Linux: which penguin for you

[Scimmia]

Personally, Slackware or Debian would be my choice. I like having more control over my system. Everyone is talking about certain things being out of date, or not having packages available, but the great thing with Linux is that you can just grab the latest source from the author and compile it yourself!

[j6ppc]

Fedora for laptop/workstation. Centos for servers.
YMMV.

[ky toker]

Funny story guys/gals.

I was running Smoothwall on a computer I that setup to create my own subnetwork to see how it worked. Well, ya' know sometimes things just happen and sometimes that thing is the company network going haywire and everyone losing their connection to the network. It was nuts. The internet, gone - Our database connection, gone - Mail server, yep, gone. What the hell was going on? Oops, did I have the DHCP enabled on Smoothwall while still connected to the network. I looked at that box and quickly pulled the connection, got everything reset and created my own cover-up operation. I fixed the issue as usual.

[volfan]

SuSe, Ubuntu, and Knoppix.

Knoppix is great when I need to run Kismet on a production windows machine.
Ubuntu is a great desktop alternative.
SuSe works great as an all-around great machine for me though.

scottie

[tech-ninja]

Originally Posted by ky toker

Funny story guys/gals.

I was running Smoothwall on a computer I that setup to create my own subnetwork to see how it worked. Well, ya' know sometimes things just happen and sometimes that thing is the company network going haywire and everyone losing their connection to the network. It was nuts. The internet, gone - Our database connection, gone - Mail server, yep, gone. What the hell was going on? Oops, did I have the DHCP enabled on Smoothwall while still connected to the network. I looked at that box and quickly pulled the connection, got everything reset and created my own cover-up operation. I fixed the issue as usual.

We had a guy do that at my office. Funny.

I have used Red Hat and Suse, but right now I am using Ubuntu on the desktop and server. Lovin' it.

[SeanGAR]

I've tried most of the distros mentioned and would add PCLinuxOS 2007 for consideration, which is currently my favorite Linux flavor for desktop.

Right now, I dual boot with XP on my work Dell D620 and have it installed clean on a Dell D400 lappy and AMD 3800+/ATI AIW 9600 desktop at work. The strengths are speed, reliability, clean layout, updated packages, a nice package manager, and a very friendly and helpful forum.

I like Ubuntu a lot, but it runs slow on my hardware. Linux Mint is a worthy spinoff from Ubuntu which I like a bit better than its source.

PCLOS runs fine even on an old Thinkpad Pentium III 300 with 192K RAM. Suse & Ubuntu laughed at me when I tried to install.

The PCLOS live disk boots perfectly on my Dell lappys and after a software update and I download drivers for my video card, Beryl works great. Nothing but great luck on 3 laptops and several desktops with this distro. Only problem I had is the kernel in the PCLOS 2007 is incompatible with AMD K62 processors and Pentium II and older.

[sonick]

Originally Posted by ky toker

Funny story guys/gals.

I was running Smoothwall on a computer I that setup to create my own subnetwork to see how it worked. Well, ya' know sometimes things just happen and sometimes that thing is the company network going haywire and everyone losing their connection to the network. It was nuts. The internet, gone - Our database connection, gone - Mail server, yep, gone. What the hell was going on? Oops, did I have the DHCP enabled on Smoothwall while still connected to the network. I looked at that box and quickly pulled the connection, got everything reset and created my own cover-up operation. I fixed the issue as usual.

Sounds like it's time to build out your Layer2 security scheme.....

[ky toker]

Originally Posted by tech-ninja

We had a guy do that at my office. Funny.

I had a good time with that one. It actually happened several years ago and it was one big brain-fart.

Originally Posted by SeanGar

I've tried most of the distros mentioned and would add PCLinuxOS 2007 for consideration, which is currently my favorite Linux flavor for desktop.

Sean, great to see you man. I will definitely check that one out. One of the great things about Linux is that you can find a distro for a new or an antiquated machine.

Sounds like it's time to build out your Layer2 security scheme.....

Yeah! Or pay attention to which hub I'm plugging into.

[tiptone]

Originally Posted by SeanGAR

I like Ubuntu a lot, but it runs slow on my hardware. Linux Mint is a worthy spinoff from Ubuntu which I like a bit better than its source.

The default Ubuntu install loads a lot of kernel modules by default (so that "everything just works") which can slow the system unless you've got a fair amount of RAM. It's easy enough to look and and see what's loaded that you're not, or not going to, need and keep them from being loaded at boot. But it's also just as easy to find a distro that just does what you want, and it sounds like you have. That's what makes Linux so great.