I made this post back in
2004, and again in
2006 (but it was just a repost). Seeing as how there's only 3 linux guilds on Gaia, and, this post exists in the other 2, I felt obligated to repost it here, too, for nostalgic reasons. Please note that it is going on 4 years old, and thus, out of date by quite a wide margin with regards to a lot.
Gentoo: What I currently run on 50+ systems, ranging from desktops to servers to routers to embedded devices. Gentoo is the best distro I've ever used by far, and I look forward to it's continued growth and development... Source based to squeeze performance, and allowing you to totally tweak and customize your system the way you want it, you won't end up with the extra cruft that other distros force you to install.
Red Hat: 5.x was great, 6.x was good, 7.x was ok, anything later is IMO a joke. That includes Fedora, which I haven't used, but won't due to Red Hat's history, and the stories I've heard from others who have. Red Hat as far as I'm concerned is the Windows of the linux world.
Debian: Nice layout, nice ambitions, feels too dated though. I want a fresh, modern distro. Gentoo is in. Debian doesn't seem to fit the bill any more. I'm just not apt to it any longer...
Slackware: First, and still one of the best. But they're resistant to change. So many better ideas for doing things have passed them by...
Mandriva: Formerly based on Red Hat, now a hodgepodge of a Red Hat clone merged with Connectiva, it's a horrible server, and a pig of a desktop. I hated it. But a lot of novices seem to like it. It's Windows XP to Red Hat's Windows 2000.
Corel: Debian based, which was nice, with a commercial backing. Wasn't my thing, but didn't have many complaints from my limited use of it. More desktop oriented. Also no longer supported.
Lycoris: Very nice system, and one of the ones I recommend for office workstations. I can't stand using it personally, but it's a very well-laid out distro with a lot of nice features. Too limited for my liking though.
TurboLinux: Eww
Thiz Linux: Eww x 2
Knoppix: Nice. KDE, though - blah...
Knoppix STD: This is a more serious Live CD. It has many tools like packet sniffers, Windows password crackers, and many other things that may get you in trouble or save your friend's computer when he forgot his Windows XP login password.
Gnoppix: Very nice. Gnome version of Knoppix. Too many bugs compared to Knoppix though...
Puppy Linux: Shoot yourself.
SuSE: The perfect balance of linuxes for the novice. Debian like, Red Hat like, Slackware like, and yet in it's own class. This is the first distro I recommend to people usually who can't get Gentoo up and running...
Ubuntu: Based on debian, it's a modern distro built on a stable core. Still using binary packages, it sacrafices a little performance to provide speed and ease of use as well as administration. Great for beginners and advanced users alike, though not as customizable as Gentoo or other source-based builds. If you go binary, give this a try.
Slax: A very nice little Live-CD OS. comes in Server edition, standard edition, Popcorn edition, and a core version that is just the main command line. It's pretty nice, in the months that i use it as an OS. It auto-detects and configures any ethernet connection, and is ready to go from the start.
And then there's the BSDs...
OpenBSD: Ever since Theo went no-show at defcon one year, and I was sitting next to where he was supposed to be, waiting to argue over pfsync with him, I've lost respect for it. Between the recent security problems and the no-show there because their FTP server got rooted, I've kinda been dissapointed. Older OpenBSD was great. The new turn they're taking, however, concerns me.
NetBSD: It runs on anything, including the toaster. Unless you need it on the toaster, use something else though.
FreeBSD: I don't like the direction these guys have taken either. 4.x is awesome. 5.x I won't touch with a 10 foot cat5 cable.
DragonflyBSD: This is a fork of FreeBSD 4.x and is working on merging it with old school OpenBSD... I'm very much happy for these guys, and love their preview releases so far... Can't wait for this to mature a bit more...
Other things Unixy...
Solaris: 8 was nice. 9 was nicer. 10 has some mild issues. Either way, Sparc hardware + gentoo > solaris any day.
QNX: Very interesting OS. I'm not sure if I like it or hate it just yet though...
BeOS: I miss Be...
MacOS X: Nice... Unixy... Commercially supported. User Friendly. I still like my gentoo over it, but, it has potential... now if we could only get an x86 version with a 3 button mouse, and GTK instead of Cocoa/Carbon...
HPUX: Hewlet Packart made a good solid system that's widly used. Good commercial support, good on resources, not overly friendly to those new to unix or familiar with linux, however. Moderatly advanced.
DUX: Digital Unix is pretty much dead, but still should be mentioned as it was a very strong runner up till Digital was bought out by Compaq, which then merged with HP. At one time, even more popular than HPUX.
Irix: SGI makes killer hardware. Most of it finds its way to being used to process motion video, doing CGI for movies, etc. More and more of them however are switching over to running linux instead of Irix due to some issues stemming back from it's 1970s codebase. Still a good solid OS, but its age is showing in places where throwing more CPU cycles and/or RAM at peices doesn't work.
These are of course my impressions... Feel free to write your own opinions and the like as well. Anybody who wants to write a full review is more than welcome to do so... I'll prolly start at the top of the list, myself...
The only thing to keep in mind is that everybody is entitled to their opinion, so unless you have facts to back up yours, don't attack anybody else's. I encourage debates. Flames and personal attacks will not be tolerated. Further more, take things with a very large grain of salt as necessary. Remember: Opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one, and it usually stinks...
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