Linux has come a long way from being the OS of choice for geeks to be the OS of choice for all but the most incompetent of users. The most difficult thing about Linux nowadays is perhaps selecting a distribution. Of course, those who just want easy Windows replacement will just go for Ubuntu, SUSE, Mandriva and the likes but being a seasoned user, I wanted something that is tailored for my needs; bleeding edge software, speed, flexibility, simplicity and customizability. Here’s the chronicles of my Linux journey.
Red Hat – first attempt in 1998. Back then Red Hat was THE Linux. Installation failed completely due to unsupported graphic chipset in my then Acer Travelmate laptop, so I went back to Windows98.
Mandriva – took the plunge again 6 years later in 2004 when I can’t afford Microsoft’s expensive license. Installed for my then new AthlonXP 2600+ system with nVIDIA 5900XT during the ‘Mandrake-age’ (before bankruptcy and Connectiva-Lycoris acquisition). It was hailed as one of the most if not the most newbie friendly Linux. Removed due to incompatibility of RPM packages across different distros causing me to fall into the infamous ‘dependency hell’, and too much bloat.
Debian(Sid) – excellent dpkg package management. apt-get and dpkg commands were easy to figure out, all the DEB based distros followed strict packaging guidelines ensuring compatibility and one line of command got my system updated to the latest packages in Debian’s repositories. Removed because Debian was too slow to update packages to the latest versions, and Sid packages broke down on me often enough.
Knoppix – the original Debian-based LiveCD. Did not install onto disk as I found Mepis more interesting.
Mepis – one of the easiest LiveCD installation thus making it very newbie friendly. It was basically Debian with some customization. Removed for the same issues like Debian and also the LiveCD bloat that got installed together with hard disk installation. Note: the latest Mepis release is now based on Ubuntu.
Arch- kept a very simple approach and followed strictly to the KISS philosophy (Keep It Simple Stupid) and the Arch Way. It featured BSD style config scripts a la Slackware yet kept being very bleeding edge with updated stable packages in the repository sometimes in a matter of hours after release. Excellent package management in Arch’s ‘pacman’ a la Debian’s ‘apt-get’ or Gentoo’s ‘emerge’, Arch Build System (ABS) and PKGBUILDS very similar to Gentoo’s Portage and ebuilds but binary instead of compiling packages from source yet just as fast as a streamlined Gentoo system. Arch was optimized for i686 and highly customizable with base installation that allowed users to install only needed packages thus eliminating bloat and making it blazingly fast. Arch seemed to combine the best features of every other distributions yet achieved it while maintaining to be very simple. Without doubt, this became my perfect 32-bit distro.
I spent the last month or so experimenting and deciding on a 64-bit distro to use with my new AMD64 X2 3600+ and ATI X1300Pro machine and here goes.
Gentoo – my first 64-bit experiment after a bit of study and much hype. Generally viewed as having the best 64-bit support. LiveCD installation was easy enough but customizing USE flags took too much time to study, and the compile time really took a while. Took about 3 days for me just to setup the system; obviously not the distro for the impatient, yet extremely customizable. Bleeding edge packages were available but mostly in Testing or Unstable branch so users be warned; Gentoo is NOT for everyone!. Due to the time-consuming nature, I had look elsewhere.
Sabayon – basically Gentoo without all the headache of customizing USE flags. Excellent LiveCD with desktop enhancements, XGL and AIGLX supported by default. HDD installation also was just a matter of defining partitions and username. I had high hopes but the downside was stability and the bloat of software that I didn’t need. Updating the whole system to the latest in Gentoo’s repositories broke a lot of packages. In the end it became another time-consuming distro for me so again i had to remove it.
Kubuntu - It was hard not to see why people fell in love with Ubuntu. You really need to experience it yourself to appreciate the sheer user-friendliness, elegance and the ‘Ubuntu’ spirit extended even to the Ubuntu forums and wikis. There was also very little bloat from the LiveCD installation which impressively installed to my hard disk in less than 15 minutes. 32-bit packages were compatible through multilib libraries so Ubuntu actually was not a pure 64-bit distro per se. Ubuntu/Kubuntu would be my choice of distro in terms of user-friendliness but it was still a bit behind in terms of package updates even by synchronizing with Ubuntu’s snapshot or Debian Sid’s repositories which were unstable. However it definitely became the distro to recommend to my colleagues and friends who were looking for a replacement for Microsoft’s Windows.
Arch64 - 64-bit port of Arch Linux and they target to be a pure 64-bit OS with no multilib for 32-bit compatibility. A 32-bit chroot environment solved this and kept the 64-bit installation clean from excess 32-bit libraries at the same time. The idea was moving forward, sooner or later unsupported packages WILL be supported. After all what I needed from 32-bit were just Opera with Flash support and Folding@Home. Arch64 retained all the philosophies and features of the original Arch Linux, and yet offered something more.
With all that said, it seemed that I really can’t find anything more fitting for myself than Arch and Arch64 Linuxes; they effectively ended my distro hunting days. Kubuntu came close but it was more of a distro for newbies or those who do not want to spend time tinkering with configurations. Many people argued that Linux is just not ready for desktop computing, and 64-bit computing will not be mainstream any time soon but for me, Linux has been ready for desktop since years ago, and 64-bit is already mainstream!
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