[CS-FSLUG] Why?

[Clawman]

Well sir,

> I can't find a distribution I want to stick with its been like that 
> since I stopped using Mandrake 9.1, I 've found some that worked but 
> none that worked well and rather then complain I want to know why 
> everyone in the list thinks some of the distributions they've tried 
> were good or bad and what they think of my observations on the 
> distributions I've tried.
>
> Fedora was a step up from Debian, it was more polished but I didn't 
> like how Red Hat had removed packages from KDE itself and tried to 
> fill the void with Gnome applications, also package management was no 
> less clumsy then with Debian and software was difficult for me to find 
> because there was no way for me to find out what I even wanted 
> nevermind where to find it. 

Here is where I chime in (and how little that is these days).  I am 
partial to Peanut Linux + Enlightenment for super small distro's.  Under 
400 megs gives you a super-duper fast distro with a great window manager 
(Enlightenment) that will run well even on old p200 machines.  Plus, the 
Peanut Linux site has the most updated packages already configured and 
ready to go.

For a fast, full distribution designed for 500 - 1Ghz machines, I prefer 
Cobind.  It still uses a modified 2.4.26 kernel (0.3 will feature the 
2.6 kernel), but it has all the features of Fedora Core 1 (including 
graphical install) but without the bulk of Gnome and KDE and the 
libraries they carry as baggage.  A full install is under 800 megs and 
runs quiet zippy (it is seriously fast).  It can be updated using FC1 or 
FC2 repositories, which means that you have access to Xine, W32Codecs, 
Audacity, all the gnome and system-config tools and more through their 
Yum GUI or through apt/synaptic.  With the addition of the 2.6 kernel, 
Cobind was so fast on my wife's 1.72 Ghz Athlon that it even left WinXP 
in the dust (and that is alot to expect from a Fedora based distro).

For machines over 1 Ghz a dilemma exists.  I guess it depends on the need. 
For someone who knows Linux and wants to install all the latest 
software, I'd recommend Fedora 2.  I keep a collection of at-testing, 
at-bleeding and development repositories in my sources.list for getting 
the latest of anything.  Their version of Open Office is themed and 
generally really cool to use.
For a noobie ... I'd recommend Suse or Mandrake.  Both support most 
hardware and have good repositories.  Neither has the mass of software 
on tap like Fedora, but Fedora requires a little more know-how to 
operate.  With either of these you can go hardcore linux if you want, 
but you don't have to.  Their system configuration utilities are perfect 
for noobs as well as their updating techniques. 

Well, from my experience, that's what I would recommend (for what it's 
worth).

By the way, I have decided to start the Claw project again 
(http://groundhog.zevallos.com).  I saw the good work Nathan was doing 
and, along with some people in Italy running Gentoo nagging me to 
continue, I decided to continue the project.  I totally rewrite the code 
from scratch, adding features, gtk2 themes and optimizing it to death. 
And hey, it works in Enlightenment since it has no Gnome or KDE 
dependencies.  Any ways, keep it up Nathan, you are doing a great job 
programming and inspiring others to do the same!