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rhythmbox with "bad" (codec) gstreamer plugins http://crunchbang.org/forums/v...

Now indeed, for an init system, it's a bit more complicated to leave complete choice to the end user. Some specialist distro like Gentoo are able to offer you to switch between their default OpenRC and whatever you want.
But the amount of work and risk of bugs in untested paths is rather high. So don't expect other distros to offer instant switch between systemd and upstart.

What is Debian? Chopped liver?

sudo apt-get install sysvinit-core systemd-shim systemd-sysv-

Or...

sudo apt-get install upstart systemd-shim systemd-sysv-

http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=37871

while I'm probably going to switch to CrunchBang...

you probably won't: http://crunchbang.org/forums/v...

http://crunchbang.org/

There's a repository for that: http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=248917%23p248917
What is most painful though is the old version of libc they are stuck on (2.13), half of all the Humble Bundle games won't work because they were compiled with something newer, so I'm thinking of switching to Mint or Arch this weekend.

Mod this highly informative!

It's much easier for you to specify your needs as there are hundreds of distros and packages that can be combined. To a first approximation pretty much all linux packages are available for all distributions.

Beyond that, most linux distributions are based off some other distribution. The description of Kubuntu as "Ubuntu, but with the KDE desktop environment" is perfectly descriptive.

So what distinguishes one distro from another? Besides what comes installed by default, the most significant difference is how those packages got there.

Debian is probably the distribution that the greatest number of other distributions are based on. It has a very very long testing cycle; it takes packages years to get into Debian's stable branch. Ubuntu is based on Debian unstable, and a shit-ton of things are based on Ubuntu, including Linux Mint.

Red Hat produces the next biggest family of linuxes. Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux are more or less analogous to Debian unstable and stable, respectively, but I don't think very many people are dumb enough to try and base a distro on Fedora. CentOS is RHEL with the logo removed, and Scientific Linux is also based on RHEL.

Next up we have Gentoo, Arch, Slackware, and Suse.

I was going to put a joke about Gentoo here, but it's taking a while to compile. Gentoo is a rolling-release distro where most of the packages that you use are compiled on and for your machine. You mention gcc, this is related, but you will probably not ever use it directly. Compiling packages yourself can make them run faster, but it can take a long time.

Arch is a well-documented, rolling release distribution. I'm not sure what else to say about them honestly, but "well-documented" is one of the highest compliments I'm aware of.

Slackware is the oldest and most "unixy" of the distributions. It uses an old bootloader, old unix-style boot scripts, and by default boots to a text terminal. You should use Slackware if you want to retreat into a cave for five years, to emerge with a profound knowledge of unix, a full beard, and a solid opinion on whether emacs or vi(m) is the best text editor. I'm pretty sure these things are highly marketable. No, really.

Suse hasn't failed yet. The last time I checked, they had a wonderful, polished experience, and great admin/configuration tools. I have no idea why they don't have more users, except that there's already a shit-ton of options.

It's probably fair to say that Debian stable, RHEL, and any derivatives will have the longest testing cycle, and fewest updates in any given span of time. There are many more distributions for more specialized purposes, such as BackTrack for pen testing, Puppy for small installations, Bodhi for those seeking Enlightenment. You may have to figure out what you need on your own there.

Whew! Let's take a break for a minute.

All right. So with all that in mind, you can install, as previously mentioned, pretty much all the same stuff on any and every distro.

Here is a guide on desktop environments. If you're a n00b, you're probably going to want one of those.

We also have another guide for more experienced users, or those on resource-constrained systems, that covers some of the more popular window managers. Because sometimes 2GB of gnome libraries gets a bit old. For the truly adventurous, this post covers 30 Window Managers in 30 Days.

Honestly, there's really a pretty limited amount of advice that one can give about using any particular distro. They're all substantially similar. Without any specific information about what you want to use, a recommendation becomes, well, exactly what you were complaining about. "Use XYZ bec

Here is an excellent collection of resources and tools relating to security and privacy on the internet, courtesy of Tunafish at the CrunchBang Linux discussion forums. Those who want to take a slightly more 'proactive' stance against the collection of their information should find this worthwhile reading.

