Gaming Favourite Linux Distribution?

[Deleted User]

I'd create a poll, but due to the insane number of distributions out there it would be an impossibly long and fragmented poll

So, what's yours? I personally like Ubuntu. I don't get why "Pro Linux" users hate it so much.

 

[The Catboy]

Personally I love Fedora myself, but I also use Ubuntu as well.

 

[monkat]

I'm a fedora man, myself.

Don't have to be a genius to install it, but unlike Ubuntu, it is pretty stubborn with their open source repos, and isn't as...bloated would be the best word, I think.

Repos are quite large, with additional ones such as RPM Fusion (Free + Non-Free), and the KDE spin isn't nearly as buggy as Kubuntu.

I'm a huge fan of the idea behind Arch, but I can never get off my ass to install it. They have excellent documentation though.

Gentoo....it's really cool. I mean, it's a really cool idea, anyway. But takes forever to install / upgrade things, since you compile them all from source through the repos.

Well...there's my opinion.

EDIT: As far as Debian goes, it's great or servers, but all of that "outdated" software would bug me.

 

[Fear Zoa]

I just use ubuntu ...and I only use that for things that linux is good at.....like cracking wep's...and formating stuff.....and other stuff

 

[Deleted User]

Just found this from years ago...

http://gbatemp.net/t85097-linux-ubuntu-is-...-shit?&st=0

Oh lawd, I was such a moron when it came to Linux back then. Now I'm pretty good with any distro, including Gentoo but I don't bother with that any more.

 

[Deleted User]

Just found this from years ago...

http://gbatemp.net/t85097-linux-ubuntu-is-...-shit?&st=0

Oh lawd, I was such a moron when it came to Linux back then. Now I'm pretty good with any distro, including Gentoo but I don't bother with that any more.

Yeah, same, I run Ubuntu as a dual-boot alongside windows now too. I still made some idiot mistakes during installation, but things are better now, and I couldn't be happier
w/ Ubuntu.

 

[sweenish]

i like Mint, which is a spin off of ubuntu.

haven't tried any other distros except puppy.

 

[Mazor]

While I use FreeBSD as my main OS and not Linux, my answer would easily be Arch.

The reason why I and many others like it is that with Arch you can extremely easily get a very fast system that only has the software you need and no bullshit.

I don't get why "Pro Linux" users hate it so much.

Ubuntu has partly suffered from the same thing as Vista: hate it because others hate it.

The few people who actually have a valid reason to hate it often bring up the same few points of which the bloat is one of the points I agree with the most. Ubuntu is one of the bloatiest distros available due to its design to fit everyone. A standard Ubuntu installation comes with tons of software for stuff you'll never do and with many applications for the same purposes.

"But you can uninstall all programs you don't like!" is a commonly used response to this. Except there really is no reason to go through deleting all programs and all their dependencies when you can just start from zero.

"Ha! But you can install Ubuntu from a minimum CD without any of these programs then, 1-0 to me archfag!". While this is true, when you start installing what you want through the synaptic package manager you will be installing everything in each package group. That is, you will be installing every single optional package for every single package you wish to install. Since Arch is modular by design its package manger lets you choose which if any of these optional packages to install, thus leading to a much cleaner system if you so wish.

Also, there is a big difference between the repositories for Ubuntu and Arch. Ubuntu's repository focuses on maintaining stable packages, which means slow updates, where as Arch's repository aims to be bleeding edge with the latest of the latest packages. This is really what I miss the most with Arch when I am on FreeBSD with its updates equally slow to Ubuntu.

 

[TheLifeRuiner]

While I use FreeBSD as my main OS and not Linux, my answer would easily be Arch.

The reason why I and many others like it is that with Arch you can extremely easily get a very fast system that only has the software you need and no bullshit.

I don't get why "Pro Linux" users hate it so much.

Ubuntu has partly suffered from the same thing as Vista: hate it because others hate it.

The few people who actually have a valid reason to hate it often bring up the same few points of which the bloat is one of the points I agree with the most. Ubuntu is one of the bloatiest distros available due to its design to fit everyone. A standard Ubuntu installation comes with tons of software for stuff you'll never do and with many applications for the same purposes.

"But you can uninstall all programs you don't like!" is a commonly used response to this. Except there really is no reason to go through deleting all programs and all their dependencies when you can just start from zero.

"Ha! But you can install Ubuntu from a minimum CD without any of these programs then, 1-0 to me archfag!". While this is true, when you start installing what you want through the synaptic package manager you will be installing everything in each package group. That is, you will be installing every single optional package for every single package you wish to install. Since Arch is modular by design its package manger lets you choose which if any of these optional packages to install, thus leading to a much cleaner system if you so wish.

Also, there is a big difference between the repositories for Ubuntu and Arch. Ubuntu's repository focuses on maintaining stable packages, which means slow updates, where as Arch's repository aims to be bleeding edge with the latest of the latest packages. This is really what I miss the most with Arch when I am on FreeBSD with its updates equally slow to Ubuntu.

I'm still a pretty big noob to the Linux/UNIX world, so I was wondering why you chose FreeBSD? What advantages does it have/How does it differ from Linux distros? And most importantly, what do you use it for?


Also, I've only ever used Ubuntu/Linux Mint/Xubuntu, and I was very pleased with them. I had to switch back to Windows though because of school

 

[Mazor]

I'm still a pretty big noob to the Linux/UNIX world, so I was wondering why you chose FreeBSD? What advantages does it have/How does it differ from Linux distros?
(Skip down for tl;dr.)

