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Chef Marcel at your service!Food, Wine, and Linux may seem like a strange combination, but combining three passions can be a wonderful thing. I'm Marcel Gagné. Those of you who read Cooking with Linux, the multi-award-winning column that appeared monthly in Linux Journal magazine for 10 years, likely agree. With the help of my faithful waiter, François, Restaurant Chez Marcel serves up the finest in Linux and open source software paired with exceptional wines.

In that same spirit, this site features great Linux and Open Source software, ongoing wine tasting reports, recipes, and the occasional restaurant review. If you came here looking to read past Cooking with Linux columns, you'll find newer releases on the front page, a comprehensive list here and under the "CWL, The Column" menu link to the left. A votre santé! Bon appétit!

What distro now?!

I need help. No, not that kind of help. I need your technical advice, specifically as it relates to Linux distributions. I've been running Linux in one way or another since 1992 and as my exclusive desktop environment since 1996, so we aren't talking that technical. It's just that I feel it may be time for me to part company with my current distro. That's where I need your help. Watch the video, then let me know what you think.

 

 

So . . . Mandriva? OpenSUSE? Fedora? Stick with Kubuntu?

Comments

<p style="text-align: left;">Hi Marcel</p><p style="text-align: left;">For me, I prefer to stick to one distro and get to know it well. I have been in the</p><p style="text-align: left;">Ubuntu Kamp (pun intended) for about three years now. I moved from Fedora</p><p style="text-align: left;">because I did not like the "experimental" leanings of the distro. I want things to</p><p style="text-align: left;">work, without redoing stuff every 6 months. So the Ubunut LTS distro suits me</p><p style="text-align: left;">fine. I also want to use a distro that I can recommend to anyone, not</p><p style="text-align: left;">just technical savy people. A friend of mine is using Fedora and has</p><p style="text-align: left;">been for about 3 years now. When I recommended Fedora to him, I</p><p style="text-align: left;">thought Fedora was a solid distro with a good support group behind it.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Heck, I was using it too. After  the umpteenth foulup after an upgrade, I</p><p style="text-align: left;">think my friend is going to switch to Ubuntu now.</p><p style="text-align: left;">I also like getting everything I need to get going on one CD. This habit of</p><p style="text-align: left;">downloading 4- 6 CDs every time we upgrade has got to stop.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The Ubuntu distro has a great support website, an on-line magazine and</p><p style="text-align: left;">a large community. That is they way Fedora was years ago.</p><p style="text-align: left;">However, given the traction that Linux is getting in South America and</p><p style="text-align: left;">Mandriva is very popular there, perhaps this is the Distro to go to.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Suse and RedHat appear to have the market share in the USA.</p><p style="text-align: left;">I would stick with Kubuntu, I like the<b> Free as in beer</b> leanings of the</p><p style="text-align: left;">group and the community.</p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><p style="text-align: left;">Cheers</p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><p style="text-align: left;">John</p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><p> </p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p>

<p style="text-align: left;">Hello Marcel -</p><p style="text-align: left;">I'm sorry to be late on the distro question, however I wanted to give you a heads up on Suse 11.0. This is the latest version of Suse. I found out it was released in my nixcraft Linux System Admin mailing. I'd be intersted in your take on Suse 11 vs Mandriva.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Back in the day, when I first started out I used Suse 6.4. And then experiemented on and off with it. I like the interface (it was KDE based) and actually liked YaST. I find either you love it or hate it. And I guess I was one who was too young in my Linux education to know any better. *s*</p><p style="text-align: left;">I'm in a position where I will be rebuilding a desktop pc of mine and I'm either going to go with Mandriva or Suse 1.0 for a change of pase and to wish goodbye to Kubuntu.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Please see the provided tinyURL for your viewing pleassure: <a href="http://tinyurl.com/3mhqlj"><b>http://tinyurl.com/3mhqlj</b></a></p><p style="text-align: left;">Hope all is well.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Regards,</p><p style="text-align: left;">Bill Morgan</p><p style="text-align: left;">(Haawk)</p>

hi marcel, i am using on & off linux since 199x. Have tried many. Got disappointed -i talk about the 9x- and took up again 2 years agoo. I tried and evaluated many distro's: ubuntu's, linspire (bery nice), suse, mandriva, and some others. Now I am with PCLinuxOS and I just love it. It has the windows feel -sorry- but is so well developped & user friendly I can do anything with it. Just downnload the live iso and enjoy. It's fast, has backupprogram with it (also of the system, yes I saw your video on you tube) and flies like hell uh sorry, like a rocket. Install your home on a different partition, and well... i guess you know thnx for your www page

Hi as you read in my topic, I am going to talk you a little about slackware, just a little because I am not very good writing in english. Well, I have tried Most of the distros mentioned here, I worked with Open Suse, Ubuntu, Red Hat, Mandriva, Fedora, Debian, even Minix (just for few months and for fun). But most of them made me feel kind of incomplete, It was not really know what was going on with my OS, specially Ubuntu it just make me feel sick, or more like stupid, just click click click (it feels to much like Windows) I don't know how could you use Kubuntu for so long. I am a software engineer and I think my career is related to software like a Car collectionist is related to cars, So I can't be proud of myself using or collecting regulars Toyota o Nissan cars ( I am sure there are nice cars of these brands, I just use this for example because is what people drive the most here where I am from, Perú). So I start searching for something unique something that not everyone has or can handle, So I finally run into Slackware, not long ago I started with Slackware 11. I had a lot of troubles with this, but this was nice, have new challenges and get to know my OS, real close, With Slackware you get to know everything about your OS, and I must admit that at first it seems hard, but in few time, you just realize how easy and convenient it was to know all of it. Well now you have Slackware 12.1, which is in my opinion great. You can even use it as a server. Security in slackware is something that many distros wish to have. As a last thought, may I ask you if you rather be one more in the crowd or would you like to stand out.


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