What distro are you trying right now?

[PiElle]

Originally Posted by dragonbite

Yeah, I'm looking forward to upgrading to 12.2 over the weekend (unless I just can't wait). Since it is fresh install, there is really nothing to lose (except time).

I'm eager to install it.
It looks like a very good and stable Distro ...

[nonamedotc]

Well, trying to get it installed ... not much success. The alpha TC5 live images worked fine. I got the full gnome shell experience - haven't done much with it yet! (got tied up with some other work..)

[bkahuna]

Last three months with pro/cons:

Archlinux- works just like you want with only what you add / tendency to miss packages you would otherwise not know you needed for certain functionality. TOO MUCH TINKER
Gentoo- USE flags are amazing, as is portage. the package repos are relatively up-to-date and overlays are a breeze/gnome 2.x in main repos, compile time for a 1.2ghz single-core processor makes USE flags obsolete when you factor *-bin installations.
Funtoo- Same as above with a more sensible install guide (abbreviated really) and better kernel selection.
Calculate- Quick install/If you want to remove anything you end up removing some calculate-*-meta package that is required by calculate-kde or -gnome or whatever desktop you're using, so then if you try and remove the calculate overlay, completely borks your system. This is shoddy. The meta containers are not necessary and the dependency resolution is nightmarish
Sabayon- Wonderful non-gentoo gentoo system, works just like you want it to. Installler is a breeze. No tinkering/just the wrong fit really, nothing really negative
Debian(sid)- familiar package management, easy installation, simple upgrades/broken packages, bad defaults, tinkering.
Fedora 17- breezy installation and update to media codecs. works well on both machines that I have/not super bleeding-edge, and in a couple of months will have to update again.
Salix(ratpoison)- works like a champ! i love ratpoison and the defaults for all of the text-based applications are wonderful/old kernel and package selection from slackware. expecting this to change once 14 is released.

Really, Fedora 17 is what I want for what I want. The upgrade process from version to version doesn't phase me much because of the EOL factor (we're talking 2014ish), and by then a version upgrade will be worth it. I'd really like a cinnamon spin, but that's not really an issue because fedorautils lets you install cinnamon pretty hands-free. Like where I'm at, found some neat projects to get involved with (anaconda/kickstart) and yum is as painless as it could be. Was a RedHat user in the 90's, and used Fedora Core 3 for a short while before switching to Arch/KDE-based distros forever (Mepis being a big one). KDE is dumps now (akondai?), and I have real stuff to do on my system that isn't UI-fung-shuy related.

I'd love to run ratpoison/eterm/screen/vim/vimprobable/mutt/weechat/rtorrent/moc/mc/coreutils for life, but it's kind of a pipe dream

[Agent20]

Debian 6 (currently the stable release).

Works well, but the packages are quite old. It reminds me of when I started using Fedora a few years ago with the GNOME 2 desktop.

One extra setup step (compared to Fedora) is having to get the graphics firmware from a non-free repository before being able to use hardware accelerated OpenGL with the open source drivers.

[Magickman]

PCLinuxOS KDE 86-64. The reason? The newest Nvidia drivers do not play will with my machine, an ASRock N68C-GS FX with Nvidia MCP68S chipset, and Nvidia GeForce 7025 graphics by means of VGA connector. The smallest screen resolution I can get with Fedora is 1024 x 768, and the resolution I like is 1600 x 1200. I can easily adjust the resolution with Drake Config, but no such tool exists for Fedora that I am aware of. If someone could show me how to make my resolution like I want it, I would install Fedora 17 right now. I posted about this....
What Happened to my Display Resolution?
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=283757
and tried the one small piece of advice,
"I would start by renaming the /etc/x11/xorg.conf and let the system create a new one... "
But upon reboot, no screens could be found.
I even looked up and installed the newest Nvidia driver:
Linux x64 (AMD64/EM64T) Display Driver
http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux-d...43-driver.html
Still, no smaller resolution than 1032 x 768, so big it bothers me to look at the screen. Will someone let me know, in this thread, when this is resolved? I had never had a problem before I lost my HDD last week and had to reinstall Fedora.

[nonamedotc]

I hate KDE with a passion. So, trying Chakra

[ocratato]

Fedora 16 - In this city Red Hat is by far the leading Linux distribution for commercial and government work, so I use Fedora at home so that I can get a preview of what is coming for Red Hat. However, I am doing development so I want a bit of stability, hence I follow one release back so that most issues have been resolved before I get there - many thanks to those of you that jump onto the bleeding edge.

