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What Your Choice of Linux Distro Says about You
iter8 writes "NewsForge has an article explaining what your choice of distro says about you. There's no comment on what using Windows or OS X does for your rep. I use Mandrake, so that makes me suave and sophisticated."
No mention of Slackware? What a pity.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
"I use Mandrake, so that makes me suave and sophisticated."
In other news, Bud Light gets you lots of chicks. In bikinis. And twins.
Oh, well... It's a Saturday.
Please refrain from making 'lickable' jokes.
That is all.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
What if I use the distro that I use because it's the only one that I could get to actually work?
I don't respond to AC's.
Using Caldera says that if your linux install fails, sue someone.
Monstar L
There are plenty of hardcore code, library, kernel hackers running distros like fedora, suse, mandrake, etc
There are also plenty of totaly linux newbies using gentoo, archlinux, etc
I know that this article is a joke (not a funny one either), but these stereotypes need to come to an end.
Sunny Dubey
Oh please, this is just as reliable as the Which OS Are you? quiz.
So I'll just make one up:
;) It was tongue-in-cheek.
Slackware users are grumpy, bearded old Unix sysadmins who prefer things be done the "good old fashioned way", making their Linux distro stick to traditional Unix principles, through 10 feet of snow, uphill, both ways!
P.S. I'm a slackware user myself, don't flame me
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
I don't see any mention of Fedora. Do they expect everyone to believe it's the same as Red Hat's commercial distro?
More likely, we Fedora users are just too good for words.
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
Obviously, theyv'e never seen mine...the only reason that the icons even line up is because the automatic line up feature's enabled. As for my non-computer desktop....it's been declared a Superfund site, and the EPA guys will be along any time now with the hazmat suits.
I guess I'm using the wrong distro, huh?
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
... is BBSpot's OS Quiz.
Gentoo
:)
If John Wayne had been a Linux user, he would have used Gentoo. Gentoo users are pioneers, people who like to live close to the metal, and don't mind hurting themselves on sharp objects. Some feel that Gentoo users are simply lazy louts who always want to have a ready excuse for why they are not doing constructive things with their computer, other than compiling or recompiling the latest kernel, app, or hapless passerby. The official Gentoo motto is, "If it moves, compile it."
Paraphrasing Maddox, Gentoo users are baddases and listen to Pantera. Red Hat users get their nails done and shop for purses.
Ok, i'll shut up now
The entire point of the article is to piss off everyone using any of those distros.
What if I use Damn Small Linux? Does that make me very tiny?
"The television is the retina of the mind's eye" - Videodrome
Slackware users don't need to be compared to the rest of that trash!
;-)
Oops... Did I say that out loud?
I use Gentoo because I believe that an OS should be loud, obnoxious and have glass packs on the exhaust. Of course my Shuttle XPC has a "Type R" sticker on it.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
What a cincidence and a true story.
One of the broad minded Windows admins in [insert major logistics company] yelled at me "Linux for President" when I passed his office before yesterday.
It turns out that one of his laptops was fuxored and no matter what he wasn't able to boot it under Windows.
Since he is broadminded and a good admin (even though he's an MCSE) he has his tools ready and one of it is Knoppix.
The laptop booted like a charm, made the partition visible, the files where saved to another laptop and Linux oughta be president.
There was really no need to push Knoppix on him.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
sofar i've tried ubuntu, gnoppix, knoppix, suse, morphix, knoppix, slax, elearnix, dynebolic, mepis, dsl, puppy, pc linuxos, gentoo (oh, and one or two of those bsd's as well).
The moment i find one that recognizes my onboard sound i'll take it, no matter which name it's got. Untill then i'm stuck on windoze for everything that involves sound (and i do like music).
http://funroll-loops.org/
Does that mean you like threesomes?
I agree that the documentation is easy to follow. But I dont understand why you make it sound like a bad thing. Its wonderfull they have such good documentation. How else are you going to learn to do it the 1st time? And after that, you dont really need the install docs anymore, because you understand the process going on.
Both NewsForge and Slashdot are part of OSTG.
Since they didn't cover Slackware, here you go:
Slackware users are paradoxically obsessed with being cutting edge and traditional at the same time. They love to point out that their distro has all the latest programs, but explain that it's ancient installer is 'still up to the task' and that the lack of powerful package management 'leaves them in control'. Slackware users like to do things for themselves and tend to ignore what popular opinion (and logic and reason and all rational thought) says is good.
