What's the hardest Linux distro you've tried?
I just saw a DistroTube video with this question. Quite a thought provoking question [for this seasoned distroholic at least].
"What's the hardest Linux distro you've tried?" can be interpreted many ways, and I wonder what kinds of answers we'll get.
Especially these days, with much change underfoot and newer users having a different distrosphere to explore...
What's the hardest Linux distro you've tried?
61 replies
No doubt the hardest was the first one. I recall it was slackware with kernel 2.x around the late 90s. Having to recompile the kernel and configure manually the scan line freq for the monitor made it challenging. Ah yes, the man pages I printed them at work, that was all I had access to. No internet.
Still remember that as well. Though I was in school and had plenty time at my hand. Was a very rewarding experience. Not necessarily easy by any means. But it was so much more capable than any Windows 98 or ME. Didn't crash like the latter. There was a million things to explore. Software to just install which I'd never have been able to afford as a school kid. Also way easier to customize, or read some log files and fix things once I understood how the filesystem is laid out.
And the CRT monitor was fine. Ours just displayed an error message if the frequency was wrong. At some point I grabbed a permanent marker and wrote the mode line onto the back if the monitor. Problem solved.
Your comment on writing down the freq made me chuckle.. I did the same! For some odd reason I still have that old CRT..
Awesome! 🏆
The first one I installed (doesn't matter its name) as it was the one forcing me to question all my decades long habits and to build new ones.
SLS Linux. I feel old.
First challenge: getting it.
It was about 25-30 3.5" floppy disks, but you had to download the disk images, and I downloaded them to my PC via a modem connected to the modem pool at the University where I worked. At the time, they had no limits on the use of the modem pool, so I was able to stay connected and just keep downloading until I had it all.
Then, you had to manually create the disk partitions and create the file systems on them. When that was all done correctly, you could run the install script.
I switched to Slackware when it came out. I also downloaded that to a SunOS box at work and used that to write the floppies.
Slackware. 64 disks. Three of them somehow failed verification, and i had to re-download them the next day at university.
With "download" being an euphemism here. I had to get the disk images via email from bitftp@pucc (if anyone remembers), over the 38400 baud line of the department. Get one disk image in 64kb emails, decode and join the attachments, log in on the PC, copy it to disk, and log out. Delete everything on the VAX (the disk quota did not allow for more), and request the next disk image from Princeton.
I like to believe that I had a part in causing the university to implement time limits on the modem pool.
However, the University had an excellent Internet connection, so once it dawned on me that I could download it and copy it to floppies there, it was a lot easier.
Probably trying to design and build my own custom distro. There's help like LFS but you still need to read an entire book and learn about a million important decisions to make. I scrapped the idea. It's just hard and then how am I even going to maintain it?
I successfully had a running LFS build.
It booted, I typed in
ls /saw my folders, thought it was neat and read up on what would be required to get a GUI up and running, then deleted the partition.Gentoo. I've gotten to stage 3 a few times, but somehow I cannot get past it (Be it a VM issue or a skill issue)
Stage 3 is the default nowadays and not hard to reach. Was this many many years ago?
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Stage_file
Follow the Gentoo wiki. It is all that is needed to get across the finish line. What you will learn along the way about how all of the pieces fit together is pretty valuable IMHO.
Linux from Scratch
Everything is built from scratch.
First, you need some kind of host Linux system, which then is used to compile and install everything to target environment.
It is quite a huge undertaking, needs lots of time and patience. Basic LFS book is around 280 pages, and it will just give Linux terminal - you will need to go Beyond Linux from Scratch to actually get desktop environment running.
I have installed it twice, as a learning experience.
https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
Linux from Scratch is not a distribution; it's a documentation how you build your own distribution from scratch.
It is not a distribution, but when you build your own Linux from Scratch, it will become your own distribution - thus it is distribution!
No, your distribution is the distribution. Your distribution doesn't make Linux from Scratch into one. Let's say I think your distribution is the best one for me. That does not mean another distribution created with the help of the documentation found at Linux from Scratch the best one too. Those are two different distributions. Linux from Scratch remains the documentation how to create one.
It's like finding a video tutorial how to program your own program a little game. The video tutorial doesn't become a game, it remains documentation how you write your own game. That's comparable situation with Linux from Scratch (in relation to our discussion).
You just asserted elsewhere in this thread, that it's not debatable. ... Seemed like you were already putting forth debate arguments a day ago here.
I am not debating with you if LFS is a distribution or not, I teach you that its not.
Rather than merely repeat and invite an infinite loop... I wonder how you've interpreted what you just responded to.
I don't understand what you mean by that. There is nothing to interpret really. Linux from scratch is not a distribution, its a documentation how you build one from scratch. So I'm not sure what else to say about that. Maybe... a car example. :D
Let's say someone asks you which specific car model you like the most. Would the answer "I don't like a specific model, but I have a tutorial document how to build my own car from scratch, every single bit of it" a correct answer? To me, no. Because the question was about a specific model. A document how to create one is not a specific model. Hope that makes sense. BTW I'm not trying to be an ashowl or anything. I'm dead serious.
