Linux Distros... compare and contrast

[TennBikeBerk]

Mandrake, Knoppix, Redhat, etc., etc.

What is the difference between all of these. Are they all good for home computers, or just servers? It would be really nice if somebody laid this information out in a nice manner, that could be easily referenced. It's all a little confusing for me at the moment.

[Xayd]

RedHat/Mandrake - aimed at desktop use, decent software management systems, a bit bloated for low end machines or servers. Can use both binaries and source for official software packages, but precompiled binaries are used for most.

Debian - aimed at server use, not trivial to get a desktop working on, but has a very good software update system for keeping software up to date. Knoppix is a variant of Debian. Uses precompiled binaries for the vast majority of official software packages.

Slackware - the original Linux distro, has a package management system but it doesn't check dependancies so it's not very useful compared to software package systems as complete as say, Debian's. However it is very easy to maintain as a server, also a good server distro and a good development distro, uses kernels straight from kernel.org without any distro-specific modification. Uses source for official software packages.

Gentoo - latest distro to have fanboys. Has a software management system similar to FreeBSD ports but without A LOT of the funtionality of ports. Annoying to maintain, imo, due to inherent flaws in their software package system. Uses source for official software packages.

SuSE - aimed at desktop use, completely graphical installer from CD to first boot, also has a graphical system management tool. Uses KDE by default as a desktop and is not for low-end hardware. Uses Red Hat's software package format.

[TennBikeBerk]

Thanks Xayd, that was very helpful.

[Xayd]

As for ease of installation, SuSE and Mandrake would be the easiest, Slackware somewhere in the middle, Gentoo and Debian would be the toughest to install for a first time user.

I haven't personally used Red Hat in quite a while so don't have any experience with recent versions of it.

Slackware and Debian are probably the middle ground of performance and ease of use. SuSE is easy to use but at the expense of alot of bloat, same goes for Red Hat and Mandrake.

The upside of Gentoo is that it allows you to compile everything on the system from source with flags specific to your processor so should theoretically give you improved performance. However, the downside is time, compiling everything from scratch is a process of hours if not days, depending on what you need installed to start with and your hardware .

[kilgoretrout]

Check out this link for a little more in depth discussion of the major linux distros:

http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

[Karnevil9]

Knoppix while based on Debian, is different in that it can be run off the CD without loading it to the hardrive, and is as easy to run as Redhat and Mandrake as compared to Debian itself

[LocoCoyote]

And if I may add to Karnevil9's last post...is a great way to see if linux is for you or not