Arch seems to be a good one, there always seems to be arch users on the ubuntu forums. <div class="gmail_quote">On Jan 9, 2011 1:09 PM, "Paul Morgan-Roach" <<a href="mailto:roachy@roachy.net">roachy@roachy.net</a>> wrote: > On Sat, Jan 8, 2011 at 9:22 PM, Steve Fisher <<a href="mailto:xirconuk@gmail.com">xirconuk@gmail.com</a>> wrote: > >> >> Mandriva - I am a refugee from Mandriva, looking bad over on the forums, >> hardly any one there! Worked well, hardware recognised (and I know what I >> am doing!) >> >> Fedora - didn't like it, could fry an egg on my trackpad! >> > > IMHO Fedora is a great distro, but requires some tweaking to optimise it > well (unloading unneccessary modules and stopping unused services helps). > Also find that because it is so "bleeding edge" caution is required with > updates.....I've had some issues with bugfixes that subsequently expose more > bugs. It's solid though and a good opportunity to see some new features in > projects :) The Fedora forum guys are all really helpful as well > > >> PCLinuxOS - Forum full of rabid fan boys, it didn't work well at all. >> > > Agreed - couldn't stand it last time I used it! > >> >> Linux Mint Debian - very, very impressed! Probably going to stick with >> this on the laptop. Rolling distro, attractive and the forums are friendly >> and helpful. Cpufreq didn't run out of the box and the Debian methods of >> doing things are not as straight forward as Ubuntu, but it just feels right. >> Still got a huge learning curve, moving from a RPM based distro to a DEB >> based. But very impressed. >> > > Never really played with Mint - this is interesting feedback - might give it > a go! > >> >> > So I now have 4 machines on 4 different distros!! >> >> Have I missed any distro worth investigating? >> > > Depends what you're looking for. I've spent a lot of time distro hopping > over the years. The ones that really stand out are Crunchbang - which is > *seriously* light and very usable. I've got that running blindingly fast on > my wifes EeePC 701. Openbox requires a little bit of command line work > setting up menus for new apps etc, but it has a nice minimalist feel - and > it's FAST!! (<a href="http://crunchbanglinux.org/">http://crunchbanglinux.org/</a>) The community in the Crunchbang > camp are really helpful too. > > Debian is naturally a great distro to have a go with. It's about as stable > as anything out there and it's quick. Again, great community and great > documentation out there. > > If you want an "everything but the kitchen sink" distro, have a look at > Sabayon. It's Gentoo based but has some nice features like using Anaconda > as an installer. And there are loads of packages available. The default > install is huge though. It's well put together and polished and again, > friendly community. It is a bit heavy though! > > If you want to have a look at security tools, you could have a look at > Backtrack -it's a pen-testing distro which is good for learning a little > about some of the security tools out there. SamuraiWTF is good for testing > web application security. > > If you have a little patience, and want to "roll your own" you could also > have a look at Arch Linux. This is a great distro if you want to build from > the ground up, installing only the stuff you want/need. You'll probably > need to set aside a weekend to get something usable for day-to-day use, but > it's pretty rewarding :) > > Does this help at all? > > P </div>