[geeks] Distro recommendations

[N. Miller]

On Sep 23, 2007, at 1:40 AM, Jochen Kunz wrote:

> On Sat, 22 Sep 2007 19:50:04 -0400
> Phil Stracchino <phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net> wrote:
>
>> I specifically DO NOT want to have a desktop that visually  
>> emulates or
>> attempts to emulate Windows
> [...]
>> And I absolutely will not tolerate a distro that goes behind my back
>> and changes settings I have configured manually back to what it  
>> thinks
>> they should be.
> Sounds like you are a candidate for Debian.
>
> Or NetBSD. The most sane implementation of the Unix paradigm in
> existence. You don't need to compile everything yourself out of  
> pkgsrc.
> You can install binary packages:
> pkg_add
> http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages-2007Q2/NetBSD-4.0/i386/wm/ 
> fvwm-2.4.
> 20.tgz
> Dependencies will get handled automagically. (Possibly you wane  
> wait for
> the upcoming pkgsrc-2007Q3 branch at the beginning of October.)

I have to agree with the Debian sentiments, or possibly a *BSD.  I  
haven't touched any non-OS X BSD since the abortive attempt to  
shoehorn OpenBSD onto that Sun Blade 100 a couple of years back, so  
can't recommend anything.

I start with Xubuntu on desktops for the quick, painless install and  
it's (relative) light weight, and go from there by adding the  
"regular" Debian repositories.  I was an fvwm2 maven as well until I  
started using Xfce.  I suppose if you have up-to-date rc files for  
fvwm, it'd be more of a no-brainer, but I didn't, so I took the path  
of least resistance and stuck with Xfce.

Also, as an alternative to Firefox, I find Opera on Xfce to be light  
and fast.  I haven't used it much yet so I am not all that well- 
versed with it's UI differences at this point but my few hours of  
local testing with it have been positive. The Xubuntu box I installed  
Opera on is mostly a staging point for our new websites where we are  
beating CSS and related into submission before uploading to the live  
sites.

=Nadine=