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Apologies if this site is either bloody obvious or redundant, but I find distrowatch quite handy. It provides tables showing included software packages, quick overviews of distros and other useful things. Hope that helps!

you want a table like those at distrowatch,
but that expands on the initial section, with (subjective) opinions on what each distribution excells at, has trouble with, is quirky about. in a tabel format so you can easily compare the major ones with each other.
does anyone know where such a thing already exists?

Distrowatch

I'll leave the rest up to you.

Oh, and in case you're wondering: Slack rules them all.

according to distrowatch.com, it is Mandrake and Fedora.

You mean like this?

find a slack ware user, and check out the blurb on distrowatch

of slackware:
Perhaps the best characteristic of this distribution I have heard is this: If you need help with your Linux box, find a Slackware user. A Slackware user is more likely to fix the problem than a user familiar with any other distribution.

Get this, http://www.haking.pl/en/index.php?page=hakin9_live

then get this,

http://www.distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution= std

and get this too,

ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/phlak

then get one of these,
http://www.systemrecycler.com/shomiti/

and lastly get this just for shits, grins and giggles,

http://www.metasploit.com/projects/Framework/docum entation.html

I wonder if people are becoming less distro-religous since most distros seem to work well. anyway, after reading distrowatch for a while you'll no doubt become a distro-tart and try all out 101 live cd's like L.A.S.

rd

"In Linux it's a pain in the arse to install a package, to uninstall packages, to do anything that's simple in Windows basically, it's harder in Linux."

Uh, I do it every day on several different distro's. With RH, for example, rpm is NOT that hard to use. Certainly not for removing packages. Debian's apt-get (and Kpackage for gui tool) is easier yet.

"Linux is basically nowhere near ready for the average user."

We have new 'average users,' small kids, non-tech folks, etc, using Linux, AND LIKING IT, daily. This statement is patently untrue when compared to observable fact. Mepis Linux is an excellent distro for new users, and many 'newbies' like it better than they ever liked Windows.

"I've tried Lindows and Xandros and both have serious flaws, Linux is atleast a decade off of a Desktop OS. This isn't bashing Linux, it's facing facts. Windows is miles ahead, the Mac is way ahead, and there isn't anybody else who stands a chance at the moment."

First of all, you might want to try more distros before you condemn the entire 'family.' DistroWatch

IMO, Linux is A LOT closer than than you think.

Mandrake is a leading distribution. Just look at http://www.distrowatch.com/ and look at the page hit ranking.

Lindrake? Mandrix? Windrake? Mandrows?

Distrowatch also has a list of Linux-based LiveCDs:
http://www.distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=cd
OR
from their home page click on SEARCH and then select CD-based Distributions (Live CDs).

Distrowatch also has a list of Linux-based LiveCDs:
http://www.distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=cd
OR
from their home page click on SEARCH and then select CD-based Distributions (Live CDs).

Why would people download or buy it then? Simple, it has all freely available programs from RHEL 3.0 AS ($1499) and RH Cluster suite ($499) as free download, 18 Euro DVD-ROM, or 30 Euro Finnish book+DVD-ROM.

Why would people download or buy it then? Simple, it has all freely available programs from RHEL 3.0 AS ($1499) and RH Cluster suite ($499) as free download, 18 Euro DVD-ROM, or 30 Euro Finnish book+DVD-ROM.

Red Hat -> Lots of enterprise and business users
Suse -> More of the same, except mostly in Europe
Mandrake -> Fast growing with non-techies and some businesses too
Fedora/Old Red Hat -> Fast growing with home users
Debian -> Growing with home users Slackware/Knoppix/Gentoo... -> all have niche audiences

http://www.distrowatch.com/ has a ranking of people downloading each distro from them at the lower right of the page.