[johnlvs2run]

Originally Posted by ocratato

I want a bit of stability, hence I follow one release back so that most issues have been resolved before I get there - many thanks to those of you that jump onto the bleeding edge.

That's a good idea. I will do that too from now on.

[jpollard]

With most current processors (supporting VMs) you can test the next version in a VM... then decide.

That is what made me skip F15, and it looks like I will be skipping F17 and possibly even F18.

[ocratato]

Originally Posted by jpollard

With most current processors (supporting VMs) you can test the next version in a VM... then decide.

That is what made me skip F15, and it looks like I will be skipping F17 and possibly even F18.

Strange that you should mention VMs - I have just finished setting up VirtualBox for the first time.
(A friend wants do some C#/Mono stuff, and I want to be able to get rid of it after we are done.)

A VM can give you a quick impression of the usefulness of a distribution, but its not good for finding those deep unusual problems. For that you need lots of real users for an extended period of time on a popular distribution.

Out of interest, what are your concerns about F17 and F18?

[jpollard]

It still has problems booting (on some systems using BIOS), still has problems with systemd, still has problems with Gnome (though improving - having to install lots of not-very-supported plugins to make something usable is just so wrong).

F18 is still a work in progress and is too raw for even good testing, but from reports it has the same problems of F17 plus the problems of a new distribution.

[famicommander]

Desktop 1 (modern gaming desktop)
Linux Mint 13 Maya 64 bit MATE, Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

Desktop 2 (~pre 2005 gaming desktop)
PC-BSD 9.0 Isotope 64 bit, Windows XP Home

Desktop 3 (fallback system, also use on another monitor for browsing/chat/music while gaming)
Fedora 17 Beefy Miracle 32 bit LXDE

Laptop 1 (most used machine)
Xubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin 64 bit

Netbook (mostly for guests/parents to use)
Lubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin 64 bit

eMac (can't remember when I last used it but it's still set up for some reason)
Debian Lenny PPC, Mac OS 10.5.8

I can't wait until I can get rid of Windows. I only use it for gaming and even then it's only when I can't get a game to run in WINE.

[Magickman]

Since last evening, after discovering my resolution problems was in my monitor, and not my software, I reinstalled Fedora 17 KDE 86_64. Now I have proper resolution, and all choices of same. I am a Fedora man at heart, have been for years, but some days it distresses me, making me work for my Fedora installation.

[kevdora]

been using SolusOS based on debian stable , works straight out of the box and has the classic gnome 2 feel. It automatically recognized the integrated sound and provided the correct driver, which was driving me nuts with some other installs and was crucial for XBMC. Great OS that was up and running in 10 mins on an old Dell optiplex.

[R3v0lut10nary]

I just decided to make a fairly significant switch from Fedora 17 KDE to Debian Testing.

The original plan was just to stick with my normal KDE, but then I decided to give MATE a try. Once I verified everything could be adjusted to my prefs.... buh-bye to KDE.

It's almost like running an updated version of Ubuntu 10.10 - back when Ubuntu still felt like Linux.

APT is taking some getting used to, I still find myself typing 'yum' in the terminal, but it's not that big of an adjustment for the scope of my package management needs.

It's a beautiful thing. Right now I'm technically tracking 'testing' but since Wheezy is frozen, it's more like a very stable pre-release of Debian 7.0.

Hell, I may just stick with Wheezy until I decide it's time to upgrade, then go back to 'testing', then back to 'next stable'. No more ISO's, unless of course something goes horribly wrong - which is always a possibility.

I've never been a fanboy of anything, and it's still too early to tell --- but with a basic knowledge of Linux you can really take advantage of Debian's testing & sid branches to get the best of both worlds - stable AND as modern as you need.

---------- Post added at 11:44 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:04 AM ----------

Adding to the above -

I would have just added Debian to my Fedora grub list and dual-booted, except for the fact that Fedora had forced EFI on me which makes that option considerably more complicated than it should be. I'm also less interested in semi-annual installs than I used to be. But I don't like the upgrade pace of rolling releases like Arch. That's another area where my current setup seems to find a balance.

I may add some other distribution like Scientific Linux for the small amount of web development I occasionally do, where practically nothing will change for months or years at a time.