Survey, What Linux flavour do you use/love?

[oni-kun]

So I've been wondering. What distribution of Linux do you work in, in your home personal computer, homeserver, or at a job you've come accustomed to?

 

Here are a list of the 5 most common major distributions used:

 

1) Debian / Ubuntu

2) Slackware

3) Fedora

4) Mandriva

5) (open) Suse

 

I've tried some interesting flavours, starting off at Ubuntu but found I didn't need many of the features, including the GUI. Gnome seemed to be buggy when I've wanted to do certain things with it. After that I stuck with Arch Linux which is a lightweight and 'powerful' distribution that I run most of my jobs on with out hassle.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

In case anyone does not currently use/have never tried Linux, feel free to explore the links and try some out, Most come with the option for GRUB, which allows a 'boot menu' for selection between use of your own OS or Linux.

 

Tell! 

[trq]

I started with RedHat7.2 about 8 years ago, then Slack, then Gentoo.

 

About 2 years ago I moved to place that only had a dialup connection so I would take my laptop into work once a week and update my own portage tree (including all the required sources I needed) to maintain about 4 machines. This of course became pretty unmaintainable.

 

I'm not much of a fan of the RedHat related distros. Gentoo & Debian for me I'm afraid.

 

Ended up switching most machines to Debian and have pretty well stuck with it ever since.

 

Unfortunately I work in a windows only environment (which sux considering I hadn't owned a windows machine in about 5 years). I do run cygwin on a windows xp machine though.

[PugJr]

I've only tried DSL and Ubuntu server. DSL was really slow (Like 30 seconds to do anything) but it was being emulated through windows. I like the ubuntu server OS, but wouldn't have it for a personal computer.

[The Little Guy]

When I use Linux, I use Ubuntu.

[jeremywesselman]

I've been an Ubuntu user for a few years now. Started on Ubuntu 6.04 (Dapper Drake). I also deploy my web apps to my Linode which is running Ubuntu Server.

 

I had tried a few others before Ubuntu. It all started at ITT with Red Hat. From there I dabbled in Mandrake and SuSe also.

 

Ubuntu is the one for me so far.

 

Jeremy

[oni-kun]

When I use Linux, I use Ubuntu.

 

Indeed many people are scared to get into Linux, they like it 'as it is' with their proprietary software, but there's so many alternatives and more efficient ways of doing it! I'm glad Ubuntu has become a stable for linux newbies (for ease of package management etc.)

[Mindaugas]

When I use Linux, I use Ubuntu.

 

Same here

I liked it, but since sometimes I like to play games, and I can`t manage to run all games I wanted in Ubuntu, I go back in Win

[Daniel0]

Debian/Ubuntu and Gentoo are the only ones I've used personally. We use CentOS on the PHP Freaks servers, but I don't like it.

[yancy]

Fedora all the way. I like that it is functional, and not trying to be a Windows like Ubuntu.

[salathe]

We use CentOS for our web boxes and Ubuntu for the desktops. Not out of any particularly great affection for either but they get the job done.

[oni-kun]

My laptop's harddrive (250GBs) is filled with two Windows installations, one old. Right now i'm gonna take the important stuff off it wipe it with a good ol' GPARTED and install Gentoo. Thinking about it made me inspired to.

[trq]

Make sure you do the handbook install and not the install from the gui. It'll take you a little while but its well worth the effort.

[Lamez]

thorpe actually helped me setup my first Linux server. My first interaction with Linux was with Ubuntu. I love Ubuntu as a desktop. I run Debian on both of my servers. I have a web development\ file sharing server. I also have a proxy server running. I have never touched any other distro for a server. I have played around with mandrake, and other various distros.

 

For kicks and giggles, here is a tutorial file I put together, I have not updated it. It might have some random notes, but oh well.

# denotes to run as root

 

in nano commands:

CTRL+X, and press y, then press enter to save

CTRL+Z closes, with no changes

CTRL+W type in phrase, and press enter

NOTE: if apt-get does not work, try aptitude instead.

To reboot server type REBOOT as root, or if you have sudo installed sudo reboot

 

 

Start off by adding these (to save some headaces)

#nano /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian lenny main

deb http://www.backports.org/debian lenny-backports main contrib non-free

 

then close nano, and run

#apt-get update

#apt-get install debian-backports-keyring

 

NOW->

 

UPDATE!!

#apt-get update

 

First Install SSH

#apt-get install ssh

 

Install SUDO

#apt-get install sudo

then edit sudoers

nano /etc/sudoers

 

username_here ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL

 

Then change port in ssh (nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config), and disable root remote login.

(original port:22), set PermitRootLogin no, and make sure Protocol is set to 2 only

 

Now restart ssh server, /etc/init.d/ssh restart

 

Go ahead and install samba server with

sudo apt-get install samba

 

now add a user with:

sudo useradd username_here

sudo smbpasswd -a username_here

 

Create a folder to share:

sudo mkdir PATH

 

now give it permissions

sudo chown -R username_here folder/path

 

 

Open up the config file

with: sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

 

backup file, to do so, save the smb.conf as something different like smb_b.conf, to do so press CTRL+O

 

now open up the orginal file, and erase everything!

and add this with your settings

 

[global]

 

workgroup = Utopia

security = user

read only = no

netbios name = server_name

server string = File Server

log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m

max log size = 1000

syslog = 0

 

[Megatron]

path=/

browseable=yes

writeable=yes

valid users=lamez

admin users=lamez

 

 

 

save the file as smb.conf

 

now you can test it like: sudo testparm

 

now restart the samba server: sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart

 

You can test it also like:

sudo apt-get install smbclient

sudo smbclient -L //debianserver -U username_here

more conf options here: http://linux.die.net/man/5/smb.conf

 

Mouting a Hard Drive to a Folder...

