i know most of you use something other than fedora but i've been a red hat guy since i started using linux.
i'm not happy with the 'stable release' of fc4. it's buggy. even as a standard install with standard user use it's buggy.
all i've done is install some blug-ins for browsing. i've not installed anything else other than what came with it.

i've tried 4 or 5 linux flavours and i think it's time to make the permanent switch to debian.

Debian is a good choice, but I still love my Gentoo

Redhat DOES suck, and FC2 is the real only stable edition at the moment (which my webserver uses).

Seemed an appropriate time for this...

Debian > *



That is all.

fedora/red hat is buggy? Duh?

Use debian.

fc4 is noticably buggy. in alot of ways. and i'm just using it as a desktop.

Ubuntu > *

use Debian. Or use Gentoo if you have a lot of free time.

Edit: Ubuntu is based on Debian, so when I say "Use Debian" I'm including Ubuntu in there.

I tried to install Gentoo.

I failed miserably

You didn't follow the guide then. Pretty much the only major things that can go wrong involve /etc/make.conf. Like changing your chost halfway through an installation or using optimization settings that are outrageous (like 99% of the idiots who use Gentoo. Protip: Never - ever use cflags that someone recommends to you. If you don't know what the flags do based on their description in the gcc manpages, you should not be using them).

I always use the cflags "-march=****** -Os -pipe" and that's it. Sometimes I'll add in "-fomit-frame-pointer' if I'm feeling lucky (and that's the only other cflag that really affects performance in a major way). -Os is basically -O2/-O3, but it eliminates several of the options that result in a larger binary (conserving cache space).
GCC just isn't a very good optimizing compiler and trying to squeeze out performance by running Gentoo is silly. The advantage of Gentoo is portage (which is based loosely on BSD ports). That's it. If the average Gentoo user was interested in performance they'd be using ICC.

Once in a while some critical ebuilds end up being broken, but that's rarely a fault of Gentoo developers. For a while the build of python was broken, and in order to compile it you had to go in and manually change some gcc configuration options. Blech.

Now the default install is stage3, which takes about 1/10th the time and is much safer. Optionally after you install you can perform an 'emerge -e world; emerge -e world' to get a clean install with your manually-configured cflags.

I think the REAL problem was that I tried a stage 1 installation first time where everything was done via the console and I have no Linux experience...

My brain hurt after it, desptie loads of help from CMatty etc.

(me == foolio)

Everything in Linux is always done in the console. The UI programs usually just wrap console apps, and given enough time they'll break themselves so you'll have to go back to the console to fix them. :p

Gentoo stage 3 isn't a whole lot different from stage 1, but the stage 3 install takes much less time (so you know a lot sooner if you screwed up).

Hmm, do you need both DVD's to install debian?

I have DVD1 downloaded but have yet to download the second. Is the second one required?

You dont need *any* DVDs to install Debian; just the netinstall CD.

Also, while ubuntu is based on debian, they changed the whole user model to one that SUCKS so be careful. The first account you create is a "root" account, but you have to type your password every freaking time you want to do anything that root would want to do. It's totally annoying. They don't have a real root account, either.

Yeah, but i can't be bothered to let my PC spend hours downloading during install while i can't do anything else. I'd rather download more but be able to use my pc at the same time.

$ sudo bash

It's a security issue. People who recently switched over from Windows to Linux don't understand the dangers of running in root, so they end up using root to do everything. It's anaccident waiting to happen.

what he said.

it really doesn't take that long. i'm not sure what kind of connection you have but if it's anything more than dial up you choose what you want installed it just walk away for a bit while it donwloads the packages.

sudo is crap and it's annoying. They should have a toggle so you can turn that crud off at least.

Actually sudo is quite useful for certain purposes - such as quickly running X programs as root (nmapfe, for example) - but to be the *only* way to do anything as root? Yeah, that sucks.

BSD is where it's at. I just set up an OpenBSD server with RAIDFrame, which is some fun stuff.