Help me pick my Linux Distro. (Confused @ options)

well, me being a linux noobert, not sure what you should go with, but ive been trying to install gentoo with no luck so far. good luck with what ever you pick.

Ubuntu Dapper. the most stable distro i've ever used. recognizes EVERYTHING (well except now sound, but i havent worked on that much). plus, if you're interested in cool desktops, you can install XGL/Compiz for a totally sweet totally 3D desktop. Package manager (apt-get) is sweet. to get a program you "apt-get install whateverTheHellYouWant" and you have it and everything it depends on. quickly too. AND its a really easy install, just pop the disk in and answer a few questions and it sets it up for you.

Gentoo is def not a noob distro, its one of the hardest ones out there. its good to mess with it to learn about the system, but hard to get it working right and maintain it unless you know what you're doing

If you plan to keep it, use you common sense really. Like 8-10gb is good, imo. That way you can test a lot of things, and anything bigger you can just store on a partition shared with Windows (what would be drive D: in windows).

on swap, i always use 1gb.

gentoo is not as difficult as people make it out to be, that is if you're willing to work with it. i DO admit that i have failed with gentoo about 5 or 6 times. However, some distros (even FEDORA of all things) to be more difficult than gentoo.

the benefits of gentoo (and sourcemage for that reason) is that everything is from source, so its built to spec how you want it, and runs mighty fast if you do it right. the downside, it may take hours to install a program.

Dapper is cool, used it for a while, and although Ubuntu is getting better about it, they are still pretty damn slow compared to some other stuff out there.

Fedora, Suse, and Mandrake (though i use 2005LE on my desktop) are in my dog house. Fedora and Suse are just HORRIBLE beyond all belief.

Recently I've picked up ARCH and i must say i like it. the base install is rather simple, and its just that, a BASE install. from there you connect to the net, fireup packman, and install the system of your dreams. its binary, yet is still proven itself to be as fast as gentoo in most cases. very worth checking out in my opinion (as long as you're not planning to use E17 as your desktop)

Hmm whats the problem with e17 on Arch?

Anyways my opinion? If you want to truly learn some things and dig in Gentoo. Not an easy distro, but you learn a lot(ABF you already knew a fair amount going into it from other distros I would imagine and is VERY easily customized to whatever you need. But it does require extra work to get it to the point of tweaked to your heart's content.

If you dont have time, or inclination, to put in the extra effort just so you can run your programs aand do what you really want, or need, to do, go with Ubuntu. Very good distro, I have tested at various points the past several releases(Meaning Hoary Breezy and Dapper) and have been pleased all around, one of the best distros for a basic setup and go approach without being TOO bloated.

Seablade

My new desktop is Myah 2.0 (Slack based) . I always liked Slack but setup was a bit of a pain. Tried oh so many distro's. KDE is my choice for window manager. So here is my Personal rankings.
1) Myahos (SlackWare)
2) Fox Desktop Pro (Fedora)
3) PCLinuxOS (Mandrake)
3) Kanotix (Debian)
3) Linspire 5.0 (Debian) * you can get it for free
I would not hessitate to recomend any of these. But Myah has almost eveything ready to go office,multimedia etc. Oh did I mention GAMES

Sorry guys but just can't get in to any buntu , my personal experience has been too buggy and bland for me.

I'll vote for Slackware (slax is based on Slackware) if you're willing to put in some effort, but want to have a working system quickly and easily. Slackware installs fast and easy, but requires effort and learning to properly configure it. It's not for the faint of heart, but it works well out of the box, and gives you a LOT of control to set things up the way you like them after the install.

I've also found the Slackware community to be very helpful and friendly IF you try to find the answer on your own. They dont like people who want to be spoonfed a cook-book answer.

So many choices. The beauty of Linux!

I think the system and your ability level are what determines the distro you should use.

If you're willing to start on a fairly modern machine and don't have a lot of bizarre, outlandish hardware requirements, try Ubuntu (or rather, try it in two weeks, when Dapper hits final release). It's also a great place to learn about how Linux works, and the community is awesome. There are no stupid questions in the Ubuntu forums.

Once you have a feel for Linux, you can start looking at other distributions -- ones more suitable to your hardware. For example, if you use a Pentium-III machine and have a steady grasp of Linux, try Arch. It can do amazing things for 1Ghz-and-below machines. The learning curve is steep in Arch, but quite rewarding.

If you have a pre-P-III machine -- particularly a laptop -- try Slackware. I say that because in my experience it handles PCMCIA ports better on early hardware. There's something about the 2.6+ kernels that abandons P2 machines and below.

Less than that, and you're working with Damn Small Linux (I've never tried Puppy Linux), which is a fantastic distro for an early or very lightweight machine. You can do things with DSL that were never intended for machines of that era -- such as surfing the Internet with a 486.

I've tried a few others ... Zenwalk was nice, but not particularly attractive. Kororaa was nifty until the Ubuntu crowd simplified XGL. Fedora Core 5 was very blue and very easy to set up, but seemed a bit heavy (plus I prefer Debian). Knoppix was quirky for me. And PC-BSD (since we're on the subject) just wouldn't work for me.

And Gentoo? I haven't gotten my courage up yet. ... Actually, for me, it's more of an issue of time. I just don't have the option of waiting to compile it all.

However you decide, don't approach it with a do-or-die attitude. Poke around and see if you like it. If you don't, you're not betraying anyone by going back to Windows. But if you do like it ... welcome to the community.

Have fun!

e17 itself works rather well, havent seen any show-stopper bugs in it. however the current community build of entrance is broken, so i guess if you're using gdm or kdm or even xdm to get the signin action going, then e17 + arch is a fine mix. however, i think that if you're gonna use e17, you might as well use entrance to go with it.


that said, as you might have guessed from my "fglrx doesnt play nice with mandriva" thread, i am currently using Mandriva 2006 Free. Its not bleeding edge (read: Firefox 1.0.6, Xorg 6.9cvs, KDE3.4) but it gets the job done reletively painlessly compared to some other distros out there (that is, after it took me a good 1/2 day to figure out how to get fglrx installed).

that said, my rankings (by package manager):
1 - APT [and clones] (apt-get rpm-get, slack-get) -- APT has magic cow powers!
2 - Portage / BSD Ports
3 - Pacman (Arch)
4 - URPMI / RPM (Mandrake)
5 - Sorcerer (SourceMage / Lunar)
6 - Conary (Foresight)
100 - YUM (Fedora)
101 - Yast (SuSe)

Individual Distros by type:
Source:
1 - Gentoo
2 - SourceMage
3 - Lunar

Binary:
1 - Ubuntu Dapper
2 - Arch
3 - Mandriva / PCLOS
4 - Zenwalk / Vector