Which flavor of linux to use ?

[paulunderwood]

Originally Posted by moebius

Next distribution I want to try out. Kali Linux a Debian-based Linux distribution aimed at advanced Penetration Testing and Security Auditing .

I use Kali on my second hand EeePC which is 32 bit, 1 GB RAM, 16 GB solid state drives. I like it although I have yet to use its features. It is a rolling release.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by a1call

So how does freebsd fare? I remember using it in the last century millennium and remember webhosts using it. What does distinguish it from Linux?
ETA foggy memory, was 15 years ago.

I last used FreeBSD about 4-5 years ago. Rock solid, very secure, damned good server operating system and a competent desktop system which runs many of the familiar desktop managers and applications. Good package manager, IMO.

Not all Linux software is (or was) available as binary packages so you may have to build from source. Some CLI utilities behave somewhat differently.

That information may now be 4-5 years out of date. Perhaps I should spin one up again, maybe in a VM, to see what the current state of play has to offer.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by a1call

Ubuntu used to be a great OS, Until they decided to make root access impossible. Setting it up with a password that you will have to look up will render it unusable.
Enabling root account with online procedures will still maker it not function properly.
My 2 cents.

I used to like Athena. At MIT everyone knew the root password (it was "mrroot", which we carried over to the evaluation system we set up in Oxford) because having superuser powers was no big deal. The worse you could do was screw your current session.

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by retina

When I used Mint, it came with a horrendous file manager called Thunar.

Tried "mc"?
You'll like it. Nothing beats ol'style Peter Norton...

[retina]

Originally Posted by LaurV

Tried "mc"?

If you mean this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_Commander
Then the minions will run away screaming because:

Midnight Commander is a console application with a text user interface.

[LaurV]

That's the key. Due to not having complicate graphic stuff inside, it is much faster and it has a much shorter memory footprint, and it can do everything Norton Commander could do (and more), i.e. in a word, the perfect file manager. Now, don't say it's no good, it is the only Linux tool which I know how to use