I chose FreeBSD because it has _two_ (excellent) official repositories instead of one. First it has a standard binary package manager like the package manager of Arch or Ubuntu, a "binary" package manager is one that downloads and installs precompiled binaries, code that has already been compiled. Secondly it offers a source code repository which you can use to compile and install packages from source code (also in one single command just like with the binary package manager).

There are two main differences between precompiled binaries and binaries you compile yourself:
1. Binaries you compile yourself run a fuckton faster since they are compiled to be optimized for your specific system whereas precompiled binaries are compiled generically to fit many systems and thus not optimized.
2. When compiling yourself you get to choose which optional features your binary should support (like a certain type of drivers for a media player). In FreeBSD, unless you have turned this feature off, you are presented with a list (navigate selection up and down with arrow keys, press space to check the checkbox of current selection and enter to continue) of optional features to add support for each time you compile from source using the repository. Disabling support for features you don't need leads to smaller packages and even faster packages.

Compiling from source can be done on any distro, but the general procedure requires you to:
1. Search the internet for your package.
2. Download a source code archive.
3. Extract the archive and go into the extracted directory.
4. Run './configure' and go to step 1 for each missing dependency it tells you about, and search for solutions for each problem it comes up with.
5. Run 'make' and search for solutions for each problem it comes up with and then 'make install'.

Whereas in FreeBSD you only type one command to have all of this automatically done for you without any problems as the packages in the repository are made specfically for FreeBSD and are very stable (hence unfortunately slow updates as I mentioned previously). I have seen a few similar solutions for other distros, but none have been official, with the exception of Gentoo's official package manager which works like this except is a bit more complicated and more importantly will break your system unless you know exactly what you are doing, and none have worked nearly as good as FreeBSDs.

The thing about compiling from source is that it takes time, which in my opinion is really worth it to get faster packages for the most part, and for those small programs where performance is irrelevant you can still use FreeBSDs binary package manager which is up to par with any other, except again for the slow updates.



tl;dr: FreeBSD gets you fucking fast packages without any hassle, the disadvantage is that updates for these packages are slow.

And most importantly, what do you use it for?

Programming, media, internet, running any non-game windows application in a VM (virtual machine, _full_ OS running virtually in a window). These things are pretty much the only things I do on a computer, for the odd occasion when I want to play a game I boot into my XP partition since gaming on any Unix-like (OS X partly excluded) is terrible for the most part.

QUOTE(TheLifeRuiner @ Mar 3 2011, 10:57 AM)

I had to switch back to Windows though because of school

What specifically required you to switch back? Any non-graphically intensive windows program can be run in a VM under any Linux distro or BSD.

 

[Maz7006]

Debian or Mint - i use both and like them

was into openSUSE a lot, then meh, too many updates to keep up with my limited bandwidth.

 

[trumpet-205]

Debian, Crunchbang and Arch Linux. Not a fan for Ubuntu.

 

[Frederica Bernkastel]

Pretty much Debian and Arch.
Although I do use Ubuntu Server Edition on my servers, as it's pretty much the same as Debian Server Edition.

 

[Deleted User]

@trumpet
Oh, I used #! once, it was pretty damn good.

As for the bloat in Ubuntu, it's far less bloat than you get in the majority of Windows versions. Plus there's not that much really.

 

[TheLifeRuiner]

What specifically required you to switch back? Any non-graphically intensive windows program can be run in a VM under any Linux distro or BSD.

Ah, I see, I see. I tried giving FreeBSD a go in a VM but I don't know how to start the X environment nor set xfce to default. I skimmed through the FreeBSD guide though, because it was late at night and I just wanted a quick install with a GUI. I'm stuck at terminal though lol.

I'm guessing FreeBSD is blazingly fast? Strangely, I never thought about using a VM to run windows programs (lol).
Reasons for Windows:
Visual Studio 2010 for VB
Need For Speed World
DoubleTwist (media player that does wireless sync with android)
One Touch Video Capture (this is a big one - for a capture card i use; i don't know if running it under a VM would reduce capture performance, but it's something i've been wary of and haven't researched)

For now, I'm just gonna try and figure out wtf I have to do to get xfce up and running. I GUESS I should read everything in the manual, but I don't want to spend that time reading haha though I'm probably going to spend a similar amount of time figuring out what's wrong...

edit:
I figured out what was wrong: I was in the wrong directory lol

 

[zuron7]

Linux Mint and Kubuntu.
For some reason I prefer the KDE desktop environment than the one Ubuntu uses(I think it's Gnome).

 

[pistone]

my preferite is ubuntu i like the gnome desktop on the kde is to much going one ..........even thought im curioz about opensuse
from what iv read on internet is almost good as ubuntu/kubuntu and other ubuntu derivates,will it boot as fast as ubuntu???

 

[Frederica Bernkastel]

my preferite is ubuntu i like the gnome desktop on the kde is to much going one ..........even thought im curioz about opensuse
from what iv read on internet is almost good as ubuntu/kubuntu and other ubuntu derivates,will it boot as fast as ubuntu???

OpenSUSE boots in roughly the same amount of time as Ubuntu (at least last time I had them both installed side by side) but it's better in every other way.
There are even better distributions out there though, such as Arch or CrunchBang (well the statler releases, which are based off debian as opposed to ubuntu)

 

[KDH]

Arch for me, though I'm quickly growing fond of Slackware, especially on my laptops. Not having to update every time I turn them on is nice.