I am at a crossroads currently on my computer. I am using an alpha distro set-up that is being "phased out", most likely by end of this year. This is giving me the opportunity to check out the new changes in other distros I haven't installed. I am currently running Chakra alpha from quite a bit back(I think alpha 2). Chakra has now branched off from their Arch base and has a new infrastructure. So below are my thoughts on what I've seen and am considering.

Chakra(new alphas):
-------------------
Pros:
* Already understand and enjoy the package architecture.
* Have many packages I maintain/made using the PKGBUILD format, therefore, easier to reinstall all my programs I have currently.
* Many-up-to-date software

Cons:
* Still in alpha and could be left again like I am with a new structural change.
* Less documentation
* Not much in way of app integration/control center apps

Arch+KDE:
---------
Pros:
* Already understand and enjoy the package architecture.
* Have many packages I maintain/made using the PKGBUILD format, therefore, easier to reinstall all my programs I have currently.
* Always have newest packages

Cons:
* Always have newest packages(you know, they break sometimes )
* Not much in way of app integration/control center apps
* Very manual set-up

OpenSuse:
---------
Pros:
* Well Supported KDE integration(I'm currently using their firefox in Chakra.)
* Good documentation/community support
* Many up-to-date software
* Build service to propagate packages you make.
* Full featured control center

Cons:
* Foreign package structure that(from my quick viewings) is less intuitive/fun to set up and use.

Pardus:
-------
Pros:
* One of the better KDE desktop integrations.
* Well done simplistic Control Center(even avoids duplication)
* Many up-to-date software
* easy to use desktop settings(Kaptain)

Cons:
* Most documentation/community news is still in turkish.(which I can't read)
* Package structure is similar in complexity as openSuse.
* (last time I checked) network interface doesn't support all wireless settings.
* not many packages compared to others

I would have added Kubuntu/Mint KDE into this list, but, again unless it's changed a lot since 9.10, the desktop has been buggy for me as well as poor KDE integration.(something I would like.) I also would have had PCLinux OS in there, but it's similarly based like openSuse, but openSuse seems to do what I want better.

You definitely are missing quite a number of distros

But really, if you are not sure, trying them all out via livecd would at least allow you to check out the basics. A lot has advanced in all distros in the past year to year and a half that some of the distros you left out may have improved things greatly.

The only thing to do is actually try them for yourself to find which one fits you.

Some questions for you that may help in determining your choice:

What do you mean exactly by app integration or KDE integration, exactly?
What part of any packaging scheme do you think would be difficult?
How much are you willing to learn? You may be surprised in how little you may need to know.

A poll is just a popularity contest, and really does little more than cause fans to bicker among themselves over their favorite so I have refrained from voting

Thanks for the honest post. I put up the poll and limited distro set thinking it's be easier for people to compare and give opinions on.

On KDE integration, I am looking for most administrative actions being semi-self-contained and non-qt apps playing nice(I already pointed out I loved what opensuse did to their firefox,making it work better with KDE.). This would most likely mean either making those items be KCM modules(like pardus) or making an entirely new "control center"(like mandriva/pclinuxos/opensuse). Not saying a distro couldn't work well without this feature, but when the administrative items are spread out as individual programs, I find it harder to find the program for the administrative task I want and use it.

On packaging, I would hope a method for me to be able to assemble a package with least amount of effort put into menial tasks. I've liked Arch's PKGBUILD file, mostly because it's one single file with few lines of information needed in it that fetches and builds the package for you. DEB/RPMs take a bit more work to set up, but the packages end up being more structured/organized. A nice GUI tool(or template tool) would make the package part a moot point for DEB/RPMs for me.(I do know I've seen one for DEBs before, forget what it was, though.)

I'm an avid learner in that I am willing to spend effort learning something if I feel the end results will be worth the effort put in. I'd be more than willing to learn hand-editing DEB/RPMs if every other issues I'd be worried about are solved.

Seeing you are a Kubuntu user, I will let you know my system is from system76 I'm installing on. It originally had Ubuntu on it, but when I upgraded to 9.04(and 9.10 I believe too) there was a recurring problem with the shipped 64bit kernel that sadly was never fixed in those releases.(they said it was too late to patch/update kernel before shipping) It would, as long as the computer was on, sometimes "forget" to write blocks back to the HD, causing immediate data loss. It sadly was only on very specific hardware setups and 64bit only, but it was enough to make me steer clear of Ubuntu and derivatives for awhile. That's why I made sure to say I didn't list it because of past buggy experience.(not that I wouldn't try it again if given reason to.)

