In search of the perfect distro

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Wally Balljacker
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In search of the perfect distro

Post by Wally Balljacker » Thu Oct 20, 2005 10:52 pm

I've got a broken Debian Sid install sitting on my hard drive, and I really want something more stable, and alittle more polished. I'm kind of in the same boat as Dann, where I want a Debian-based distro that is completely compatible with standard .deb packages, and isn't KDE centric. I've used Ubuntu, and I really like it, it has the best community support of any distro I've ever used, has excellent GNOME integration (which I prefer), gets regular 6 month releases, and is 100% free. If only Ubuntu didn't stray so far from Debian, it would be perfect. I love Kanotix, (using it now since Debian is broken), but it uses KDE. Has anyone tried using GNOME, or XFCE with Kanotix? Or, does anyone know of another distro that fits what I want? Eh, I'll probably just end up installing Debian Sarge. It's not THAT old...
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mrben
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Re: In search of the perfect distro

Post by mrben » Fri Oct 21, 2005 3:17 am

Wally Balljacker wrote: If only Ubuntu didn't stray so far from Debian, it would be perfect.
Define "stray so far"? Ubuntu is committed to synchronising with the Debian Unstable tree every six months, and thus is probably one of the closest derivatives out there.....
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snarkout
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Post by snarkout » Fri Oct 21, 2005 9:04 am

Personally, I've never had a problem using a debian package on ubuntu (meaning dpkg -i packagename.deb). I have, however, had numerous problems with third party repos that work beautifully with debian not working with (or breaking) ubuntu. I think this is the major gripe most people have.
Shared pain is lessened, shared joy is increased; thus do we refute entropy.
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snarkout
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Post by snarkout » Fri Oct 21, 2005 9:06 am

You can see my thoughts on the whole WTF distro should I pick at linuxfortherestofus.com - I'm stumped as well.
Shared pain is lessened, shared joy is increased; thus do we refute entropy.
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Post by CptnObvious999 » Fri Oct 21, 2005 2:08 pm

I had the same problems with Ubuntu and the severe breakage in Kanotix with KDE. Thats why I switched to Gentoo. It may take a while to install some programs but it basically like building from source so there is less breakage and theres one standard repository. I have had problems getting a couple of programs to compile but I have never had to uninstall Xorg or kde or anything like that unlike my previous Debian experiences. If you have a fairely fast machine it doesn't take too long to compile unless you doing something like KDE. I'm not saying Debian is bad Im just saying I like Gentoo better and you *might* want to give it a try.

EDIT: also you might want to check out this if you have some apt breakage
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