Who currently uses Linux?

[Harrison]

I've had mixed feeling about Linux over the years. I love the way you can tinker with every part of the OS and pick and choose between different Desktops, File Managers and everything else you can think of... but I've also encountered some very annoying issues that have not been easy to fix, especially on laptops. And it can be annoying with network cards sometimes needing to use a fudged workaround that actually uses the Windows drivers. And even the very mature Ubuntu still has its issues.

Personally I will stick to Windows for my main desktop OS, but Linux for my server OS. And for those I currently used Cent OS (based on the open source files from Redhat Enterprise) and Fedora. Have you tried Cent OS yet?

[Stephen Coates]

I've not used CentOS, but I will have a look later.

I downloaded the LXDE based Debian Live CD yesterday, and I am currently running that. LXDE seems nice. Only issue with this live CD is that the ISO image was too big to fit on a CD, so I had to remove some stuff from it.

I'm pondering dual booting Vector Linux and Debian.

[SamuraiCrow]

I keep Xubuntu on my dad's systems and he likes them just fine. As for me? I have a Mac and am pretty happy with it.

[Stephen Coates]

I found a nice looking distribution called Absolute Linux. It is based on Slackware and used the IceWM Windows manager.

I'm going to give this a try.

I re arranged the partitioning on my HDD so I can have a big /home area shared between many systems and can then make several logical partitions for Linux systems and primary partitions for Windows/DOS.

GParted does a good job of partitioning. Only downside is that it took nearly 3 hours to move a 300GB partition to the left.

[Buleste]

I have just installed Ubuntu 11.04 on a Windows 7 Ultimate with Ubuntu going all the resizing and partitioning with no real issues other than with Grub2. However the solution to the Grub2 in my mind proved why Linux will always be a minority OS. The inherent need for all Linux to open a terminal when you need to do something serious will always scare off the less technically minded (it scares me and I'm used to DOS!).

[Stephen Coates]

I think last time I used GRUB I had trouble getting it to work.

I have been using LILO for the last year or so and that seems to be nice and easy to set up.

[Stephen Coates]

I installed Debian 6 this morning. It is working nicely . I decided to stick with GNOME instead of LXDE, mainly due to how well it does things like desktop icons.

It has the older version of GNOME, rather than the new GNOME 3 which has a new GUI.

It uses GDM 3 for the graphical login. Unfortunately, this doesn't allow logging in as root and there seems to be no option to enable this, like in GDM 2. It also lacks the many configuration things that GDM 2 had. This was easily fixed by using Synaptic to completely remove GDM 3 and install GDM 2 instead.

It doesn't come with much useful software 'out of the box' like Vector Linux does but it has huge repositories. I like its cool 'SpaceFun' theme.

You will probably be amazed to hear this, but I have decided to give Ubuntu a try. I'm downloading the 11.04 LiveCD now.