I'm not sure if this is trolling, or some kind of philosophical stumble (like some kind of naive realism ~ hence oblivious to interpretation), or even a personality malady (like NPD, impeding capacity for introspection).
To assert there's nothing to interpret... is a difficult stance to approach, having already concluded, contrary to present evidence, as if there's so clearly only one interpretation, so much obliviously so, like the fish asking "what's water?", that there's no interpretation at all...
And so, having dodged answering the question, it's difficult to know how to proceed.
Also further made difficult by you not answering the question asked about the substance of the question, but answering something entirely different. I wondered (left it open to answer, did not pose it as a direct question), how you interpreted what you just responded to...
as in
I was wondering how you interpreted that line. Perchance that may lead to clarification as to what led you to simply repeat
re-asserting your position, seemed to be missing that this can be, and (evidently through the other comments) has been, interpreted many ways. So I still wonder, how did you interpret that line that restated that the question can be interpreted many ways?
As for your assertion itself, that you've double down on, as if there can be no other interpretation... Have you heard of a no-true Scotsman fallacy? The lines are blurred as to what defines a distro, even without someone offering reassurance to interpret a question about distros freely. Would you baulk similarly at various ilk of meta distros and installation scripts and other instructions? If the scripts that fetch the programs that comprise your operating system get from upstream sources, are they no longer a distro either? Where is the line for you, since you exclude LFS? And, we're all to just agree with your decree? Given thus far^, not my pope of FOSS. Heh.
If I build a car from instructions, then I have that car. ... Now you've got me hankering after a Caterham again. Heh.
I wonder also how, in your world view, distros based on LFS are assessed. Like on distrowatch, they too draw the distinction, between being Independent, and LFS based.
And still, I am very intrigued by your world view, how you square this away...
You are conflicted with what you say. Distrowatch lists distributions. If you build one yourself, then that is a distribution. It doesn't change what LFS is or not. You are not building a LFS distribution, you are building a distribution. There is no such thing as LFS distribution...
Don't you know what a Linux distribution is? It is an operating system that has the Linux Kernel and is distributed so you can install it.
Linux from Scratch is a documentation / tutorial. There is nothing to interpret. That is the definition. You don't buy a book how to build a car and say this book is a car that includes a motor and is ready to be installed.
I think Gentoo back in 2005. I left my laptop compiling OpenOffice while I went to class for the day. When I came home the laptop was off, so I had to start over. My roommate denied responsibility. The next day the same thing happened! It turns out I hadn't configured the fan correctly - or I guess at all - so the laptop had been overheating leading to emergency CPU halt.
But I've been using Linux since 2002. A lot of distros used to be a lot harder. But it's also hard for me to remember what the struggles were so long ago.
Starting with Suse in 2003, I found things by then already easy enough, and have not noticed any significant change in ease since. I think the hype of how much easier linux has gotten to install and use, is overblown (in significant part thanks to Ubuntu's marketing claims). But then, depends which distros, like you say with "A lot of distros used to be a lot harder.".
Slackware, back when the Linux kernel was still static and had to be configured and compiled each time an update came.
Sort of in keeping with the people saying "the first one I installed", for me that was some 20 years ago with early Fedora and Ubuntu, I forget which order I tried them but it took multiple attempts over different hardware, any Linux was definitely more "difficult" back then, worse when combined with being a noob. I think some people don't know how easy they have it.
As for modern distros, it depends what you're trying to do; for example you might say something like Gentoo, but Gentoo has good documentation and is arguably "easy" for what it's specifically trying to be.
I've tried all the "main" ones over the years and the only one that's consistently defeated me is Slackware - somehow I could never work that one out.
Reminds me, the one distro (albeit not linux) that has consistently defeated me (
not me just deciding "not worth the effort" (like NixOS and LFS)), is FreeBSD. Fine with all the other BSDs. Curious.Suicide Linux of course.
Oh! Best answer yet! I forgot that's a thing.
It's more "annoying" than hard, but... Linux From Scratch. Having to mix and match every element (to see if they work) can be a very frustating experience.
Gentoo or Slackware.
Although, technically Debian.. Because I had Debian 1.0 on CD, and had no idea what I was doing (no idea if that even came with Xfree86, if it did, I didn't know how to run it at the time)
People today have it easy since Xorg added auto configuration, PulseAudio was added and manufacturers started treating Linux as a Tier 1 OS.
Back in the day, and for an absurdly long time, Debian was one of the hardest distros to install, solely because they buried the ISO download links so deep in a confounding byzantine labyrinth trail of links through their website, it felt more like luck if you managed to find it to download. LOL.
I to this day have yet to get a successful Gentoo install. Virtual or bare metal and following walkthrough I always fail on compile. Before that though I always struggled with Slackware. The concept of Slackware is something I love, but I have always struggled with the setup and especially installing new packages and updating.