And, since they didn't include Fedora either, here's that one:
Fedora is synonymous with Red Hat, but many of its users believe that it isn't. The song of the king of the Linux street, Fedora is popular with those who want to be in the middle of the road, but leading the crowd. Unfortunately, they are actually be pushed along from behind, with the silly-hat men leading from behind. Fedora is very loyal to its customers, except when they want something that Red Hat doesn't, in which case they consider the feature risky.
If you want something informative, there's the old reliable Distro Watch and if you want something funny, try:
I had opened the link in a new tab and was about to read it, and then I caught the "I use Mandrake, so that makes me suave and sophisticated." part, which instantly removed any faith I may have had in the test. ;-)
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
1. I HAVE A CHOICE.
2.I DO NOT HAVE TO CONFORM TO THE SCHEMES/STANDARDS/LICENSING SET BY REDMOND.
3. I GET TO USE MY COMPUTER IN THE MANNER I SEE FIT.
If these choices are important to you too, then consider becoming a member of the EFF and supporting your favorite distro by purchasing a copy once a year or so. There's lots of software projects that could use help as well!
and I'm talking about this part:
If John Wayne had been a Linux user, he would have used Gentoo. Gentoo users are pioneers, people who like to live close to the metal, and don't mind hurting themselves on sharp objects.
I'll bet my last dollar that a lot of gentoo users, if they used slackware, would hurt themself more than on gentoo. Some people use emerge without knowing wtf its doing and if you give them a real distro, they're gonna be lost and go back to gentoo or a distro with an easy package manager. I have nothing against package managers.
Slackware is the pure thing. You actually learn out of it. Of course when you're done learning and you are sick of it, then ok you can go to gentoo or something like debian sarge but nowadays, it's not true that every gentoo user knows how gentoo and/or portage works.
The people I know who use Debian, myself included, have less patience for crap that doesn't work. Though harder to install, unlike the other distros, you only ever have to do it once.
Tongue in cheek or no, the myth that Debian is behind other distros has continually been dispelled. Debian/Unstable is consistently ahead of other distros. What other distros besides Debian, and maybe Gentoo, currently include Kernel 2.6.8, KDE 3.3.0, and Firefox RC1?
Debian users simply loathe frigging around with the basics of their system, an experience all too common with some other distros. We prefer to spend our time frigging around on Slashdot, et al. Or advocating free software.
I think it would be more fun to pick a Star Trek race for each user to assume at a convention.
Mandrake - Humans. Like it simple and straightforward, but can be badass at need and gets things done.
Redhat - Vulcans. People may not like them, but they do a lot of things right and everyone owes them.
Debian - Romulans. Tough, but strangely elegant. Deserve more respect than they get.
Gentoo - Klingons. Never do it the easy way if there is a hard way - it makes one stronger!
If any MacOSX guys wander in, they get to be the tribbles. Soft, cuddly, and relatively harmless.
Windows users unlucky enough to stray in - the Borg, of course. The one common enemy of everybody else in the room.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Newsforge is owned by etc...
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
OpenBSD - You are a paranoid schizophrenic and you think everyone is out to get you. You consider your pores security holes
NetBSD - You take solace in the fact your operating system can run on playstation2 and dreamcast and is thus superior.
m0n0wall - You are the Calista Flockhart of the BSD world. You like to keep your base at six megabytes because anything more would be bloated.
Dragonfly BSD - You are a rebel without a clue. You are against the status quo establishment and all the conformist sheep that follow it. Anybody who questions your judgment can go fork themselves.
FreeBSD-CURRENT - You are a crusader, living on the bleeding edge of the Open Source revolution. You build worlds, merge masters, and slay kernel panic modes with nothing more than an UPDATAING file to defend you.
FreeBSD-STABLE - You are a corporate whore... caring more about production, stability, and uptime than any reasonable person. Your if it ain't broke don't fix it mentality makes OS developers ponder the true purpose and meaning of their life quests.
To blog is sublime
Debian users take pride in the fact that their distribution is always several releases behind the latest version of the kernel, but makes up for that by being more difficult to install and use.