If you are adding a second harddrive or even a third, you must set a folder or a mount point for it. If you want to share this hard drive, then make sure you make it the folder you made eairler

 

type: sudo fdisk -l

find the correct hard drive, it should look something like /dev/hdc

now lets partition, if needed, type this sudo cfdisk /dev/hdc (instead of hdc, make it the hard drive you are working with)

 

1. New >> Primary >> Size in MB

2. Once done select Write

3. Select Quit

 

now format it! mkfs.ext3 /dev/hdc1 (change hdc, to the name of the hd, leave the 1)

 

lets mount it!

sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/hdc1 /foler

change hdc to the name of the hard drive, and new-disk to folder name!

 

**Mouting Windows HD******************************************************************8

sudo mount -t ntfs -o nls=utf8,umask=0222 /dev/hdb1 /folder

 

change hdb1 to the hard drive! change folder to your folder!

 

adding to fstab

/dev/hdb1 /mnt/windows ntfs ro,umask=0222 0 1

 

change hdb1 to desired hd!

 

to have write access to the drive downlaod ntfs-3g (for etch)

 

wget http://snapshot.debian.net/archive/2007/03/01/debian/pool/main/n/ntfs-3g/libntfs-3g0_0.0.0+20061031-6_i386.deb

wget http://snapshot.debian.net/archive/2007/03/01/debian/pool/main/n/ntfs-3g/ntfs-3g_0.0.0+20061031-6_i386.deb

sudo apt-get install fuse-utils libfuse2

sudo dpkg -i libntfs-3g0_0.0.0+20061031-6_i386.deb

sudo dpkg -i ntfs-3g_0.0.0+20061031-6_i386.deb

 

be sure to set the file system as ntfs-3g in fstab, and as you mount it.

 

**********************

 

you can check it by: sudo ls -lsa /folder

 

lets add it to fstab, so it will be mounted on boot up!

 

sudo nano /etc/fstab

 

add the following:

/dev/hdc1      /folder            ext3    defaults,errors=remount-ro 0      1

 

change hdc and /folder

 

save, and you are mounted

 

Lets install Lamp (Linux Apache MySql PhP) + Phpmyadmin-------------------------------

=Apache + PHP 5

sudo apt-get install apache2 php5 libapache2-mod-php5 (<-- change 5 to 4 for php 4)

 

-Might not need.*

now type in the the ip of the machine to see if it works, now if it redirects to the folder: apache2-default/ you can change by:

cd /etc/apache2/sites-available/

sudo nano default

 

find this and comment it out RedirectMatch ^/$ /apache2-default/ by adding a # to the beggining of it!

now restart the apache server by: sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

now delete the apache2-defualt dir by: sudo cd /var/www && rm -rf apache2-default/

 

 

 

=MySql

sudo apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client php5-mysql

 

Make Public:

sudo nano /etc/mysql/my.cnf

find Find the line bind-address = 127.0.0.1 and comment it out (with #)

 

sudo netstat -tap

 

Output Looks like below

 

tcp 0 0 *:mysql *:* LISTEN 4997/mysqld

 

change mysql password:

 

sudo mysqladmin -u root password new-pass-word-goes-here

or

sudo mysqladmin -h root@local-machine-name -u root -p password your-new-password

 

restart!

sudo /etc/init.d/mysql restart

 

 

=PHPMYADMIN

sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin

 

type: sudo nano /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

find the very last line, and add this: Include /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf

 

restart apache: sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

[JonnoTheDev]

CentOS. Mostly familiar with Redhat type distros.

[gizmola]

For Desktop -> Ubuntu.

For Server OS -> RHEL/Centos.

 

If you really want to geek out on your desktop:  Gentoo.

 

 

 

 

[oni-kun]

Make sure you do the handbook install and not the install from the gui. It'll take you a little while but its well worth the effort.

 

Gentoo requires a 'Stage3' tar to be downloaded (separately) to livecd to install? wtf? I preferred not to generate an image out of it and manage to shove it on yet another DVD of mine. Only other way was to use Links (text browser) to download it to the temporary mount and retrieve it from lost+found. Made me quickly get off that. Even the LiveDVD wasn't functional, I always have bad luck with new distros.

 

Right now I'm just installing Arch Linux, I'd prefer the -less of default packages and am just sticking with XFCE, I'm installing it right now, and hopefully I can get my Wireless broadcom chip to work with my bloody laptop! (these laptops are known to take forever to set up wireless..)

 

Off to do some more modprobing.

 

@Thorpe, Thankfully I've dev'd a few things before to go in from command line and install, but the annoyances of having to import (physically) a package just makes me angry, The 'minimal' ISO is the newest, Why? It's 200mbs, and has no installer (the stage I was referencing to), Why on earth wouldn't they place it in with the '200mb minimal iso'??

 

EDIT: Whilst partitioning, my NTFS partition reads as invalid, although out of GParted it seems to read as an NTFS. I pray I've not lost all my work....

[oni-kun]

Woo! Got the XFCE shell up. Amazing the lack of instructions the guide gives you about Xorg. It doesn't even say to install it.. 

[trq]

Why on earth wouldn't they place it in with the '200mb minimal iso'??

 

So that you get the most up-to-date system. The install cd doesn't matter. In fact I haven't used a Gentoo cd to install Gentoo ever.