What are you currently testing?

[Jayce]

We're blessed with the free-ness of *nux and open source operating systems, which also bites us in the rear end - how on earth are we supposed to use each one enough to decide what we like?

Like the nature of open source software I try to have an open mind in regards to software choices and opportunities out there. As a result, I try and use as many distros as possible while devoting a decent amount of time to each to really get an understanding of the OS. As of lately I've been converting from my long time Gnome roots to KDE. After trying Kubuntu, I began to really dig KDE. After seeing Fedora/open SuSE/Mandriva, I knew KDE was brighter elsewhere.

So here I am, at the moment currently installing Open SuSE on my spare computer, with intentions of possibly installing Mandriva later if it's not my cup of tea. Everyone I spoke to said Mandriva and Open SuSE are the two that really make KDE shine - and having Mandriva's Control Center and Open SuSE's YAST2 - it REALLY means they're comparable since they both have a unique system-wide control panel for managing a ton of stuff.

So, that's what I'm up to. What are you guys using now? I know there's a couple BSD users out there too - what are you getting your hands dirty with?

 

[kmote]

I'm pretty much the opposite of that these days. If I find something that works I stick with it as much as I can.

 

[Jayce]

As of lately I've been leaning more towards Mandriva. I got Mandriva fired up on my work laptop and it worked like a charm. The control center that it has is very easy to use and seems to be very snappy as well. One thing that just sold me with Mandriva for use on my work laptop was the wireless manager. It's such a nice interface and very quick to use as well.

I encourage anybody out there to try out Mandriva (formerly known as Mandrake). It's very solid.

 

[kmote]

I found it really off putting when I tried it, seemed like one big advert somehow. For a slick user experience I like opensolaris, the speed was incredible.

 

[Jayce]

I found it really off putting when I tried it, seemed like one big advert somehow. For a slick user experience I like opensolaris, the speed was incredible.

What do you mean when you said off putting? Weren't a fan of it? Despite me using Linux for such a long time, there's still things about certain operating systems in the Linux category that are kind of meh. Most distros these days are doing a good job of it, though. Certain things used to be a pain... like multimedia codecs, partitioning, editing the boot loader, etc.

What struck me about Mandriva is for one, their control center. It's very easy to navigate and makes a lot of sense. Adding multimedia codecs was a snap - just had to click "add" and it brought down all of the common repos users often get. Check what you want, apply, update, win.

Secondly, I found when I installed Mandriva that it didn't give me the option to detect Windows XP on here at the boot menu. Crap... so I did... control center... boot... add operating system... Windows (other)... blam. Windows is there.

It's nice having a sense of practicality and user friendliness with Mandriva while still being able to utilize it in the same advanced ways I would with Fedora and Ubuntu. Another thing I read was how good of an OS PCLinuxOS was - which is a fork on Mandriva.

Learn something new every day.

 

[oldskool]

I found it really off putting when I tried it, seemed like one big advert somehow. For a slick user experience I like opensolaris, the speed was incredible.

Is Open Solaris going to still be around with Sun having been bought by Oracle ? And how much different (if at all) is Open Solaris from Solaris ? Are they one and the same ? I suppose I could Google it, but you guys are more fun, especially at pool parties

 

[Jayce]

Is Open Solaris going to still be around with Sun having been bought by Oracle ? And how much different (if at all) is Open Solaris from Solaris ? Are they one and the same ? I suppose I could Google it, but you guys are more fun, especially at pool parties

I don't see how much is going to change with the situation Sun is in. It's true what they say, once you go open source you can't ever go back. Oracle went into the deal full well knowing that. I'm sure they embraced the open source philosophy and ran with it, in hopes of turning an open source product into a profitable one thanks to making support available. This is what several companies do (Red Hat, Novell, Mandriva, Canonical as examples) with enterprise open source software.

 

[kmote]

I think (open)Solaris will both be fine, Oracle have open source stuff of their own. I would be more concerned about what is going to happen with mySQL. I can't compare openSolaris to Solaris though as I haven't used solaris...
Mandriva I didn't like. At least I think it was mandriva, it seems like a long time ago and my memory is pretty vague but as I remember it they had a non free version and I felt that I was being pushed to make the purchase.