This is the usual FUD you encounter when discussing Debian. Neither is Debian several versions behind the kernel (yes, stable is somehow old right now, but there is Sarge or backports.org), nor is it difficult to install and use. Debian (I'm talking about the new Installer used for Sarge) has a real nice installation process, making it easy to install straight from network. The package system is clearly one of the best, installing additional software has never been easier: "apt-get install foobar", and through the magical wonders of the internet you get foobar right on your system, including any libraries it depends on. This is a major advantage over other systems where you have to browse through endless lists of packages, interactivly selecting the right package and installing it. The package system is most flexible, so you can get your packages from several sources, really nice for example if you use Debian Stable and backports.org (this project adapts recent software for the Stable branch). I'd say that Debian is the best distribution for newbies, since heliping others is so easy: You acan easily transfer example configurations, you can offer commandline examples for certain jobs, no need to tell someone where to click and what do look for in those fancy colourful dialogs.
And remember: The best distribution for newbies is always the one your more experienced friends use.
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
John Wayne sould use Gentoo?!
Right on! High fives around...drinks on the house!
Some aim to please, I aim to tease.
But it was a shame they did not include the "huggers" of the new Ubanto distro. I wonder what the author would have made of that!
Single White Gentoo-Using Male seeks chique Mandrake-Using Female for late-night RPGing...
/etc/portage/package.mask?
So, what, now instead of knowing that my Sun Sign is Leo with Mercury in ascention, I instead have to be able to recite my USE flags with
BONUS!!!!
Thats a nice fun and lighthearted article for a saturday afternoon. Makes a change from all the serious stuff!
:- I've got a couple of higher spec machines I use for gentoo- but I also run Xandros (Open Circulation Ed.) on this laptop (which is for family use) and I've got my mother running Libranet on her aging K6.
... please!!!!
...
I wonder though what about people who use multiple different distributions? For example
I suppose technically speaking Xandros and Libranet are Debian based - but so is Linspire - Where does this leave me?
Im in a twisted state of being neither here nor there help me
Nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
To accept binaries is dishonorable.
He whose distro is not compiled from source will never enter the halls of Stovakor.
Any ko'tal who cannot compile his apps to brings dishonor upon his family, and is a weak piece of baktag.
We do not allow the weak to live.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
I did enjoy the analysis and, somehow, it did seem to hit home, like reading the explainations on a Chinese Restaurant place matt of the year you were born, with just a smitherene of truth. In my case I started with slackware (not mentioned), changed to redhat from 1.x to 7.2 (bought 8 but never installed it for real use) but after buying a new nvidia chipset MB at home and being given a new intel chipset gateway at work to load, at the time Mandrake was the only distro that came close to working right and supporting the devices. So the newer kid on the block (mandrake) became the suave dominator and when redhat did it's turnaround in the big customer direction, I began to forget about them and fumora, well I tried it. Of course Mandrake ain't perfect and all have a ways to go. But the real Truth is I carry a live linux cd, Knoppix or one of it's derivitives for various uses. Long live knoppix!!!
In case you were wondering, I am a Slackware user. And, if you had read the fucking article you would have realized that all of the distro-archetypes were comedic and sarcastic, you moron.
Now I know I'm a complete bitch and everything, but since when where X and TCP/IP features of the GNU/Linux system?
Since the moment that they were featured in the first comprehensive Linux distribution.
All Linux distributions have features that were not necessiarly created by Stallman or the creators of the distro, but that doesn't make them any less of a feature.
Swaret and pkgtool are damn fine things, and I'll challenge you to show me how they come up short. I mean, I do kind of long for those sweet, sweet ebuilds of gentoo, but i can just type in
orand that is that. Oh yeah, and you can also point out that Slackware users don't need or want wizards and guis; we'll take a swarm of xterms, thank you.
"Less power to the government = more power to the people = free people."
Fot the sake of accuracy and nitpicking, it should be pointed out that traditionally anarchy is not only opposed to the state but also to capitalism, because capitalism creates inequality which creates unfreedom.
debian: you value freedom overall
gentoo: you value a fast/ultra-tweaked system
slackware: you value conventional standards
knoppix: you value the ability to upgrade by just burning a new cd
linspire: you value being able to get stuff done without any dirty work
mandrake: you value being able to get stuff done without much dirty work
suse: you value the ability to get stuff done without much dirty work, and you hate the french
redhat: you value supporting the "big" distro
fedora: can't afford redhat, you value being a guinea pig for the "big" distro or are too scared to try anything new
caldera: you're a f****** idiot!
Meh.
"Less power to the government = more power to the people = free people."
That is a gross oversimplification. From your statement it seems like it is only the government which limits the freedom of the people.
In fact one of the most important uses (in my opinion) of government power is to prevent a limitation in the freedom of people by restricting actions from other people and organisations that try to limit this freedom.