Ubuntu isn't really suited for low end machines anymore, IMO. Has to be at least 2ghz, with at least 512mb RAM.. Anything lower and it's going to be pretty slow.

I'm sure some people here are going to be comparing Ubuntu to Vista in regards of getting slower with release, but because it's Linux we have a few more choices.

They make distros that are meant to be lightweight- Anyone with a machine that's a little old, I urge you to try one of them. You'll be pleasantly surprised and maybe find a new favorite window manager/desktop environment in the process. Before you start talking about how joe sixpack doesn't want to try another distro or learn anything about Linux- I'm not talking to Joe sixpack here, I'm talking to you, a slashdot lurker.

Try one of these distros and be amazed at how fast everything is:

Crunchbang Linux

KMandla's GTK 1.5 Remix

Or, if you want to be more adventurous, get Arch Linux and grab a window manager like Openbox or PekWM. If you go that route, take a look at this Openbox guide that'll show you a nice panel to use, file navigator, and generally hold your hand through the process, here. But if you want your hand held even more, someone packaged a panel and file navigator and theme chooser and stuff like that together with Openbox already- Called LXDE. You can just grab that too, should be in any repository.

I do think it's unfortunate for joe sixpack that it's getting a little slower- But for them it's still faster than Vista and XP, right?

You know what they should make? They compile pretty much everything in the kernel as a module, and then they probe hardware and load the right modules each time you boot... It would be cool to be able to do a "Speed up my computer" boot where it loads the modules, and then compiles a kernel with the modules for the hardware it finds compiled into it. Disable things that it hasn't seen their computer use, etc., and then just still probe the hardware to fall back on another kernel if things have changed.

OR, how about loading modules when you actually need them..? And this goes for daemons, too. When you go to listen to something, and it returns that there's no module loaded for sound, how about loading the module then, and then starting the alsa daemon. Have you ever looked at the daemon list for Ubuntu? It's huge. I know I don't need all of those- I know because on the distro I'm on now I only run 3 daemons on boot, and everything works fine.

I don't know. Maybe that's not the solution. But those guys are clever, I'm sure they can come up with something to get rid of the extra daemons and modules running without sacrificing usability. Anyone here have any good ideas..?

I'm glad they're finally going to put some attention on boot time and speed. I'm a big fan of getting your boot times down, mine is 8 seconds (brag brag...).

But when I see Ubuntu and it boots slower than XP and... Well, feels slower than XP, I have to facepalm. Linux is supposed to be the faster one, it's supposed to be the one where you can say "Man, you use XP? It's so slow! Use Linux!", but with Ubuntu you can't really say that. Not that it's Ubuntu's fault, I put the blame on Gnome. The Gnome desktop is bulky and slow, your *panel* shouldn't be using CPU cycles constantly, or the amount of memory gnome-panel uses. There's alternatives for sure (And I'm not talking about KDE, it's almost as bad.), but you have to piece it together yourself because it isn't a single DE. I.E, Openbox WM, pypanel or bmpanel or lxpanel or lbpanel or one of those (I prefer pypanel and bmpanel), pcmanfm filenavigator (Can also set icons on the desktop and manage wallpapers), and on and on. There's tons of lightweight programs out there with the same abilities, just not packaged neatly together. But people are trying! Just have a look at crunchbang linux and DEs like lxde. Using this stuff, you can get that old 550mhz thinkpad you have in your closet up and running again, webbrowsing and e-mailing at lightning speeds. THIS, to me, is what Linux should represent. Not the slow bulky thing you have to buy a new computer for!

But about the other things with the new Ubuntu release, polishlinux has a great review of what Ubuntu alpha looks like right now, and what we can expect from it here.

Looks like nautilus is finally getting tabs, although the lighter pcmanfm has had tabs for awhile. I'm really excited about is improvements with the network manager and with xorg... Two places that really need improvement. Seems like wireless support improves with each release, and I hope it continues on that awesome path. And it seems that the kernel 2.6.27 will be out in time for this release! It's already on rc5, and most kernels don't go past rc10 before release (And they're releasing an rc once a week, or about once a week).

It's all very exciting, but again the one thing I hope for more than anything else is speed and bloat! Keep Linux the OS that you say "You don't even have to get a new computer for it. It's fast, unlike Vista/XP/OSX/Everythingever", please please please