Distrowatch weekly has a list of distros that contain the 2.6 kernel:

# Fedora Core, development branch (2.6.1)
# Mandrake Linux 10.0-beta2 (2.6.2rc3)
# Debian unstable, not the default kernel (2.6.0)
# Gentoo unstable, not the default kernel (2.6.2)
# Arch Linux 0.6 (development), not the default kernel (2.6.2)
# Sorcerer, not the default kernel (2.6.2)
# Conectiva Linux 10-TP2 (2.6.1)
# Magic Linux 1.2pre5, a Chinese desktop distribution (2.6.0)
# Berry Linux 0.36, a Japanese live CD (2.6.2rc3)
# Bluewall Linux 1.0, a minimalist distribution (2.6.0)
# JoLinux 1.0, a Slackware-based Brazilian desktop distribution (2.6.0)
# knoppiXMAME 1.2, a bootable arcade machine emulator (2.6.1)
# LinuxNetwosix 1.0, a specialist live CD for security operations (2.6.1)
# Shark Linux 1.06-beta2, a minimalist distribution for AMD-64, in early development (2.6.1)

• Consult the instruction manuals that come with your distro, this is often known in

1) Go to Distro watch and select the Linuxen of your choice
2) Burn to disc (that if BSD actualy supports cd burners. Since it dosent boot into windows from and burn the iso.
3) Boot your new shiny operating system
4) In the partitioning setup, replace your freebsd partitions with Linux ones
5) Bask in the light of the magic world of linux, complete with cd burner support and with powerful apps such as K3b!

Or you could chose an alternative here. Considerably more options.

THE reference for such matters is Distrowatch

Don't just take my word for it, download the Mandrake's 10.0 alpha and see KDE 3.2 beta today, combined with Kernel 2.6, this baby is FASTER than the boxes!

Anyway, here is more reasons why Gnome will be Killed!

Gnome Zealot Translate-o-matic 2004

Ever since Gnome 2.4 (and the BETA 2.5) was released, I have found more and more gnome zealots who MUST absolutely advocate GNOME at every possible moment. Here is a guide to some of their claims, and what they really mean.

Claim : Unlike KDE, Gnome is free
Translation : GPL is freerer than LGPL. LGPL allows corporations like Novell
and Sun to have propeitry forks and lock away their changes from the user. Now
that Novell has taken over Ximian you can expect Gnome to get put under
corpirate lock. With KDE you have the choice, you either PAY UP or pay with
your source code. Most companies agree, the majority of commerical software for Linux is written in Motif and Qt, and NOT GTK. Apart from Ximian's desktop, there is no major product using GTK.

Claim : Nautilus is much better than konqueror.
Wrong, if your using nautilus for anything more than a simple finder clone you
can forget it. No split screen, no ioslaves (gnome-vfs can't compare, sorry) and forget about being able to
have a decent file dialog, not to forget that it is as unstable as hell and is
STILL slow on >3 Ghz machines. The latest version decided to copy Windows 95, complete with a my computer icon on the desktop.

Claim : Gnome is easier to use than KDE
Yep, nothing like using gconf-editor to edit all except the most trivial of
settings. Want tear off menus? Want a useable file dialog? You won't find it
here. Gnome was a lot more usable back in the 1.4 series, before sun came along with their usabillity "study".

Claim : Gnome has eye candy
Yes, my pirated Win32 fonts with the patent infringing font renderer. Bit
stream vera sans looks like Tahoma put through a shreadder! Of course I still
reboot into windows to print using "Comic Sans MS. Gnome themes don't even let you change the colour scheme. Looking at sites like art.gnome.org you will see that the majority of themes are the same one in different colours!

Claim :Gnome has a new web browser
Yawb! Along with Galeon, mozilla, thunderbird, konqueror, atlantis, lynx,
netscape and w3m. Yes I need another browser! Not to mention that its got a
religiously offensive name and it dosen't allow bookmark folders. It also
crashes like a crazy! Apple chose khtml for a REASON! its stable and light! Epiphany is also a faliure, it has gone through 6 major bug fixes and none of the major distrobutions use it because they stick with decent browsers.