Exherbo's fresh on my mind, so it springs to mind first.
But I doubt it's the hardest.
Could perceive GuixSD as harder (~ I swear, even as a bedrocklinux user (with it's longer file paths and other complexities and extra concepts to grok), I'll never get used to the GuixSD/NixOS confounding noisy style of file paths, with those fat hashes in the middle).
And if what's harder, is changes to the file system, different to the conventional norms, then maybe GoboLinux is harder. Nice as the idea is, I never managed to really daily drive Gobo for any meaningful duration. I at least managed to stick with GuixSD for months.
Distros like CRUX, and also KISS and Carbs, spring to mind. It's a different kind of hard again.
But for sure not the hardest. There will be some even more obscure distro I'm forgetting, because it was
too hard.Do distros that just failed to install for some reason, count as harder, in my experience, since they were just a hard wall blocking getting further? Because some distros I did not even figure out how to download, so they'd be even harder?
Ah, but, the question is indeed "tried", not "used".
I tried NixOS, then gave up when I realised how much had to be learned for its package management language that would not be a transferable skill learned (~ and it was then I decided to run GuixSD, and learn guile, lol, I know no guile from a few months in GuixSD years ago). Maybe that's more a case of tried to try.
And LFS's another "tried to try" (several times even). But always giving up before can really say "tried".
Joborun, might be one of the more obscure examples, that had some hardness to it, that I'd actually tried to ride along with... but that was more a (for want of a different description) a penance amidst familiar comforts. [Edit: and joborun kinda invited [/insisted] more attentiveness, so that, in a way, made it easier to be attentive enough to use something arch-based more properly (e.g. not using AUR blindly)]
I dabbled at making my own (~ respin + scripts + things + grander ambitions). That was pretty hard. Though, the hardest part, was the cat herding community aspect. Not running it.
I tried doing hardened gentoo... that hardest?
I've done decibel linux many times since around 2008 (though it was called gentoo studio back then iirc). If one were to partake of decibel without first learning at least a little gentoo... that's hard. And I only did my first stage3 gentoo install in 2010. [Edit: Oh, and last time I checked, the site was down, and couldn't get the stages from the wayback machine... so that's even harder to try decibellinux now. ~ hoping the guy's okay. ~ which reminds, XeroLinux, another distro I've tried, that's hard in a different way, emotionally, concerned for the developers wellbeing.]
And so I don't think I'm going to include bedrock as a candidate for the hardest... because by the time one arrives at a need for bedrock, one is already comfortably familiar with (likely) many distros, and the amount learned already is still more than the sizeable amount of learning new things required for bedrock, and so, like other distros [though, confoundingly, every distro example coming to mind are also each in their own way exceptions to this rule], that just take a bit of time diligently attentively learning and following the documentation, it's not hard, especially from the likely entry point.
So perhaps I just never really pushed harder... if one were to jump sooner to something harder... then it'd be harder. But the things that would seem harder to the novice, are not hard once you arrive there with the knowledge that brought you there.
Perhaps the hardest, might have been the first, simply because as a windows refugee, it was like going from 0 to 1, the initial infinite step change, where everything after that is easier.
... So wait, am I going to say SuSe is the hardest distro I've tried? lol.
Yeah. Final answer. Suse is the hardest distro I've tried. Simply because it was my first.
in the early 00's it was Mandrake. totally borked my HDD trying to install that and nuked my Windows XP partition in the process. just couldn't wrap my brain around it.
as for recently? Slackware. My Dad uses it but I just couldn't get it working correctly. More than likely it's simply because I did something wrong during install or setup post install. I've installed Gentoo a few times and I currently use NixOS and OpenBSD so I don't think i'm stupid, I just messed up Slackware.
NixOS. A beautiful idea that had me fight it constantly. That was after daily driving Arch for 10+ years, so I was no newbie. It's one hell of a learning curve.
Honestly I have never been much for my home machine being overly complicated. Yeah back in the day I made my own rig but at home I mostly want to use it and not support it. I used linux at work though as far back as the early aughts and nothing today I think is as complicated as that. So I simply have not used a hard one in my day to day. Pretty much went puppy to zorin (ubuntu) to bazzite.
I don't remember which one it was but it was back in like 95 and it was the supposedly user friendly one because it had a terminal menu system for installation that only required figuring out every chipset in your beige box yourself and picking out drivers for manual compilation of the kernel and hope it was enough but alas something else didn't still work and when everything supposedly did there were obscure crashes that had no hits on neither Altavista nor usenet and you were called a lamer for not knowing how to fix whatever in C/Cpp yourself.
Turbolinux 6, which was the first Linux distro I tried and which I never successfully installed because I was a high-school kid and had no idea what I was doing.
(Why Turbolinux and not some other distro? Because it's the one I found a physical, boxed copy of. I can't remember if I bought it at a store or somebody gave it to me at a Ham Fest -- more likely the latter -- but I definitely didn't download it.)