Hi

travel

I hate it when I see X distro is better than Y distro and other likewise lame comments on trying to establish that their distro has a bigger nob than all the others.

At the end of the day everyone has their own personal choice.

Personally, Gentoo is for me.

Why?
Its simple, Gentoo doesn't even attempt to auto detect your swanky new hardware, it expects you to know what bloody hardware you own and configuring the hardware yourself, so you can't whine about it 'not working with your hardware', belive it or not, hardware is *not* that hard to configure.

It also doesn't have stupid snazy GUI's that try to configure (or screw up) everything for you, you learn how to edit your configs yourself, so if something gets screwed up then it really is your fault and you learn from the mistake.

No crudy package management system either, you don't get a dependency hell cockups, or 8 month old binaries. Portage automatically resolves dependent libraries and other packages judging from the USE options that you chose during a merge. You can set all manor of gcc g++ and ld optmisations to squeeze every drop of performance out of your system, so no more crap i586 (Pentium 1!) targeted binary builds. Got a Pentium 4 prescott?.. sweet, you can utilise most of its registers with gcc opt flags. The difference between FPU and SSE3 performance is massive.

Yea, this sounds all horribly compicated, just as well there's tons of documentation and a tightnip gentoo community to help you through your experience.

In fact, I've learned more about how Linux works and how everything is tied in together in the last year of using Gentoo than the prior 3 years of fiddling other distros put together.

So Gentoo is a pretty apt meta-distro, but this poll wasn't about which was best, but which is voted user favourate.. I'm not bothered Ubuntu was voted favourate, Gentoo works for me so I'll continue using it regardless of what most people uses.

Ubuntu was the only Linux distro that detected my printer (Lexmark Z12).

PCLinuxOS has a major flaw. It uses rpm for it's packages. Anyone who used a debian based system soon comes to hate rpm. When it becomes easier to compile software yourself instead of going through the depencies nightmare that rpm packages can create, you start looking for other options.

When it comes to rock solid stability and usability, I have used nothing that compares to Debian. However that stability comes at the price of using older versions of software.

Ubuntu does have some issues to work out, and I think they will have many fixed with the stable release of Breezy Badger later this month. I think that Ubuntu and Kubuntu will continue to grow in popularity.

In the meantime I'm trying Gentoo, so far it's been worth the long install time from compiling everything. Gentoo has such good documentation that I think that a novice can install it if they have experienced computer person on hand in case a problem arises, but it wouldn't be the first distro I'd recomend. Portage has to be one of the most ingenious ideas in Computer history. Of course a lot of credit has to go to FreeBSD for the core idea of ports.

I'd like to see a distro based around the new autopackage package system. I think that it has a lot of potential.

You only say that because it is on distrowatch as number one.
IMHO it is the WORST distro ever! I couldn't get it to work with my WIFI on any system,it's slow to load from CD,and it's bloated Gnome!
The winner should be either Mepis.PCLinuxOS or Suse. All are fast,stable,and work with most hardware out the box with KDE. Kubuntu is a pain for a Debian-based distro. Knoppix is faster.
And my fave Linspire,is another great one.

Check it out
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tuxmagazine.com%2Fnode%2F1000151

Well, the fans of PCLinuxos are a loud group :) I to am a PCLinuxos fan, It simply works and has a dedicated team of developers that listen to and care about their users. If you are looking for a simple, easy to use, yet powerful distro then choose PCLinuxos. If you want to spend hours setting up and maintaining a distro try something else.

Linux Mandrake 9.1 is the only one Linux distro that not giving me any trouble on my i586 PC (p233mmx with 92mb ram).
DSL, puppy, austrumi, slax, mandriva, t2, debian, knoppix, move, rh, fedora, even mini distros like movix and geexbox are really troublesome.
PCLOS? Mepis? Ubuntu? Xandros? Never dare to try them.
Suse? It is 4 i686 man!

Ubuntu ? What a joke !
Publicity ? What a fake !

If you are directed by publicity,
why don't choose WINDOWS ?

But I understand, ... Ubuntu catch first prise becouse
the money talks.

The real winner (especially for newbies) could be
mepis, xandros, knoppix, knopper, pclinuxos, ...

And the final winner, out a doubt, PCLINUXOS !
Why ? Just test it !

I gave Ubuntu a test drive and to me it was nothing to write home about. It had problems with my rather run-of-the-mill hardware and wasn't exactly ready for multimedia web browsing.

Though I'm not that technically proficient in Linux, I've used it for nearly five years now, starting out with Mandrake and trying other distros as time permitted.

PCLinuxOS is about as perfect a distro as you can get, in my opinion. Installation was a 15 minute process and when it was finished I had a quality OS at my fingertips, with just the right mix of applications, a look and "feel" that beats the pants off Ubuntu (or Kubuntu, for that matter), multimedia fully integrated into the browser, and an overall desktop experience that reflects the dedication and love Texstar puts into his creation.

Has it been painless? Of course not - updates have broken things a time or two, but a fix is invariably released nearly as fast as the problem is reported.

This is the only distro I felt strongly enough about to burn the ISO to CDs that I hand out to friends and acquaintances who are looking for an alternative to Mordorsoft.