Claim : Gnome is more popular than KDE
Despite the fact that the only mainstream Gnome based distro has been EOL'd,
and all the newbie distros such as Mangadrake, Lindoze, $u$E, Lycoris,
Xandroze, Gentoo use kde default, bruce perens decided to make a gnome based distro and everybody hated it because KDE wasn't in it.

Klaim : Kou KDE kuys kust ke kick kof khe K
Our G's and monkeys are SO MUCH better, gedit, glib, gconf, bobono, ghex,
gless, same-gnome, gstreamer.

Claim : Gnome is themeable
Yep, choose from High, low and medium contrast, default, and clean ice. Wan't
to change the colour scheme? USE GCONF NOOB, plus if you complain about it we
will tell you to fuck off and go back to Windows or KDE.

Claim : Gnome has multimedia framework
Its a kludge of esd combined with broken xine libraries. No wonder it crashes
all the time and dosen't work on 95% of video files.

Zealot : My Gnome work station.

im waiting for someone to run 100+ distributions> of linux on a single machine!

here you can check what packges, and in what versions are used in Xandros.

here are their forums.

and here are updates. Unfortunately you cannot download Xandros for free.

here you can check what packges, and in what versions are used in Xandros.

here are their forums.

and here are updates. Unfortunately you cannot download Xandros for free.

on the bottom of this page you can see in some nice tables what versions Mandrake currently uses. (e.g. koffice in 9.2 is 1.3beta3)

RUNT will get you to a command prompt off of your USB keyfob, assuming USB drive with boot-from-floppy allowed.
You'd probably want to get your Beyond Linux From Scratch on to give you something beyond that, e.g., a desktop.
Linux, like all good IT projects, is blessed/cursed with flexibility...
And flexibility, like any good PHB can tell you, is the key to indecision.

the OS that it ships with, at least in the article. However, we can all assume that the price is $200 HIGHER for the mandatory XP that'
s preloaded and comes with a "system restore" CD (AKA the "loose all your shit CD")

Also of interst, this little turd of wisdom;
"Microsoft has plans to deliver a 64-bit version of its Windows XP operating system for Athlon 64 desktops. Once that software is available, consumers will be able to make the step up to 64 bits. "

So, only by the grace of M$ are users allowed to "step up to 64 bits"...
How considerate of M$ to bless with their oh so wonderful 0$....

Um, hello.. There is an alternative out there to M$....
Mandrake has a 64bit package NOW
as does
Suse Professional 9.0 64bit
as do several other distros, check them out here,
http://www.distrowatch.com/

Lindows
Lycoris
Knoppix
Mandrake

based on Distro Watch's Major Alphabetical List

and for fun you could add Caldera - its CEO was compermised... how else can you explain it?

From the article:
> There's absolutely no reason for there to be more than two or three distributions.

--Um, right now off the top of my head we have:

o Debian (and .deb-based derivatives)
o Red Hat (and rpm-based derivatives such as SuSE, etc)
o Gentoo (and I should add Slackware, after double-checking here.)

--Those are the major families that come to my mind immediately.

--The reason for having distros like SuSE is that they took the RH model and did something a little different with it. Personally I preferred Suse 6.4 / 7.3 over RH's offerings at the time, and went with it. However that's NO EXCUSE for having incompatible RPM's.

--The beauty of Debian installs is that .deb's are pretty much universal. I can install Knoppix or Mepis and link straight to the Debian package sources, and everything pretty much "just works" when I do apt-get update / upgrade. Not so with suse / rh, which is one of the big reasons I won't go back to RPM.

--I agree that we could stand some merging of distros (Mepis could investigate merging with Libranet, for instance) but there are distros such as Suse that cater to a more European audience, and would never merge with RH - although they did get bought by Novell. What they *should* do is make all the RPM packages from here on work with any rpm-based distro, and concentrate on the value-added distro-specific tools (Mepis has it's own System Center, Libranet has it's Admin menu, Suse has Yast, etc.)

