Yeah, so I gave Debian another go since everyone at Rutgers seems to use it. Using the default most everything brings me to this:
=== root@nutmeg:~ # uname -a
Linux nutmeg 2.2.20-idepci #1 Sat Apr 20 12:45:19 EST 2002 i686 unknown
=== root@nutmeg:~ # gcc --version
2.95.4
I’ve heard of being conservative, but this is rediculous. Uhh, yeah. I think I’ve had my share of Debian, I might go on to Gentoo (I have used it before on SPARC) or Slackware. For some reason, I’m probably going to get looks for those choice of distros. I’m getting a linux box before the end of the semester, no matter how hard it takes.
Just to let you know, I’m sticking this machine in the closet, so it ain’t going to be running X.
Update: I know there is an option in the installer to use 2.4 (and I think 2.6), but the default is 2.2. Why?
Yep, debian is a POS. Gentoo is tolerable. Slackware seems to have cruddy package management, which means I’ll never try it.
I think I had enough of Debian for now. What’s wrong with Slackware’s package manager? I’d go for Gentoo, but I would have to start from a Stage 3 thinger since I don’t have to time to build the thing from scratch. Hmm, I remember not liking something about Gentoo.
If this doesn’t pan out, then I’m probably just going to stick FreeBSD on it. Right now I just want a box so I can play with stuff.
Hmm, I wondering if I’m forcing myself to have these probablems.
If you have time, try LinuxFromScratch. Takes two weeks to install, but you tend to understand why there are a billion linux distros out there after trying it out.
Otherwise, try one of the many other distros out there, like ubuntu. I heard that one is getting pretty good.
I’ve used Gentoo on and off to play with, though their config file support leaves much to be desired. Constantly merging config files bothered me to the point where I wasn’t updating that frequently, and then what’s the point of being on the bleeding edge.
I’ve been toying with the idea of looking at running on debian unstable. Any reason you didn’t look at test/unstable instead of the very conservative stable branch?
I wasn’t aware that Debian/stable was that conservative. I was going to make an attempt at bringing the my system to the unstable branch, but I didn’t see the point since reinstalling the system would just have been easier. I don’t have the time to play with it all right now since school is kicking my ass, so it’ll have to wait for the smester to be done. I plan to get build a new x86 box then, so it’ll probably make it on that instead of spare machine laying around my house.