I saw a few of us in the Vista vs XP thread and I figured that instead on continuing to hijack that thread that I'd just make one for us Linux geeks.

Going back to what I read about complaints about even in Linux tons of system resources going to waste to draw pretty lines and what not. Give XFCE a try. It's more than just standard X, but doesn't go into all the bloat of Gnome and KDE.

And to the person who wanted the ability to customize every last bit of their Linux distro. Check out Gentoo. That is a distro built with that very idea in mind. I was introduced to Linux by a minimalist and the swore by both his distro and his window manager. Of course, they're not going to be for everyone, but if it fits your needs then use it. What's beautiful about Linux is we have these options. We're not tied to one distro or one window manager or one architecture. We have the freedom to choose what works best for us.

I'm fairly lazy when it comes to wanting to customize everything. I ran Gentoo for about 2 years and it was a great experience for me. I learned a lot just in installing the distro. However, it was just too much work for me to try to keep up. The distro works great until something doesn't, and then good luck trying to find out what the problem is. I got fed up with it and took 30 min to install Ubuntu. For what I want it for, it works great. Sure, the kernel has all sorts of crap I don't need. Sure, Gnome is bloated. Sure, it installs libraries and entire programs I'll probably never use. I'll be damned though if it's not easy as hell to use.

Personally, I like fluxbox. It's definitely not for the non-saavy though. Requires a lot of time and effort configuring it to get things running smoothly. The payoff in response though is well worth it, IMO.

Yes. This is why NIXes do deserve attention. I am going to wait, and try again, and repeat until there is a full-GUI Linux distribution.

I like an idea of kicking the M$ in their balls for what they have done too. Just another side of motivation.

Most are all gui. My father runs linux and he has never had to use command line. The nice thing about it is if you know how and have the desire you can do things from the gui and tweak the hell out your installation. But if you don't want to chances are you will never have to do so.

Well they did ask for an opinion on other options like linux lol

Like I said, I was a dedicated RH/Fedora user for a bit now but I love the control of Arch Linux and run GNOME when I need GUI apps like a word/excel compatible app or the internet. The command prompt and community for Arch is so awesome. Normal packages are handled by pacman but there are other tools like yaourt that allow for installation of compiled packages and tools (that are done by the community) for apps not originally packaged for arch (since most are done for RPM or Debian) or that are not official releases. That support is why I chose Arch over others.

Ubuntu was the easiest to get into (though I ran Kubuntu with the KDE GUI) and Fedora 10 was a bit more powerful and secure. I originally installed Arch because with Kubuntu and Fedora came many apps I did not require. WIth Arch I installed GNOME core packages and then added my own web browser, office apps, music app, etc. The clutter is gone and the speed for me is worth it (it's on an aspire one so it's not all that powerful).


But, since we're on the linux topic, does anyone have a recommendation for a good server distro? I'm looking mostly for use as a home-based server for my own web development testing, bulk storage, and FTP capabilities for when I'm not at home and need one of those files.

Dinky Snippet Linux

I've heard good things about CentOS and am going to be giving it a try on my own server once I take the time to restore my raid after a failed hard drive.

I just pulled out an old doorstop and got it back up and running again. After a quick test with DOS to make sure everything worked I stripped the drive and installed Slackware 10.0 I also need a local Linux server for testing. I just got it up and running last night sent mail out with Pine then started fluxbox and got online with mozilla. Didn't seem all that hard to config. I sure hope the rest goes as well. I am going to run MYSQL, PHP, on Apache. Then load Joomla and give it a run.

Does anyone have any experience with Ubuntu Server? I don't need anything horribly complicated but my laziness has me leaning toward a GUI-based distro more than something like the command-line based distro I run on my laptop. The server is fairly capable (P4 1.8Ghz, 512 Ram, 2x 500GB hd) and since it'll be just a server and only for my use, I'm thinking the GUI stuff won't kill it too much.

I actually found SuSE Linux be pretty darn good, personally. Totally rock-solid distro, even it it's not the most user-friendly out there.

I'd be using Linux now if it weren't for the fact that Windows still has the greater software base.

you know, that was always my turnoff too. The more I looked into it, the less I feel that way. I use GIMP for images. Not as good as photoshop I'll admit, which is why this computer is still winXP until I find a good server distro. I have openoffice - for free. it opens all my excel and word docs. I use Amarok for music - way faster and more reliable than iTunes. I've always used firefox so that's no different. bluefish is a nice little HTML app that is simple, small, and gets the job done. Other than games, I cannot think of one program I miss (other than adobe's stuff like PS, illustrator, etc). I know for some it's different but for me, it quickly became a no-brainer.

Most of my applications for linux don't even use the gui, especially, this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KveWz8l2yBw


Of course I should also be using the rtlib of the kernel to assure nothing is missed in providing fluid motion, but so far so good.

NASA use Linux. (Fedora)

http://jaboutboul.blogspot.com/2008/02/fedora-on-final-frontier.html