I'm not sure but there are lots of cd distros that might help you here

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind - I'm sure. But does anybody know a list, that is complete as possible? I know only a list of CD-Live-distros at knoppix.net .

Distrowatch

It's always good to see another distribution from a research/development standpoint. Rolling your own distro builds more who are familiar with the landscape.

But why is this here? What defining feature of Mepis make it /. worthy? I think it'd be better suited on distrowatch. Posting each new distribution won't help Linux, but rather it gives the impression of being a little desperate.

I'm not trolling or trying to start a flamewar (I'm a Debian user myself), but Linux needs to push the envelope for creative code hacking.

Why stick with RedHat if you feel abandoned by them? If you "need a GOOD and STABLE OS for a REASONABLE price -- and updates, of course" there is Slackware which is noted for it's stability. For updates to Slack, there is swaret and slapt-get (check freshmeat.net to find them). Then of course you could always go with Debian and apt-get, or try a different distro. Take a look over at Distrowatch.com! and see all the choices out there! Just because one vendor is dropping out of a market, that does not mean there is are no replacements!

Redhat doesn't want my busness anymore, so it looks like a perfect time to try mandrake.

Despite financial problems earlier this year, Mandrake Linux has gained big popularity with their latest Linux distributions, and it seems to go quicker now (see distro ranking at distrowatch). They also have been pionneers of "what Red Hat should have done earlier" (release of ISO images, Cooker community...) and are inventing new interesting business models that seem work now (Mandrake Club).

Compared to Red Hat, MandrakeSoft has very small financial capabilities, very low press coverage, but is still growing and attracting a large user and contributor community. Additionally, they now have a full range of products, from the pure desktop product to the clustering solution. They generally have excellent new technologies (URPMI/RPMDrake/dynamic desktop...), excellent support policy (see http://www.mandrakesecure.net) and again with very low ressources. Why? Maybe MandrakeSoft understood something about the Linux community, a way to listen to it carefully (maybe too much sometimes).

Why wouldn't Red Hat trust Mandrake and let them deal with that? Red Hat could certainly buy MandrakeSoft easily, and the "Mandrake" brandname could become the community Red Hat brandname, by merging with Fedora. The "Mandrake" brandname is already very well known and this would be better for Red Hat than trying to impose the new "Fedora" brandname (this could take years).

Mandrake has always been a kind of little brother of Red Hat. They know how to do things Red Hat don't know how to deal with or don't want to do - and now they are profitable with this model. It could turn into a great thing for Red Hat and would help to catch a new big part of Linux users, in particular newcomers, individuals and small corporates, from the Windows world. At the same time this would avoid to frustrate millions of Red Hat users that are now considering a switch to another Linux distribution.

So why wouldn't Red Hat trust Mandrake for the community side of Linux?

Try distrowatch.com. I think the only reason I have not done same thing is that I've read another article on ./ that mentioned scheduled fedora release this week. Regards!

"It is ironic that Massachusetts, as the only state remaining in the lawsuit accusing Microsoft of antitrust violations, is creating its own state-imposed monopoly on software."

A monopoly comprising 154 entities?. It looks like their first money-saving idea was to not buy a dictionary.

Hell, dictionaries are free, why not quote one. "Monopoly: Exclusive control by one group..."

The thing is, at least to me personally, Microsoft just isn't relevant to what I do. That might sound strange, since they are clearly the dominant player in the market that Linux is in, but the thing is: I'm not in the ''market.'' I'm interested in Linux because of the technology, and Linux wasn't started as any kind of rebellion against the ''evil Microsoft empire.'' Quite the reverse, in fact: from a technology angle, Microsoft really has been one of the least interesting companies. So I've never seen it as a ''Linus versus Bill'' thing. I just can't see myself in the position of the nemesis, since I just don't care enough. To be a nemesis, you have to actively try to destroy something, don't you? Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect.