 

[Jayce]

I think (open)Solaris will both be fine, Oracle have open source stuff of their own. I would be more concerned about what is going to happen with mySQL. I can't compare openSolaris to Solaris though as I haven't used solaris...
Mandriva I didn't like. At least I think it was mandriva, it seems like a long time ago and my memory is pretty vague but as I remember it they had a non free version and I felt that I was being pushed to make the purchase.

Mandriva has 3 versions:

Mandriva Free = entirely open source, no closed source or proprietary software included. (similar to Fedora's philosophy)
Mandriva One = Mandriva Free OS + includes proprietary and closed source software, drivers, etc. - also free of cost.
Mandriva PowerPack = Mandriva Free + Fluendo codecs. Fluendo codecs cost money anywhere you go, Mandriva just offers a version with them integrated. I guess PowerPack is the ideal thing to use if you want to integrate Linux desktops to a business or something like that.

All in all, no matter which Mandriva you choose you're still getting the open source operating system. It's the extras that dictate what version it is and what costs it comes at.

 

[Jayce]

I've played around with Mandriva, OpenSuSE, and Fedora (along with several others) heavily in the last few days and I wanted to give my 2 cents on them.

Mandriva - definitely great for a beginner to use. I honestly think this distro is one you can use and avoid the terminal completely. I fully configured it and had wireless working, multimedia codecs, etc all running without issue and without using the terminal. If I had a buddy who was curious about Linux, but not too sure yet, I'd probably recommend this. It's very user friendly to use.

OpenSuSE - well this was a pleasant surprise. I installed OpenSuSE thinking I'd hate it, due to poor experiences I had with OpenSuSE 9.2 server from a few years ago. When I used it then I wanted to punch myself in the face - but I had to since it was the distro of choice for our Linux class at school. My gosh how things have changed. YaST2 is actually fast, and very user friendly. It's not ungodly slow like it used to be. OpenSuSE 11.2 is very user friendly to use, and with YaST2 and all of the admin utilities you have, I feel very at home with it since there's a lot of server oriented stuff available. It had no issues running on my laptop either. All I had to do was install packman (the multimedia/restricted repos) and bring down the broadcom-wl package for my wireless and reboot. Blam. I was good to go. It's a distro that's worth trying, and one that Novell and the developers have worked very hard on.

Fedora - well, mixed bag here of emotions with Fedora, but everything I'm about to say comes with good intention behind it. I have a lot of respect for Fedora and it's big brother, Red Hat. RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) has done some great things for the open source community, and they tend to use Fedora as their testing ground. The great thing is, that means Fedora is bleeding-edge with features and technology. The downside is, this in essence creates a very "beta" like feeling to it. Despite this, Fedora is actually very usable and solid. However, it should be known if you walk into Fedora that issues may arise due to just how bleeding edge it is. I spent 2 days tinkering with it on my laptop because it would hang during the boot process. After multiple threads and chatting with people in the Fedora IRC, it was discovered that Fedora is running "Plymouth." A completely new animated splash boot screen (or something like that) that was noted as being buggy with intel cards. Guess who has an intel card? Yep. Simple point is, Fedora is a very nice distro, and very solid, and bleeding edge so you know it's got the newest stuff out there. The downside is, this can work against you like it worked against me. But we can all bet, by the time the bugs are fixed in Fedora, they'll be ready for other mainstream distros to pick up.

PCLinuxOS - While I tried this distro, I didn't get too far with it. It was a spin off of Mandriva, so I had to try it since I liked Mandriva. It's an easy to use distro and I would definitely recommend it. The reason it didn't really take off for me is they don't offer a 64 bit version. However, you can't really hold them accountable, they're working on an extremely small staff and the manpower created to beef up a 64 bit edition would take time and effort. Still, there's no denying that PCLinuxOS made a solid distro that most users would feel right at home with.

At the end of the day though, the important thing is you're using what works. It's important to note that while one distro may not work for you, that's not the end of the road when it comes to Linux. There are limitless possibilities. Just look what I went through. PCLinuxOS didn't have a 64 bit edition and that's what I wanted. Fedora 12 gave me boot issues due to its bleeding edge nature, but at the end of the day Mandriva and OpenSuSE were both there that fit the bill - and I went with OpenSuSE since it has more toys for a power user like me to play with. I do feel as though I will be playing with more distros soon, but for the time being, Ubuntu and Kubuntu have taken a back seat, and for the first time in my Linux usage history, neither is installed on any of my systems. Currently running Debian on a test PC and OpenSuSE 11.2 on the others.