I have been trying livecds and so far(of the ones I already listed)opensuse has caught my eye the most, but I wanted to ask other's opinions to make sure it wasn't just "initial experience charm". What other ones do you feel I've left out?

I'm guessing that you're currently using KDEmod on Arch, as I did.
But I've already made the jump and went Arch all the way. My decision was based on the fact that I like AUR, Bauerbill and such, and that I'm not sure how much of this options will still be available in Chakra after the change (especially all the kernels in AUR).
And I must say vanilla KDE of Arch is more modular than Chakras, and has mostly all of the necessary things.
Only thing I still didn't got it that was in Chakra is the mount .iso in service menu. There's an option in Dolphin to install it, it just doesn't work. But that's all I remember that's missing from vanilla Arch KDE.

So yeah go for KDE and then after Chakra comes from alpha you can check it again.
Also I did hear only good things about Paruds, but it is Turkish centric distro; so yeah...

One thing I want to point out about Arch base(as pointed out in my pro/con list) is that I'd like a more toned back upgrade path. I have had a few issues with updates to core software I've upgraded that temporarily broke my system's wireless. While that is the only issue I've seen, if it's possible to only have some software upgraded frequently and base system not as often, that would make things better for me. That is one thing I liked about what the new Chakra alphas said they were doing is making the core upgrade less.

p.s. bleeding edge isn't always a bad thing, I also run Arch on my webserver and have no plans on changing it. I just think I need something slower paced for my laptop, where the issues with bleeding edge are less than the benefits.

eyecreate wrote:Thanks for the honest post. I put up the poll and limited distro set thinking it's be easier for people to compare and give opinions on.

On KDE integration, I am looking for most administrative actions being semi-self-contained and non-qt apps playing nice(I already pointed out I loved what opensuse did to their firefox,making it work better with KDE.). This would most likely mean either making those items be KCM modules(like pardus) or making an entirely new "control center"(like mandriva/pclinuxos/opensuse). Not saying a distro couldn't work well without this feature, but when the administrative items are spread out as individual programs, I find it harder to find the program for the administrative task I want and use it.

Other distros have Firefox/gtk integration installed, and most of them that don't have their own control center like Mandriva/PCLinuxOS and Suse have things in System settings - at least I generally do all my admin stuff from there in the distros I am using.

On packaging, I would hope a method for me to be able to assemble a package with least amount of effort put into menial tasks. I've liked Arch's PKGBUILD file, mostly because it's one single file with few lines of information needed in it that fetches and builds the package for you. DEB/RPMs take a bit more work to set up, but the packages end up being more structured/organized. A nice GUI tool(or template tool) would make the package part a moot point for DEB/RPMs for me.(I do know I've seen one for DEBs before, forget what it was, though.)

Can't say much about that as I ahve not done this in an arch setting, and my rpm packaging goes back to 2002 or 2003, while my debian packaging skills are minimal. But for the most part in the debian or rpm setting, there is less need to create your own packaging with the large set available to each, plus those contributed by users.

I'm an avid learner in that I am willing to spend effort learning something if I feel the end results will be worth the effort put in. I'd be more than willing to learn hand-editing DEB/RPMs if every other issues I'd be worried about are solved.

You don't have to hand-edit much for debs as their are tools that help set this up somewhat easily

Seeing you are a Kubuntu user, I will let you know my system is from system76 I'm installing on. It originally had Ubuntu on it, but when I upgraded to 9.04(and 9.10 I believe too) there was a recurring problem with the shipped 64bit kernel that sadly was never fixed in those releases.(they said it was too late to patch/update kernel before shipping) It would, as long as the computer was on, sometimes "forget" to write blocks back to the HD, causing immediate data loss. It sadly was only on very specific hardware setups and 64bit only, but it was enough to make me steer clear of Ubuntu and derivatives for awhile. That's why I made sure to say I didn't list it because of past buggy experience.(not that I wouldn't try it again if given reason to.)

I though that this bug if that was what you saw) was fixed before jaunty was still in development.l I have not seen or heard of that one in quite a while, and don't think it was 64bit-specific as it bit me when I was playing with the (optional at the time) ext4 option. Though if your system76 had this, it must be another bug than this one as i doubt they would install beta/alpha releases on their systems.

I have been trying livecds and so far(of the ones I already listed)opensuse has caught my eye the most, but I wanted to ask other's opinions to make sure it wasn't just "initial experience charm". What other ones do you feel I've left out?

