I need a good Linux distro that...

JustHalf

Thanks to various "fixes" to the Gentoo portage system, my Gentoo system is in a horrific state.

I need to do a full reinstall anyway (a hard disk is about to fail), and would like to switch from Gnome + KMail to an all Gnome / Gnome + Thunderbird setup. I also don't want it to be a Gentoo system.

Decent package management system
I must be able to choose kernel, and be able to install the full Gnome 2.4 suite and a recent Mozilla Firebird from packages. It must also be easy to change drivers when I change hardware (I doubt the nVidia driver will work for an ATI card, for example).

It must also be easy enough for me to build my own packages for the system.

Solid SATA and Intel Gigabit Ethernet support
I got a new motherboard, an Abit IC7-G. It has the ICH5-R chipset, and 4 SATA ports (2 from the chipset, 2 from a Silicon Image PCI chip).

At the moment, I only need the Intel SATA ports to work. RAID support is currently not required but may be in future (I might buy some Raptors and mirror them).

Firewire support
IEEE1394a. I must be able to connect a Firewire external hard drive up and use it. I must also be able to connect up my digital camcorder and get video and audio from it.

So I'll need a program to handle the video files AND driver support.

I'd like...
The "hotplug" or similar program automatically detecting what hardware is installed and loading appropriate drivers and modules on boot.

A good solid audio mixer / sequencer.

Thanks,
Dave

joePC

How about Mandrake 9.2

Moriarty

linux schminux. You want freebeard.

Most likely you want 4.9 (the latest -STABLE release) but you could always give 5.1 (the latest -CURRENT release, with 5.2 due in a week or two) a bash.

The well written offical handbook (also available in a number of handy tarballs)will hold your hand while you install and configure.

Hecate

yep, freebsd is the way to go if you want minimum hassle.

Typedef

Debian, Slackware or FreeBSD.

Choose the form of the destructor.

BenH

Originally posted by Moriarty
[B(the latest -CURRENT release, with 5.2 due in a week or two)[/B]

I thought that they'ed put the 5.2 release back indefinitely?

Moriarty

Originally posted by BenH
I thought that they'ed put the 5.2 release back indefinitely?

.... no? The releng page has 5.2 out in january. 5.2-RC2 was released just a few days ago.

JustHalf

Ha! I was thinking of going back to FreeBSD (last used it on a desktop system in the 4.6 days, IIRC).

So FreeBSD has good Firewire support? Is it less hassle to get a multimedia system up and running on FreeBSD these days (with FreeBSD 5?).

Moriarty

List of firewire controllers supported in 4.9. I havent really used fbsd as a desktop OS much, so i cant really help in that department.

Hecate

I had 4.9 for a while as a desktop OS, no problem setting up multimedia stuff. Much less of a pain than linux.

I've used the 5.x series on the desktop and as a server, it wont have a stable branch for a long while yet, but its become very usable in the past few months, apart from that sysinstall bug and the gcc problems they had early on. You also have to remember that freebsd 5 has been in development for nearly 3 years.

MarkR

I think i'd like to play around with FreeBSD. Anyone willing to burn off a copy for me in exchage for a couple of blank cdr's?

Thanks,

Mark

nadir

gentoo.org

Gentoo is the bomb. I dont see why there arent more gentoo users here. I mean everyone is preaching about bsd, but gentoo has portage, and its linux so get installing