Any good Debain-based Linuxes?

Redwolf · August 16th, 2003, 11:17 PM

I'm cursed. I'll admit it. My favorite distro is Debian, which also happens to be the distro I hate the most of all of them. It's like some unwritten natural law the the best Linux distro out there works like crap for me. I mean c'mon. I had much much better luck using Slackware and Gentoo (which are harder distros IMO). I absolutely LOVE APT, and Debian packages are alright I guess...but I have such strange, really messed up problems under Debian, which is primarily why I keep changing distros. Like here's one. I had just installed Debian (usingh bf24) and I didn't install my kernel headers. Alright. So I go in and load the k7 kernel with headers (same version and all). I had done this before last time and did it flawlessly. Not so this time. I added the initrd= thing and did a lilo and everything. I rebooted, adn the thing can't find the root partition, no matter how hard I try (passing options to the kernel, rescuing the kernel and redoing lilo, etc). It just won't work. So I go and dl 2.4.21 off kernel.org . I untar it to /usr/src/linux-2.4.21 , alright. I go to make a symlink /usr/src/linux pointing to that so I can use the sources and such. I type ln -sf /usr/src/linux-2.4.21 /usr/src/linux ....and lo and behold, it doesn't work. It makes a linux directory, wich has a directory INSIDE it that points to the directory it should be linking too. At this point I said **** it and rebooted to 98.

So here's my question. Are there any good Debain-based linuxes (not CD-only) out there that work very nicely? And that use APT? I'm really getting tired of switching distros.

I tried getting the testing debian t work, but that was a disaster. I basically wasted 8 CDs, and it wouldn't install (md5s were okay, and cds were verified). It would install like 3 packages and then would completely screw up the computer. Oh joy

pbharris · August 17th, 2003, 02:02 AM

hey RedWolf,
libranet!! i have isos around soemwhere...

yclyde · August 17th, 2003, 10:54 AM

A hearty 2nd to pbharris. Libranet is a solid os. I believe you can currently get 2.7 either free or at a minimal fee. Great support too.

Redwolf · August 18th, 2003, 05:23 PM

Hmmm...I can only find the demo version of Libranet.

zepper · August 18th, 2003, 05:25 PM

Lindows and Xandros

linux_guru · August 18th, 2003, 06:39 PM

Yeah, Libranet is GOOD, but it's not free.

yclyde · August 19th, 2003, 01:48 AM

You should still be able to get at least the core os Libranet 2.7 free here:

http://www.libranet.com/download.html

I checked and you can still dl the single cd from there.

ChrisK2972 · August 19th, 2003, 02:50 PM

Bonzai Linux (used to called "mini-woody")is Debian based, uses Apt and is not bloated. You can start with that and build it the way you want. I think it is like a 180MB download. I am about to give it a try myself.

Libranet 2.7 is free. I downloaded the iso's off their site just a few days ago.

Redwolf · August 20th, 2003, 10:50 PM

Ahh...hmmm...I think I will try Bonzai and Libra2.7 Thanks fopr pointing the way guys. i installed Mandrake this morning since I needed a linux, but this should help me out.

Redwolf · August 23rd, 2003, 02:37 AM

Tried BOTH Bonzai and Libra. Neither worked. I think I know what I'm doing wrong, but I don't know how to fix it. The first thing I do wvery time I get Linux installed is install the NVIDIA driver. For the Debian-bases I goto install the kernel headers, but in both of those distros I instaled another kernel (the 686 one), and it didn't work (did install the initrd thingie). Sigh. I can't tell what I'm doing, but everytime I install the headers or a new kernel, SOMETHING gets screwed over...

Same goes for getting the latest kernel sources too (tried with libranet). Only those seem to be more problematic. I follow the PET tutorials (linuxjunior) to the T, but to no avail.

Hmmm.....

examples:

With Libranet:

Everythig worked fine until I went to install the headers. I didn't know what kernel Libra installed, so I picked the bf2.4 one. That one didn't work. So I simply installed the 686 kernel with headers. Then, my drive would no longer boot properly. I had to pass an ide2= line to the kernel everytime. Appending it didn't help, I had to pass it anyway. So I downloaded the 2.4.21 kernel off www.kernel.org and used the libranet-kernel config file (in /usr/src ). Kernel compiled....and didn't work at all.

With Bonzai I installed the kernel-686 inamge to no avail. No command line could save me. So I sensedd a repeat and just quit.

I HAVE to get Kernel Headers...otherwise X won't work at all (nv and vesa drivers don't seem to work with my Geforce 4 MX 420 card).