ALL of them to be honest, and not just mine

eyecreate wrote:One thing I want to point out about Arch base(as pointed out in my pro/con list) is that I'd like a more toned back upgrade path. I have had a few issues with updates to core software I've upgraded that temporarily broke my system's wireless. While that is the only issue I've seen, if it's possible to only have some software upgraded frequently and base system not as often, that would make things better for me. That is one thing I liked about what the new Chakra alphas said they were doing is making the core upgrade less.

p.s. bleeding edge isn't always a bad thing, I also run Arch on my webserver and have no plans on changing it. I just think I need something slower paced for my laptop, where the issues with bleeding edge are less than the benefits.

Well most distros provide updated KDE packages that you can run on their stable cores, you get the latest desktop apps (and bugs )if you want without getting new kernel bugs.

p.s. I am not actually helping you narrow anything down much, am I?

eyecreate wrote:One thing I want to point out about Arch base(as pointed out in my pro/con list) is that I'd like a more toned back upgrade path. I have had a few issues with updates to core software I've upgraded that temporarily broke my system's wireless. While that is the only issue I've seen, if it's possible to only have some software upgraded frequently and base system not as often, that would make things better for me. That is one thing I liked about what the new Chakra alphas said they were doing is making the core upgrade less.

p.s. bleeding edge isn't always a bad thing, I also run Arch on my webserver and have no plans on changing it. I just think I need something slower paced for my laptop, where the issues with bleeding edge are less than the benefits.

Yeah I agree, sometimes Arch can bork your system for a while.
But what I do in this situation is pray that the previous package is still in the database, revert and blacklist it from pacman.
Also being subscribed to mailing list helps as well.
I learnt my lesson with testing and I'm not using it anymore, so that I can avoid this problems. Even though I could probably live with some of them...

Well, it seems I got some more livecds to download and try out. After talking, I am deciding to try out a new Kubuntu and Pardus disk. After that, I'll see how I fare starting form the base Arch install and building my KDE desktop. Guess I'll report my thoughts here after that.

I guess part of the hard part about distro decisions is they are usually similar enough in many ways that you are deciding between them on smaller features.

I think you're right in that there aren't that many features that can't be chaned among the different distros. I' lked the default font settings in PCLOS and the default themes and settings of Sabayon. It just took a few minutes before I had my Kubuntu looking just like the two of them put together.

I've thought about Pardus. I like the idea of PiSi package manager, which only downoads and changes the difference of an upgraded file.

I've never had to make my own packages with K/Ubuntu. There seems to be a repo or deb file for just about any software available.

Good luck; let us know how it goes.

No need to get into Arch, as there are enough of us contributing to this thread I take it you like the rolling release nature and as such would like to point out two further distros:

1) aptosid (once of sidux fame) and

2) the new rolling release Mint based on Debian rather Ubuntu.

I've got the latter running on a virtual system and it is functioning as advertised. As neither of these two are as cutting edge as Arch the risk of something not working for a while is reduced while keeping the benefit of the rolling release idea.

Of course, neither are as KISS as Arch, but hey, nobody is perfect!

Oh, and there is Gentoo, of course

toad wrote:No need to get into Arch, as there are enough of us contributing to this thread I take it you like the rolling release nature and as such would like to point out two further distros:

1) aptosid (once of sidux fame) and

2) the new rolling release Mint based on Debian rather Ubuntu.

I've got the latter running on a virtual system and it is functioning as advertised. As neither of these two are as cutting edge as Arch the risk of something not working for a while is reduced while keeping the benefit of the rolling release idea.

Of course, neither are as KISS as Arch, but hey, nobody is perfect!

Oh, and there is Gentoo, of course

I tried aptosid and LMDE. I was surprised tha KDE 4.5 wasn't included. From what I could gather, it's probably because Debian stable will be out soon so "testing" and "unstable" aren't rolling very fast at the moment. They should pick back up again once Debian Stable is out.

As for Gentoo, there's always Sabayon for those who might not have the time to compile everything. It's Gentoo-based.

After lots of thinking and testing, I've chosen openSuse. I was presently surprised by how much both Kubuntu and Sabayon have matured since I last saw them, but they both didn't fully have what I liked in openSuse. Thanks for all your feedback.

Highly recommend Mandriva. That is for it's ease of install/use.
Especially the earlier named Mandriva Control Centre is the highlight of the distribution since many many years. It is really easy installing software and updates in the same MCC. KDE and Mandriva are "two hands on the same belly".
They co-operate just fantastic, not in the least for the fact because Mandriva-developers spend time in development on KDE for Mandriva.

Great, hope you like it!