An example could be pollution. The government (through regulatory bodies) limits the freedom of people and industry to pollute my neighbourhood. That is a limitation in their freedom but it is done to protect our right to avoid pollution (breathing unpolluted air and so on).
My point is that your freedom to swing your arms in the air ends where my nose begins - and that it is the duty of our government to enforce the rules securing that (the rules are of course passed by the legislative body).
I chose Suse because it's reasonably popular, it's configuration and updates were relatively easy, and, unlike Fedora/RedHat you download (almost) the same CD that's "paid-for" box, then buy a license later if you need corporate support.
I used to use Red Hat 9 and earlier, for the same reasons. Unfortunately, now that RH9 is no longer getting official vendor updates, it no longer meets my criteria.
For demos and "instant linux," I prefer Knoppix, although SuSE's live CD is okay.
I haven't tried it, but something along the lines of LinSpire would be good for Windows98 converts.
For special-purpose configurations, such as firewalls, I'll use a CURRENTLY SUPPORTED, FREQUENTLY UPDATED/EASY-TO-UPDATE distro that's designed for that purpose.
I guess this means I'm a nerd, I'm a nerd, and I'm a nerd.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Debian: You are like Ayn Rand: you insist that everything in your system be internally consistent, at the expense of nobody else being able to understand you.
Red Hat: You want to be Microsoft, except without the jackboots and the viruses. Well ... maybe the jackboots.
SuSE: You remember how fascist and self-righteous the Novell administrator for your high school was? Surprise -- that's you!
Knoppix: You're good at getting Windows users to try Linux. But hey -- they're Windows users.
Mepis: You sound like a child talking about urinating.
Fedora: You eat Nike cheeseburgers and wear McDonald's sneakers, to show that you are not a corporate whore.
Linspire: You are root. All the time. Isn't that k3wl? Here, have a virus!
3.243F6A8885A308D313
I use Fedora, according to this, that makes me a conformist.
I never thought I'd live to see the day that using linux makes a person a "conformist". I suppose that makes linux mainstream.
"This distribution is popular with those who always count in binary, and are politically correct in a free software kind of way. Many are suspected of having been nursed on a TTY. Debian users take pride in the fact that their distribution is always several releases behind the latest version of the kernel, but makes up for that by being more difficult to install and use."
uh... no....
I use debian because it takes zero effort to upgrade packages - no BS, and if there's a change in the default /etc files, i have the option of keeping my old config or use the new package maintener's version. Unlike rpms, the debian packaging system doesnt just dump the files. it checks more than that.
I dont ever have to download ISOs and reinstall the OS from scratch.
There's also a lot less crap installed on my machine than distros like Mandrake or Redhat.
I dont have to worry about rpm packages breaking my system. Packages aren't outdated because I'm running unstable...
I actually find it quite easy to install with their newest installer
i'd rather spend time getting work done than wasting time configuring my system and updating broken packages. I don't want to read packages of documentation from linuxdoc. I just want things to work without the need of manually changing LD_LIBRARY_PATH or using a distro that comes with a beta version of gcc (redhat).
my blog
Inequality is unfreedom? Is "unfreedom" a word? You know, there might be a reason why a (frictionless system) breaks down into such equalities: some people are better at giving other people what they want better than others.
For instance, I frequent Chilies, and I love their food (from the choices to the results). It's not Le Bec Fin, but it's a decent place to grab a bite to eat (average $16-22). Contrast that with any number of diners out there, lacking in business. Foods not terribly good, prices are ok, not much of an atmosphere. You see, Chilies gives people what they want, and so they grow($$$). What you argue is that they should all grow, equally. It's so a antithetical to...life, that you would have to redesign the universe from the ground up to support it.
The rights given to you are simple: no matter how much property you accumulate (from nothing to a lot), you have the same rights to it. Live for yourself, and the universe will take care of itself.
Lastly, while capitalism achieves inequality (with some people rich, and some people poor), and socialism does create equality, it's not in the manner that you think. Socialism, after a run of many years, creates equality by MAKING EVERYONE POOR. The U.S.S.R (putting aside the political figures) may have been one of the most equal states to ever exist, but I doubt the people saw it as that.
I am John Hurt.
Debian - Nerd
Gentoo - Nerd
Knoppix - Nerd
Linspire - Nerd that shops at Walmart
Mandrake - Nerd
MEPIS - Nerd
Red Hat - Nerd
Slackware - Nerd
SUSE - Nerd
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer