FreeBSD

Try another distro, or a cousin for that matter!

FreeBSD - I had the disks for 6.2 from a while back. That time, I had little anxious luck with post-install config and just decided to let it go for awhile. Last weekend I sat through the installation. The quirky things were mouse and NIC setup. Both worked out ok, but definitely different from Linux; they all have weird names, not tied to a functional use but a physical or even "firm" layer... my nVidia NIC is called nve0 rather than eth0; my mouse is called ums0 rather than /dev/mouse or input0 or even BSD's sysmouse

Of course, you don't get graphical out of the box, and I even had to download my beloved vim. I am in the process of compiling KDE after about 6 hours... the ports system is really a masterpiece, though. It downloads the source, configures it, builds it, resolving dependencies along the way. You can fully customize things, and it will prompt with text-based menus for optional components or add-ons. If the download fails, or your connection times out, just kill the process and begin again - it will zoom ahead to where you were, and even resume your download from precisely where you left off. Nice stats are given, such as percentage complete, file size, speed, and estimated time remaining, so that you can determine exactly what is going on.

I was able to install fluxbox and run my X server, so the graphical side works fine. I will attempt to bring this BSD to the state of productivity of my Slackware box, eventually. It was awesome to compile the BSD kernel... I had my dual-core system compiling the kernel and building a port. Another virtual terminal ran the top monitoring program and I perused some docs on a fourth! A lovely afternoon

Registered Linux User #370740 (http://counter.li.org)