You can find several Slackware related sites here: DistroWatch - Slackware Linux

You'd probably have better luck with one of the less bloated Knoppix-based livecds... anything old enough to be unsupported by this change would probably run Knoppix very slowly, if at all. Damn Small Linux doesn't have Apache, but Freeduc does. Here's a list of livecd distros, the version number of apache will be listed if its in the distro.

1. Mandrake
2. Red Hat
3. Gentoo
4. Knoppix
5. Debian
6. Slackware
7. MEPIS (wtf??)
8. SuSE

For a good list of LiveCDs, check out Distrowatch.com list of run-from-cd distros.

Its been done.

Though its not called Womandrake, it does come with porn-get instead of RPM.

it's not

Here's a quote from Oracle's site source here:

The examples I will use here are written using RedHat Linux 9, however, other versions of RedHat Linux-- as well as other Linux distributions--use similar if not the same syntax.

Or take cpu mnufacturers. They offer cpus specifically targeted to the server market, and they don't care which distro you run. They support them all. Or do we now not count cpu manufacturers as part of the IT industry?

Different versions of GNU/Linux are pretty much interchangeable, and most people understand that. Seibt doesn't, or he's trying to pull a SCO.

The actual facts say that SuSE is bullshitting when they claim to be "up there" in terms of numbers, as was pointed out by distroWatch, both in an earlier link, and here, where interest in SuSE lags below Mandrake, Red Hat, Gentoo, Yoper, Debian, and Knoppix, and especially here, where they point out that SuSE is talking out of their ass, in specific reference to Seibt's comments.

Or you might want to look at this slashdot poll, where even insensitive clod distros outpolled SuSE.

SuSE seems to think that its' all about the install. I think they've come down with a YaST infection.

Here's a quote from Oracle's site source here:

The examples I will use here are written using RedHat Linux 9, however, other versions of RedHat Linux-- as well as other Linux distributions--use similar if not the same syntax.

Or take cpu mnufacturers. They offer cpus specifically targeted to the server market, and they don't care which distro you run. They support them all. Or do we now not count cpu manufacturers as part of the IT industry?

Different versions of GNU/Linux are pretty much interchangeable, and most people understand that. Seibt doesn't, or he's trying to pull a SCO.

The actual facts say that SuSE is bullshitting when they claim to be "up there" in terms of numbers, as was pointed out by distroWatch, both in an earlier link, and here, where interest in SuSE lags below Mandrake, Red Hat, Gentoo, Yoper, Debian, and Knoppix, and especially here, where they point out that SuSE is talking out of their ass, in specific reference to Seibt's comments.

Or you might want to look at this slashdot poll, where even insensitive clod distros outpolled SuSE.

SuSE seems to think that its' all about the install. I think they've come down with a YaST infection.

...you really need to be careful about which distribution you choose. Officially, Oracle will only support their 9i Server product on RedHat Enterprise and SUSE Enterprise. It would be really bad to call Oracle for support only to be told you are S.O.L. because you're not running on a supported platform.

That being said, you can run Orcle 9i Server on other, less costly distributions. Personally, I run a development Oracle 9i server on debian 3.0 (woody).

The trick to Oracle compatability is the gcc and glibc versions. For Oracle 9i, you need gcc-2.95.4 and gblic-2.2.5. This happens to match exactly what debian 3.0 currently supports. Unfortunately, most other distributions have long since upgraded to gcc-3.x series and glibc-2.3.x, on which Oracle will not install or run.

To verify what versions of these packages a given distribution supports, you should use Distrowatch.com.

Perhaps he looked at Distrowatch?

According to distrowatch, this release still has OpenOffice.org 1.0.2

Wasn't the purpose of having 2 products (commercial and community) to offer the latest and greatest software? I hope Red Hat will include OOo 1.1 in the next beta.