Re: [dev] Suckless (*NIX|*BSD) Distribution?

Hi,

2009/6/20 Antony Jepson <antonyat_AT_gmail.com>
> I'm not sure if this has been asked before (although I did do a quick
> search of <dwm_AT_suckless.org>) but what distributions do you guys use on
> a daily basis?  I recently built a new computer and I'm looking for a
> good OS to install on there.
>
> I've been eyeing Crux lately but maybe Gentoo would be a better choice?
> If it makes a difference, I currently use Arch.
>
> Comments or suggestions for a (quality|suckless|KISS) distribution
> (doesn't matter if *BSD or *NIX) would be appreciated.  I read about
> pancake's distribution [1] and it definitely sounds interesting.

I started with FreeBSD, tried Slackware, Gentoo, Debian, went to
NetBSD and later OpenBSD, tried CRUX and early versions of Arch, and
settled with Ubuntu at some point, which I'm using for several years
now. This voyage has several reasons: the first one is that initially
I was a desktop/server user only, I didn't own a notebook until 2003
or so, so using the BSDs and testing some Linux distros like Gentoo
and CRUX was quite straight forward on proper desktop hardware.
Setting these systems up on a notebook by that time was usually a
nightmare apart from the basic usage (mostly no power management was
working, trouble with sound and video etc). That doesn't mean that it
used to be impossible to get a cool BSD or from scratch distro running
well on a notebook, but it took a magnitude of time to get it right...
Another reason is that I was a student until 2006 and had a lot more
time to spend at my computers. Since I joined the daily profession
life time is more rare, so I don't really want to get into that
configuration nightmare ;) Finally I'm a notebook only user nowadays
-- aparat from some hosts I keep running. Due to the relationship of
Ubuntu to Debian I choose Debian for severs nowadays though -- if I
knew that there'd be an easy way to setup FreeBSD or NetBSD on these
servers I'd probably would do so...

From all distributions/BSDs I came across I found that Ubuntu is the
only one that just works out of the box, even if it comes packed with
tons of crap (which I usually remove right after the installation).
But I save the time in figuring out which binary driver needs to be
downloaded from somewhere in order to make WiFi work etc.

This doesn't mean that I'm happy with Ubuntu from a technical
perspective, more the opposite. But what I wanted to say is, that I
experienced a personal shift towards that a system has to just run and
good if I can be stripped somehow. I don't want to get into the
configuration hell again ;)
That way I can set up a system in a matter of 2 hours and get back to
work again, which I want to spend my time with, mainly st and dwm
nowadays.

Kind regards,
Anselm
Received on Sat Jun 20 2009 - 09:22:10 UTC