[Scuddie]

OK.  I am a long time NTKernel fan, but apparently Server 2003 will be the last venture I explore for a Microsoft OS, because of obvious reasons.  I need something to fall back on.  

Now there have been many discussions on whether linux will be an acceptable option for it.  Maeg, our resident *nix guru, suggested I use Gentoo LiveCD with Portage support.  Well, I spent 8 hours installing Gentoo from a stage 2, using the up-to-date install manual as a walkthru.  It took 8 hours because I was making sure I was following the rules to the letter.  However, when time came to load the environment for the first time, all hell broke loose.  

There were more yellow stars and red bangs than there were green OKs.  Nothing loaded the way it should have, and the boot sequence was VERY different than the CD boot was.  On the LiveCD environment, everything worked...  And I mean EVERYTHING!  However, I couldn't get anything at all to work on the environment I set up myself.  This was precisely what I was trying to avoid.

So...  With all things considering (including the fact that PnP only works on resources), what linux or BSD distro actually works without the knowledge of a hardcore enthusiast?  Portage seemed to work well regarding dependancies, but too bad I couldn't do **** with what I downloaded.

So...  Comments?

[WMCoolmon]

UBUNTU.

Seriously. You need a little more advanced install knowledge than Yoper (but if you've survived Gentoo, you've got that). It's as responsive as Yoper and a lot of things work right out of the box, like Yoper, there's a special AMD64 kernel/liveCD. It installs essential stuff only, and comes with Firefox.

Once I got my sound card set up, Linux was actually useful.

I found its chief weaknesses were its lack of out-of-the-box Audigy 2 support and no guide on how to set up skins.

You can find a fairly helpful IRC channel by opening up XIRC and choosing the Ubuntu server.

My experience with Gentoo: Whee, I have a system compiled natively from my box! Well, it's not like I can do anything with the init files to speed things up; they've got logic paths a half-dozen if statements deep just to start the network. Let's install KDE! Oh crap, I'm out of disk space and I don't even have the base libs installed. I guess Abiword, Thunderbird, Firefox, Kaffeine, two kernel sources and fluxbox ate up my 5 GB of hard drive space.
Not to mention the known bugs that are not mentioned in the install guide, causing me to waste two hours figuring out that the linker failure was because I specified an option that depended on another option being compiled. (Of course meaning I had to recompile a crapload of packages, because no one bothered to add two sentences to the guide for people who try to get by on the absolute minimum of packages)

My experience with Yoper: Gee, this is fast! And the init scripts are clean! Support is pretty crappy...and my firewire ports got detected as eth0...but OK, I can live with plugging my speakers into the headphones port. Now let's install a GF6600GT.
Oh look. Now Yoper completely freezes when it starts the X server, and the new beta doesn't help at all, but does remove the boot-from-CD option and clean init scripts. I can use the X server in software mode, but that turns my movies into a slideshow.

[kode]

Originally posted by WMCoolmon
UBUNTU.
 

exactly what I was going to say. debian based, but actually real easy to install.

[Stealth]

Go with debian.  you can go with the "stable" Woody, or the "beta" sarge ("beta" in Linux terms is the same as "ultra-leet-stable" in windows).  

get the sarge netinst, and it'll do everything pretty much for you.  it's got to be the easiest distro to run, i think.


and how cool is it to just do:
apt-get install *name*
and have debian find the package, download it, and install it completely automatically

Also you could run xwindows, if you hate the CLI

[WMCoolmon]

That's pretty much how Ubuntu is (the install with apt)

I can't speak for how the Ubuntu install compares to the Debian install for getting a new system going.

[Scuddie]

OK, I'm running off ubuntu right now, and I can't say I like it much.  The mechanics work beautifully, but I'm having issues with X/Gnome.  For some reason, I can't select my optimal screen res of 1152x864, it only allows me to select 1024x768.  Also, refresh rate is either 60Hz or 70Hz.  Where is the 72Hz and 75Hz.  Even further, where are the bitdepth settings?

Also, the fonts don't seem to want to work at a lower size (10 or less) without making everything look like ass.  Also, everything looks way too frikkin wide.  It's either a limitation of X/Gnome, or I am doing something wrong.  Any help?

[Kamikaze]

Originally posted by Scuddie
OK, I'm running off ubuntu right now, and I can't say I like it much.  The mechanics work beautifully, but I'm having issues with X/Gnome.  For some reason, I can't select my optimal screen res of 1152x864, it only allows me to select 1024x768.  Also, refresh rate is either 60Hz or 70Hz.  Where is the 72Hz and 75Hz.  Even further, where are the bitdepth settings?

Are you using some custom Ubuntu control panel thing or just GNOME's resolution changer? Using GNOME's resolution thing I can select 1152x864 here on a Gentoo box. Maybe you need to add that resolution into your xorg.conf (found at /etc/X11) file. For bitdepth and different refresh rates you'll want to edit your xorg.conf. AFAIK GNOME doesn't offer any utility to change bitdepth. The refresh rate GNOME uses is likely based on the VertRefresh value in xorg.conf.

[Scuddie]

Fixed the font issue.  Turns out for some reason, Gnome likes to make gray gradients on fonts.  Really stupid idea.  I just set it to monocolor and all is well now, as far as text goes.  

Anyway, I really am beginning to not like how things are turning out.  It seems that no matter what I try to do, nothing can ever be done.  Why, you may ask?  Because every single frikkin i/o device I have is always considered busy.  No video, no sound, not even an option to umount a DVD!  Nothing is running except for the base system.  Gnome works just fine, but every time I try to do something over or without Gnome, it's always busy, busy, busy!  I can't even run totem media player, and it frikkin came with the distro!

Ugh!  Where's Maeg?!

EDIT:  Thanks Kami, I had to use Configuration Editor to fix the resolution, but I don't even know if it will hold next boot.

[WMCoolmon]

First of all, the stuff that comes with Ubuntu is...sort of crappy.

Install VLC, beep-media-player, and/or mplayer. (I know xine has support for DVD menus, so you might want to try that.)

If you have specific questions try asking around in the Ubuntu chatroom with Xirc. (Or you can post here and I or someone else may be able to help you out)

[Kamikaze]

Scuddie: Can you post the error messages you're getting?