Third place is an outstanding showing for a Linux distro that hasn't had a fraction of the press Ubuntu seems to receive. And I find it amusing that PCLinuxOS, in the opinions of its many happy users, is far and away a better quality distribution than those put out by some of the most well-known names in the business.

Congratulations to the team at PCLinuxOS on your showing. However, those of us in the know are perfectly aware who the REAL Number 1 is. :-)

I am fairly new to Linux and dont claim to be a guru in any way. However, I do know what works and what doesn't atleast for me. I have Ubuntu and can not figure out why it is so popular. It (IMO) has poor hardware detection, various serious sound issues and is a configuration nightmare. I never could get it to successfully install my avertv card or play media from the internet and sound issues plagued my every step. On the Ubuntu forums the openly admit to the sound issues, couldn't figure out why my tv card didn't work and had lengthy processes for internet media, which after much effort failed to fix my problem. The Ubuntu forums, however, are filled with nice people willing to help. After reading the Sept 1st issue I tried opensuse 10.0 and it was beautifully laid out. Very professional, but again it was a little difficult to set up and when I asked for help at 2 seperate forums I did not recieve any. This brings me to Mepis and PCLOS. Mepis is great it has a huge repository, is very stable and is ready to use right after installation. Mepis, though feels outdated, it is still using kde 3.3.2 and you really cant upgrade to 3.4 without risking damaging the entire system. Also when you update via synaptic it asks questions that a new user doesn't know how to answer. PCLinuxos, installs easily and is ready to use right after installation. I did not have to do anything except insert disk, click install me and follow a few simple instructions. Pclos is fast,up to date, stable and exeptionally well laid out. Texstar must work around the clock to keep it very current. Being a recent windows convert and new enough to Linux that I am not comfortable digging and rewriting config files I would have to say that PCLOS is the absolute best distro for the new linux user. With PCLinuxos the user simply points, clicks and enjoys.

This is some achievement.

1st Ubuntu, strongly publicised in computer press across the world, the project of a billionaire with huge resources, who even bought his way into a space trip, free disks mailed anywhere in the world, is it any wonder that Ubuntu won your poll.

2nd SuSE. The Mighty SuSE. Now owned by the mighty Novell company, possibly the beneficiary of many recommendations and tutorials. Here in UK, the examples that a weekly mag called Micro Mart give in their Linux Tutorials relate to SuSE. Certainly the choice of many computer journalists.

And then comes PCLinuxOS. The creation of a relatively ordinary guy in his own home. Very little publicity. Certainly good "word of mouth" and "unofficial reviews" but hardly seen in the official computer press. Due to its resources (voluntary donations which only recently have began to hit a few hundred dollars a month), only available in English, only for PCs and only in 32 bits (though of course it runs on AMD 64s). And it's still in a preview release, 0.91.

How did that happen?

Well sometimes word of mouth is a very powerful recommendation. Or maybe "word of net". But that would do no good if ordinary, non-geek, Linux users then couldn't get it to work. Maybe it's the well-read Blog where a Linux expert tried to find distributions for his windows-loving wife. She gave PCLinuxOS (then in version 0.81) 10/10, Mepis 8/10, Mandrake 6/10, and you really don't want to know what she said about Fedora and Ubuntu, even though she preferred the look of the Gnome desktop, she couldn't get them to do the things she wanted from her computer.

Maybe it's because, on any computer without the hardware quirks that baffle Linux distros generally, PCLOS is a breeze to install. Maybe it's because it is a Live CD where you can have a good dig around and check out compatibilities before committing your hard disk space (not to mention great hardware detection). Maybe it's because the potential to turn KDE into a nightmare of lary colours has been tamed by the subtle graphic designs of Jose Rangels.

Once installed, you find that, in nearly all cases, everything just works, and the default software packages meet your needs. Multimedia is a strength, with Real Player already built into Firefox, for example. Synaptic acts as a front end for "apt for rpm", and there are plenty of packages in the repositories.

There are guys like Ivan and others who have written scripts for the control centre. And there is, of course, Texstar, whose past "unofficial" builds for Mandrake (up to 9.2) were legendary, and whose ability to build packages seems to compensate for the fact that he uses the most recent versions of loads of software, yet manages to keep them all working together, solidly and dependably.

It could always be that PCLinuxOS is one of the distros that has fully harnessed the synergy between HAL, DBUS, UDEV and KDE3.4, so that plugging in USB drives, inserting CDs, and so on, is no longer fraught with the problems of manual mounting, or with the write-behind problems that used to plague auto-mounting systems.

If TUX magazine is for beginners, it is no wonder then, that PCLinuxOS has done as well as it has from TUX's readership. It's a great starter Operating System.

That does not explain why I use it, though. I was using Gentoo until fairly recently. I still rate Gentoo highly. You could build the system exactly what you wanted, which few distros did. Yet PCLinuxOS just gave me the system I wanted with minimum hassle. And what I've picked up over the last couple of years can be used to help others.

PCLinuxOS homepage: www.pclinuxonline.com/pclos

PCLinuxOS new user guide: www.pclinuxonline.com/wiki