Environment. :-)

Everyone seems to be just fanatically in love with gentoo... and i really like... the idea of Gentoo..

I just dislike the very long compile times... I don't know why... they don't bother me nearly as much in FreeBSD... Maybe it's because I can install a binary to use ASAP, then rebuild from source when I feel like it??

I dislike all the masked packages and whatnot... If I build my system for a Pentium 4, I shouldn't have to add the names of fonts to some obscure portage file just because the FONT was masked as ~x86... wtf?? IT'S A FONT!!!

Simple things like this have drove me off of Gentoo... I usually go back and try it again every few months... because I really would like to like it... I like portage...I like the customization, the colors, the init layouts.. etc.. *shrug*

However, when I need something that just works(that is Linux).. I usually go with Debian...testing. Stable gets too annoying with old software, and SID breaks rather frequently... testing is generally just about a perfect mix of the two.

My favorite of all is FreeBSD..then Debian.. I'm not sure what would come after that.. if I could get over that proverbial 'hump'... it would probably be Gentoo... but for now I would probably say Slackware... I have my issues with Slackware too.. such as lack of packages (yes yes... build from source.. or build your own packages... been there..done that..) aside from that I really like the layout of the Slackware stuff too... Whereas I thought I found my perfect blend in ArchLinux... Which I still like a lot.. I just ran into a few bigs that I could never get rolled out.. but it was by far the fastest distro I have used... (including Gentoo).

I think I have vered severely off topic... so I guess what I am trying to say, is that.. I would recommend Debian testing.

There have been attempts to make binary repositories, specially at distros like Mayix, I ignore how things are now.

Note that I don't always recommend Gentoo. In this case I recommended it because it was a more or less advanced user asking for a distro.
In my case, slow compilation times do not apply, as I use 3 boxes to compile the stuff with distcc and ccache.

The only reason why I'm not using FreeBSD right now is because I feel very comfortable in a Linux environment and can solve most of the problems w/o thinking too much. I am aware that FreeBSD has a way better ports system and that it's also able to use *every* pieces of existing Linux software, except the kernel and iptables.

But, as both OSses are more or less equal (each with it's pros and cons, but same overall quality) and I didn't had a urgent need to use FreeBSD I choose to use the one distro with fitted best and it happened to be Gentoo.

For me choosing a distro or an OS is a matter of what use you will give to it.
As a thumb rule (I broke this time), for advanced users I recommend a distro with binary packages if compilation should be a problem. Normally Debian Sid.

In case compilation is not a problem or the installation should be made for a network, the best solution is either Gentoo or a flavor of BSD, so that the user can take advantage of distcc and ccache, centralize a sources repository and even generate and store his/her own binaries.

IMHO the stress is not to be put in Linux vs BSD, but in binary distros vs. source based OSes.

Another distinction would be among OSses which can be constantly and seamlessly upgraded during long periods of time (Debian Sid, Gentoo, *BSDs) and those who use periodic version changes such as the normal binary Linux distros like SUSE, Mandriva, etc, where you need to wait for a new version to appear and then have to change the package manager's setting to point to the new version. In this second case sometimes upgrades can be more than trivial, while in the first case you don't need to tamper with anything to change form one version to other.

A mad idea would be making a questionnaire, like those silly tests like "What programming language are you?", but in a serious fashion, asking the user questions such as experience, type of use, number of computers, time available and such things and outputting a list of viable OSes / distros.
I'm not in the mood right now (a strong flu), but If I can remember it, I will write a distro/OS checklist for the wiki.

I like that.. and agree almost wholely.

and also... PF is is a lot better tha iptables anyways.. *hides behind desk* :P

Compile times can be a problem with Gentoo. I have it on a Compaq Proliant server with quad 200MHz CPUs. It took a while, since my CD did not support all 4 CPUs, but it did not take to long for a server install, no GUI. I would not put KDE on it though, certainly not Open Office.

If you have a fairly fast rig you can start the compile then go to bed or go home if at work. It will be there the next morning unless it has a boo boo. I find that most of those are my fault lately. I usually have something bad in my USE line or something like that.

All things considered, it depends on your availability of time and the speed of your rig. If you have the time to install Gentoo and compile all the stuff then it is really easy after that. Updates are pretty easy, a lot easier than my Mandrake experience for sure.

If you don't have a lot of time, maybe a binary based distro would be better. I just still have bad memories of my Mandrake upgrade.

Somebody has a lot to think about. This reminds me of buying cereal. They are almost all made of corn but look how many kinds there are to pick from. Linux is Linux, but there are a lot of kinds of Linux too. I like Froasted Flakes but someone else may like sugar pops.