ChoosingTheDistro

From OSLUG Wiki

New to Linux? Wondering what those distro things are?

Linux distributions are comprised of the Linux operating system (kernel) plus application software, configuration utilities and perhaps management tools. Various different distributions exist that are maintained by companies or by community effort. What set of software you have availiable as well as what utilities exist for you to configure your system with will vary from distro to distro. Also, the difficulty of setting up different distros can vary tremendously. While some are user-friendly and kind to beginners, other are geared towards "power-users" who want the most out of Linux.

Here is a brief alphabetical list of some of the pros and cons of the more popular distros, modified from The DistroWatch Top Ten.

Debian GNU/Linux:

• Pros: 100% free, excellent web site and community resources, well-tested, painless software installation with apt-get
• Cons: Archaic installer, the stable version tends to be out-dated

Fedora Core:

• Pros: Widely used, excellent community support, lots of innovation
• Cons: Limited product life-span of the free edition, poor multimedia support, concerns over the Red Hat to Fedora transition

Gentoo Linux:

• Pros: Painless installation of individual software packages, highly up-to-date, superb documentation, great user community, the "geek feeling" of building a distribution tailored to user's needs
• Cons: Long and tedious system installation (New in the 2005.1 release, there's an alpha version of a GUI installer.), occasional instability and risk of breakdown.

Knoppix (a "Live CD" distro):

• Pros: Excellent hardware auto-detection, runs directly from CD without hard disk installation, can be used as a recovery tool
• Cons: Low speed and performance if run directly from the CD

Mandrake:

• Pros: User-friendly, graphical configuration utilities, enormous community support, NTFS partition resizing
• Cons: Some releases are buggy, the releases are initially made available to Mandrakeclub members only

Slackware Linux:

• Pros: Highly stable and bug-free, strong adherence to UNIX principles
• Cons: All configuration is done by editing text files, limited hardware auto-detection

SUSE LINUX:

• Pros: Professional attention to detail, easy-to-use YAST configuration tools
• Cons: Only available in parts of the world from software resellers or via FTP install (usually 1 - 3 months after release)

Ubuntu Linux:

• Pros: Great community of developers and users; fixed release schedule and support period; upgrade path from stable Debian provided; Universe/Multiverse repositories contain most free software available.
• Cons: Default multimedia settings don't allow use of many popular file types (mp3 for instance); Many popular packages not included in default install

Xandros Desktop:

• Pros: Designed for beginners, works out of the box, excellent file manager, CD-burning tools, and other useful utilities.
• Cons: Includes proprietary components, which prevents re-distribution (not free)